Cynosure wrote:
I know it's better for me in the long run, but it's still very frustrating to consistently lose games by 10 points or less...
I know the frustration well - I was on a similar streak of close losses. I found that mentally it helped to go back over my games and see where/if I could have picked up the points. Studying endgame a bit more also helped. Counting during my games helps also (well it definitely does when I remember to do it
).Re learning new things - I know I often am tempted to try something out as soon as I've learned it. In go though every rule or pattern comes with the caveat that context matters. The problem is that while you may have learned the new rule trick etc. you usually have no idea of the proper context to apply it. Sometimes this is an obvious thing - you try a play and find it doesn't work because of a random stone that wasn't in the memorized sequence. But other times it might be more subtle - you normally play solid but the cool new move is faster but leaves weaknesses that you don't know how to handle. For these more subtle cases, it can be difficult to recognize the reason why you are not doing better despite "improving" your game.
Finally, it's often easy to see a winning streak as a sign of improvement a loosing streak as a sign of getting weaker. The reality is though that learning one new factoid is only going to improve your winning chances by a few percent at best and that really you won't see the improvement in the next game or two but in the next 100 or so.
