I'm back. I took a weeklong break from go, because I wasn't happy with the way I was playing. I was playing without thinking. Today I'll play a game or two to see if I'm able to focus on my games. I'll also start my study schedule up again if those games go well.

Two games from today: a win and a loss.

I lost the first game after I overplayed severely in the bottom right.


In the second game, my opponent died huge after deciding he'd rather kill me than live.

I've been slacking off on tsumego. Can someone here yell at me?

Redundant do my tsumego for me so I get to 1d soon! You're slacking off.

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Sanity is for the weak.

20 tsumego now!

Yes right now, what are you still even reading this for? Get off the forum and go do some tsumego!


...


Go!

Yesterday I almost finished the purple LCH tsumego book. It really showed that I have some blind spots when it comes to life and death. I'm going to redo the blue and purple books before moving on to the next.

Hey Red, have you gotten any games in in the last week? How'd they go, and can we see one?

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

I haven't played on kgs for a while, but here's a recent dgs game I played. I won by 6.5, but I feel like I made a huge mistake in saving my cutting stones. They just turned out to be heavy.

Thanks for sharing. Your opening with white was quite interesting to watch. Is the stuff in the top left something you've seen before, or were you winging it? I agree, black did a good idea attacking those stones for profit. That said, you did tenuki from the group a lot of times in order to build your framework. Perhaps black's single-mindedness in attacking meant that you got additional moves elsewhere to compensate a bit. Through the game, I kept expecting you to capture two stones in snapback at P15, since it had a somewhat sente followup double-atari outside. Perhaps it was always a bit small though?.

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

I knew that the joseki was to make the bamboo joint with 11. I wasn't sure what the best "punishment" was for leaving the cut there, so I decided to just wing it and try to kill everything.



I was really unsure on the timing of when to take those stones. I really didn't get sente to do so until ~110, and by that point I was getting worried about his bottom, so I played in a way that he could turn his entire potential into territory .

I've gotten into a bit of a slump. Here's a game from yesterday. I reviewed it a bit with Shaddy. I'm really lacking in the fundamentals, especially when it comes to attack and defense.

I suck. I really, really suck at this game.

Here's a loss from today. I got ahead early after a huge mistake from my opponent, but then managed to ... lose badly.

Taking those three stones in the beginning is the kind of thing that seems to make the game harder psychologically for the captor than for the captured. As black after that I would sometimes have the tendency to slack off and play suboptimally or without reading, or try like crazy to kill more stuff, since "obviously" my opponent is "weaker" than me. If that's what happened, you have to learn to fight it.

Your opponent's rating is similar to yours for a reason - you both make about the same amount/value of mistakes per game on average. You have to remember that. The worst mistake he's going to make all game probably already happened - yours is still lurking somewhere waiting to trap you.

I've found that thinking that way has decreased my losses in "won games" by a lot.

As far as losing moves, D15 was probably just too far. Those stones aren't as strong as you'd like them to be, and the pincer turns into a splitting attack. Probably playing low under the side star point was best there.

Even before that, 21 feels better as an attachment underneath the approach. If he plays the hane, an extension will be cramped because of your thickness, and if he plays the avalanche, you should have an easy time fighting.

I've switched the books I'm studying. I picked up some Japanese books on my trip there. I have a couple life and death, a couple tesuji, some whole board direction problems, and some joseki problems (find the next move in the joseki).

I played three games today, and lost all three due to reading mistakes. It's not that I'm lacking the ability to read, but rather that I'm not playing to my ability.

I'm now starting a re-read of Kageyama to try to get my fundamentals back. After that I'll do Attack and Defense again.

I've joined the ASR league for September. Hopefully I can get some good games, I haven't been playing enough, and I think this shows.

Also, I joined breakfast's insei league today. Now that I'm back at school I may have less free time, but I'm more motivated to work during that time.

Good luck, keep it up!

I've been playing rather poorly on my main account (dropped a rank temporarily), so I started a new account to see where it's rank settles. Right now I've made it to 5k? and won against a 5k. This sandbagging has made me me realize that I have gotten stronger over the summer. I just need to get my mind into a place where I can win against players of my own strength.

Okay, update on what I've been doing.

• Playing rated games on kgs to try to reach 2k.
• Playing with my wbaduk account until I'm not sandbagging (my account is old)
• Doing problems from this series when I have time
• Playing over games from Invincible.
• Insei league (I'll keep this up until my money runs out )

Big news:

I got one of my accounts to 2k, and have won a game on it since (let's see if I can keep it).

I just got first place in insei league group D for September. On to C group!

Here's the game I played as a 2k.

I just made 2k on my main account. Here's the game:


It's not that interesting to watch, but an important game for me nonetheless.