Time for another entry. Actually my initial plan was to post this entry on sunday, to go back to an easy one entry per week schedule but at least it is pretty close to one week since the last post.
The last week was actually quite filled with go-related activities. I played several games on KGS and went to a private go-meeting on saturday. Overall i’m currently standing at 12-11 games (w-l) in may. Considering that my actual schedule requires an average of 17 games per month i’m way ahead in that aspect.
But despite an okay-looking winning percentage of 52% i am currently really unsatisfied with my game. On KGS i was demoted back to 2k after losing against a 1d and got promoted back to 1k after i won the next two games against a 3k and 2k. At least i kept the 1k after losing against the next 1d for now.
The problem with my current game is that i am playing too aggressively. For quite a time i have been a player that enjoyed fighting and as a result i tend to favor influence during the opening. But handling influence correctly is quite difficult and for the past weeks i seem to have problems with that. Since my opponent will get secure territory in exchange for my influence i have to make up by attacking his weak groups, that will emerge from him trying to erase my influence.
And currently i either fail to see how to profit from them without killing them, or become too greedy and try to kill. Which is obviously in most cases rather difficult if not outright impossible. Coupled with the fact that i then tend to ignore vital defense moves for my group and have a certain tendency to misread you can see that most of my games don’t end well for me.
However since these problems seemed to have started mostly after the Yunguseng started and the first lecture was about playing faster moves it may be just a normal phase. You know the phase where you are playing worse as you try to incorporate new knowledge or new moves into your game, but you come out stronger once you’ve regained your balance.
At least i hope thats the case.
Concerning new ideas and studying apart from playing, i started reading
„Direction of Play“. While my reading mistakes are probably easily cured with better concentration and more tsumego-practice (though i currently don’t solve any tsumego), i feel that the opening in general is a big weak point of mine.
Surely that is partly because of my lacking joseki knowledge but i also feel often quite at a loss when the opening stage is over on how to continue. That may be one reason while i then fall back to „attacking weak groups“ as this is the only option i know.
I’m hoping that reading direction of play can help me in this regard to appreciate the opening stage more and the future potential that is created in this stage. This may help me not to play an opening just blindly following some simple patterns, but play with some kind of plan in mind on how to develop my position in the future.
I can’t say that i understand everything written in this book, it appears to be actually quite high level, but not everything there is lost on me. I find it quite enlightening to see an amateur opening being picked apart and explained how the flow of the game should have developed (or how it develops in a professional game). I’m pretty sure that i will read this book several times, especially once i have become a little bit stronger.
Last tuesday i played a game in the private league system i’m in, in addition to the Yunguseng. I consider this game to be a really low-point in my current play. I made several mistakes, both in joseki and local fighting. Even though the observer said after the game, that it actually was quite close i felt miserable most of the time. Main reason for that was, that nothing in this game developed even remotely like i wanted. Of course you can’t get everything you want in a game, but usually you have some parts that go well for you and other that go better for your opponent. In this game it felt like everything went well for my opponent.
After this game my girlfriend suggested i should try to replay some pro games on a real board. Especially Shusakuus games as he plays very calm and solid, which is probably the total opposite of my current style. And also because we already have „Invincible“ =).
So i tried it wednesday evening before my fourth yunguseng game. Maybe it helped, or maybe it was the classical music i put on during the game but that last game went really well. Both of us used a lot of time in the beginning and the game proceeded very calm and close (minus some mistakes on both sides). I can’t remember when i was this satisfied with one of my games, especially the opening stage.
In the end i blew the last chance i had gotten due to the time pressure in boy-yomi. Having to play 7 moves in 53 seconds put me in some kind of panic state, which prevented me from clearly thinking about my moves. So even though the game was a loss, it felt like a major accomplishment for me.
Future Study What do intend to study next? In addition to the normal yunguseng-schedule (lectures and reviewed league games) i want to work on my major weakness. And that is joseki. Because one important lesson also repeated in „Direction of Play“ is that just because a sequence is joseki, doesn’t mean it is always good to play it. Depending on the circumstances a particular joseki may be a bad choice and another one should be considered. Choosing the right joseki is important, especially at my current level. However in order to choose a good joseki for a situation one has to actually know several josekis. And this is where i’m lacking. That means even if i avoid the few josekis i know, because they are bad in the current situation i will go into unknown territory, that is unknown for me, but familiar for my opponent (since he knows the josekis i don’t) which can result in even worse situations for me.
Since there are so many joseki and just skimming over the sequence in a book will do me no good i decided on a 1 joseki per week schedule. I will start using corresponding lecture videos from yunguseng with additional consulting takaos joseki dictionaries.
The goal will be to know some josekis for most typical early positions. Like „what can i play if he plays a high wide pincer“ or „what are my options against a 3-5 point“
There are obviously too many joseki to really know them all, but i what i want to avoid is a position where my opponent plays a normal looking move and i have absolutely no idea on how to continue. Currently, this happens way to often.
What about tsumego?I have not been solving tsumego for quite some time. The last time i was actually semi-serious doing tsumego was probably in march. So nearly two months without any tsumego, that can’t be good, right?
Well doing tsumego would certainly help and they are a lot more efficient in improving reading ability than just playing but at the moment i’m not really in the mood for them. I tried solving easier problems from „1001 life & death problems“ but i got bored very quickly. Since go is a hobby and not my job i find it important to focus on the things that i enjoy, which are currently playing and watching lectures. Forcing myself to do tsumego would probably do more harm than good, as my general interest in go could dwindle.
The time may come again where i enjoy solving tsumego and will do them more, but currently i don’t and i don’t think my reading is currently a major weakness of mine.
Posted GameI post here the game i played on tuesday in the private league - my lowest point so to speak. The mistakes are probably numerous and i will comment on some points where i think i made a crucial mistake.
You can comment on this game if you want, but hopefully you have the same impression i have, that the mistakes are not (only) a question of reading or concentration but more of style and general game-flow.