My go seems to be getting worse. I was never a genius at finding tesuji, but lately my play has gotten even cruder, uglier, and more uninspired. Too many of my games just feel dull - a feeling which often inspires me to make a ridiculous move because I can't find a good one. It's not just that I can't read very well. I have the feeling that even if I could read better, I still would judge the results wrong, and even when the result does turn out favorable, I either cling to it desperately or squander it.

I've been playing plenty of slow games, reviewing them, doing lots of tsumego and working my way through all sorts of interesting go books, but somehow nothing seems to stick. Maybe I'm spreading myself too thin and not applying myself properly. In any case, my studies do not seem to be reflected in my results. Tsumego that I can solve when presented as a problem are suddenly too hard during a game. The concepts from books just seem to backfire, and I watch in dismay as my invasions fail, my moyos get whittled away and throughout the middle game I plod along like an animal in a slaughterhouse.

I guess I am a bit stuck on rank, and part of what provokes this whining is that my main account is soon going to sink to 7k after being a solid 6k for a year. On the other hand, I have another account that is oddly enough a solid 5k, but most of my games lately are just plodding losses on my main account. When I play a teaching game with a stronger player, they often praise my game, but 6ks, 7ks and even some 9 and 10ks on ASR seem have my number.

It bothers me that I'm not learning how to play better and that I can't get a handle on something as simple as "don't play bad moves." My confidence is draining away, and with it my enjoyment of the game. I think I need to repair my attitude, but I'm not sure how to go about doing it. Right now, to mis-paraphrase Kageyama, it feels like: insecurity causes weakness and weakness causes insecurity.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Could you post some examples of ugly, uninspired play or bungled tsumego?

There may be multiple things that you could look at to try to fix the problem, but something that struck me as interesting in your post was this quote:



Why do you feel this is? Perhaps if you can identify the difference between doing a tsumego as a problem and doing them during your game, you can find out something that may be blocking you, psychologically.

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be immersed

Mistake is often as simple as making an exchange that benefits opponent. First you place a stone. Then opponent responds by making a solid shape. Then you feel compelled to save the stone you just played regardless of position.

First 14 moves of your recent game look troubling.

Top: what was the point of playing 1 if you're going to tenuki and let black ruin the whole position with 4? Kageyama would be tearing his hair over this. You absolutely must block. If you're going with sanrensei, just play it, let black make shimari and then play a real move. Later in the game you suddenly become attached to this stone and start dilly-dallying around trying to make eyes in the center, while black is happily surrounding more of the edges. Ounce of prevention is worth pound of cure.

Bottom: 1 is no good attack as black responds by cutting with the most solid shape in the game. If you're fearing that white 2, black 1, white a, black b is easygoing, you should think at bigger picture. Sometimes groups are difficult to attack, but that's no reason to make ridiculous attempts. If you can't prevent eyes, try to contain the group instead. Chapter 2 (attacking strategy) of Attack & Defense is a real eye-opener.

If some stone like start to look awkwardly placed, for goodness sake just leave it there until the surrounding position changes and you can make a reasonable move that has something to do with the stone. Making one mistake doesn't necessarily lose the game, but the way you magnify them will certainly do.

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You're not alone.

Maybe you could take a short break from Go, and give your mind some time to process all of the different things you've been studying.

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The shape exchange is a Go Seigen idea, so I'm nowhere near qualified to discuss it
(as are most people here on the forum, I'm afraid ). But the bottom is a basic broken shape. See also:
http://senseis.xmp.net/?SqueezingOutTheToothpaste
http://senseis.xmp.net/?SmallGaps
http://senseis.xmp.net/?LameDuGo

I'm not sure why you want to see it. Haven't you had opponents who are just too easy to beat, who you don't feel like playing again because the game wasn't challenging, who give you free moves, who telegraph their plans, who start something and don't finish it, who pass when you can still get a ko against the corner etc?



I have a hard time staying focused during a game. It's a bit as if I get distracted by the other things going on on the board, but also it's the fear that it's not a 10k tsumego but a 3k one that I will bungle anyway.



On the top, I had a plan. He plays three stones and my stone is light and hardly threatened. It is high and should come in handy at some point when my influence oriented san ren sei has led to a nice position in the center. (i.e., during my second move, I am looking at the big picture, but unfortunately, already at move 10 (at r6 instead of at q6) I contradict the logic. I knew this while I played it, but I was thinking that since I had let the top get so strong, I shouldn't leave my postion too attackable on the bottom. This line of thought seems wrong, and I regretted r6 immediately. Once I played it, I somehow felt compelled to compensate by playing something even stupider, like n2 in response to k2. Like I was berating myself and then went into self-destruct mode.



Thanks, that's nice to hear.



This seems like what I should do. I can't imagine that not playing for a while would make me worse than I am playing now. I have however tried not playing for a short period (like a week). What often happens, for example when I take an internet free vacation is that I bring along some go books, come back inspired, but quickly encounter situations that prove that I didn't understand what I had read.

I guess I shouldn't take any books with me either.



Your diligence in pointing out this mistake is marvelous. Hopefully someday you will eradicate the broken shape completely.

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Patience, grasshopper.

first, understanding somth. new often often takes some time before it gets applied correctly and consistently in the game. So getting worse results can be a sign of a learning process taking place.

secondly, have you tried playing fast games? You can play more fast games than slow. That trains intuition, and you can try many new ideas and see how they work out, ...

For me playing blitz games is mainly fun because I "don't have to" think so hard. Best would probably be a mixture of many fast games to try all the new Ideas and concepts and a few slow ones to really think about the game. (my mistake is playing only quick games and falling in the trap of not thinking at all. so I often repeat my mistakes again and again, ..)

Thanks, but it's like weeds and pests; it's hopeless.
One "good" thing is, like weeds and pests, it provides job security for some people.

I often have a lot to do at university, for example right now I'm writing my bachelor's thesis, so I often have periods (weeks) where I can't play go at all. I'm always carrying one or two books, mostly tsumego, but I don't read them conscientiously. But when I return to the goban, I've usally gotten better. I think it's some kind of organisational blindness...
Right now I'm trying diffrent things on the goban and try to analyse them, for example starting with with the 6-4 point, to get new ideas by myself.
When you think, you're getting worse, doing something completely else, like playing very fast blitz games or not playing at all for a while might really help.
And when you're bad at reading, how about playing more 9x9 games?

This. I had to take a break from go for 2 months for exams, and when I came back to playing go, I had somehow jumped from 7k to 5k without really doing anything. A break might benefit you more than you think .

I also remember reading a while back that a professional said something like "If you just spend 5 minutes thinking just about go every day, that is a fantastic way to improve." Maybe it's a quality over quantity thing? You say you can't focus during games - are you focusing when you read books/study tsumego? Might be a 'less is more' thing.

I agree with this; it's a common experience by many people, in many fields. However,There is an underlying assumption/implication/wishful thinking that:
- an increase in rank means an increase in level;
- there is a (significant) difference between 5k and 7k;
- your favorite server did not do a rank adjustment ;
None of which is (necessarily) true.
Yes, over the long term, there is a direct correlation between rank and level.
But over the short term, like the stock market and the weather,
fluctuations are much more unpredictable and much less meaningful

- A student concerned with an upcoming stretch of exams is able to focus on a game of go equally well as a student who has finished the set of exams (=

Maybe a bit more confidence would do you some good.

For the record, I don't think that is a bad idea:

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be immersed

I once thought that shodan could be defined as when you always have some idea where to play.

It sounds like you are running into the bounds of your knowledge. That's a good thing, but unless you can find the right text or a teacher, you are pretty well stuck with trial and error for a while.



There are many skills in go. New learnings may require, as you say, proper application, which you may not have learned yet. It is not unusual for learning to yield bad results for a time.



Join the club.



See above.



Excellent! Weaker players can provide learning opportunities that stronger players never think of.



In Bridge for Tournament Players bridge great Terence Reese pointed out that you cannot guarantee a win, since that depends upon your opponent's play (and, in bridge, luck). What you can do is to play up to yourself. As Reese said, the player who plays up to himself is hard to beat.

You might consider getting a coach for a while. I say coach rather than teacher, because it sounds like you have been learning a lot, technically, but you have not consolidated that learning, or learned how to apply it. It might also be a good time to review, to reread books and redo problems.

Bonne chance!

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I often "get worse" when I try to apply new concepts. Something like Guo Juan's group class might be good. The class isn't based on lectures, but on game reviews, which is more like the "coach" idea that Bill mentioned. Though I think the next term isn't until October.

If you need a confidence boost, you can always beat me on OGS again. =D You certainly wiped the floor with me last time. =)

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

Guo Juan's group class is fantastic.

Your weekly workload is:

* Play a game against a classmate (usually 1 hr per side + byo-yomi)
* Review said game with classmate
* Send in cleaned up SGF with main questions and notes from your review
* Solve the 10-20 tsumego that are assigned each week
* Encouraged to solve many more tsumego in addition to the problems that will be checked in class
* Attend the 1.5 hour class on the weekend via KGS (stronger players on Saturday, weaker players on Sunday)

The class format is a review of the games played for the previous week. It's amazing, but probably not all surprising, how often everyone in the class will make the same mistakes.

I like this quote. In a similar vein, I find myself thinking of sente as when I look at the board and think, "I have no idea what part of the board I should even be playing in."

One of my (many, many) problems is when I look at the board and think I can safely play tenuki, it usually comes back to haunt me.