Hi Ember, you're very welcome.

I think there are various books and online links on shapes,
but I don't know how effective they are. For example,
the Sensei links have been there for a long time (I don't know how many years),
but unless somebody points them out to you, I don't know how likely
you would stumble on them by yourself otherwise.

I think some people can just read books and study by themselves
and improve quite nicely, while others find a good teacher to be
very beneficial. I belong to the latter group. I myself was making
tons and tons of bad shapes, including the most heinous broken shapes,
and many other bad habits, for years until a good teacher helped me
reduce them -- the process of undoing my bad shapes and bad habits
took years. It's a very slow and long process, at least for me,
and it's still on-going, and will continue for a very long time to come indeed.

One possible source of good pro shapes is joseki dictionaries such as those
by Ishida and Takao.

While by and large this can be helpful, it's worth noting that some moves are joseki because they're bad shape but they just barely work. If you look at the large avalanche, for example, white starts by hitting himself on the head, and then a couple moves later pushes from behind...

Thanks for your advice, EdLee! Studying shape really seems to be quite a longterm goal. I wish you success in your ongoing fight against bad shape and bad habits!
After reading your advice I went to look at the first two lectures on basic shapes on Guo Juan's website and guess what? Right in the first lecture the shape you explained above was discussed, too. Both lectures were very interesting and I'm looking forward to watching the remaining five lectures. I also went to Sensei's Library and browsed it for a bit and think that I found two very interesting pages that will be of great help: The Shape Collection and the page on Mistakes.

When playing today I also tried to use the information I learned about but it is not so easy to juggle shape, direction of play and all that rest and to distill all the knowledge in the (probably) best move you could play. I hope it will get easier in the course of time... because there still remains so much to be learned!

@ joseki and good shape: Of course there are bad shapes in joseki, too, but in general I think the advice to look at joseki to see examples for good shapes is really good. Although I guess that paying attention to this subject is up to to person studying joseki because the books on it have another focus it seems (just took a quick look through the first volume of the Takao Joseki Dictionary).

_________________

Weekly Update #9

Since I'll probably be traveling tomorrow and since I'm still feeling sick and cannot do much anyway, I decided to bring forward this week's report (these are the moments I'm glad that I start writing the next post soon after posting the latest one).

As you might have guessed already the week didn't go that well because I caught a cold or something like that and it has practically knocked me out. During more than half the week there wasn't really much to do concerning Go although I must say that by now I have internalized playing, doing tsumego and studying that much that I find it hard not do to something Go-related every day however sick I feel (or felt until now, of course there's always some point beyond which it all becomes pretty meaningless) and I really miss it. Whether this is good or bad I cannot ultimately say but it definitely proves that the time until now has already changed me, my attitude towards the game and my habits enormously. This shows also in the fact that I decided to abolished the idea to play unrated games to get used to being 3k after one game. I realized that I should use every chance I get to fight for not only staying at where I am at this very moment but to raise even higher. The result of this is that I won for the first time against a KGS 2k. I added the game below for you to see and maybe comment on a few mistakes I made if you like (this is, as always, much appreciated! The lower right offers plenty of possibilities even ).



Thanks to EdLee pointing out serious mistakes in the shape of my stones in that game against the 1k player, I dedicated this week's study of theory to watching the first few lessons about basic shapes at Guo Juan's pro lecture library. These were really good lessons with lots of good examples and clear explanations. Now the next step is applying the knowledge in my games. Some things are not hard to implement. However, some things ask for a different approach to evaluate a position (like the mistake EdLee pointed out), which is a lot harder. But if everything was easy it would be a boring game, wouldn't it? As soon as I get better I'll continue studying the remaining lessons.

Looking back I have to say that I gathered much more confidence in my Go in the last two weeks which is a great success. When it first hit the rank of 3k I thought of that rather as a joke because I never believed that the results of my playing and studying routine would show so soon and that I could stay at this rank (before I started my resolution this year I was a rather weakish 4k - at least that's what I can say from the little games I played before). I didn't really believe that I could have become a strong 4k already and was wondering when I was beginning to fall down again. But the results from the last games I played indicate that it might not be an illusion after all and that I'm not very far away now from even keeping this rank - at least that's how it feels. Of course I still make many hair-raising mistakes every game but somehow it still works out in the end in quite a few games..

Still, everyone makes mistakes and having more confidence in my game is exactly what I need now because another tournament is approaching (I do assume that I'm feeling better until then. I hope). It will be on the next weekend and right now I'm wondering with which rank I should enter. Since I had horrible results in the last two tournaments, my EGF rating has dropped considerably and now says that I'm a borderline-7k, being just a a hair's breadth away from being 8k. But I don't really think that this is what I should enter as.. Originally I wanted to start as a 6k again, like in the last German tournament I played in, but an EGF 2k who saw pretty much all of my recent games recommended to me to try out playing as a 5k. I'd really like to do that but since I seem to have some issues with playing "normally" in tournament games and since I always sticked pretty closely to my rating I'm still a bit hesitant about this. Of course, I learned a bit in the last few weeks, but I'm not that sure that this is already enough to take this step and getting beaten to a pulp in just another tournament is close to the last thing I need. I've also thought about going to a club meeting and ask for advice but since (I hope that) I'll be at home next week the nearest club meeting is pretty far away so unfortunately this is not an option (stupid cold! Where I'm at at the moment there's a meeting barely 30 minutes away…). Well, there's still some time to think about it.

Until soon!

Ember

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+++ Playing statistics +++
Date: 15 February 2014
Games played/to be played: 52 / 348
Days passed/to come: 46 / 319
Games won total: 29
Games lost total: 23
Jigo: 0
Winning percentage total: around 52%
Landmarks: First win against KGS 3k on 5 January 2014 (unrated game, own rank: 4k, color: black, no komi), first win against KGS 3k in a rated game on 19 January 2014 (own rank: 4k, color: black, komi: 0,5 points), first time hitting 3k by playing and not by not-playing (25 January 2014), January: succeeded in playing the 34 games needed per month to reach 400 games by the end of the year, first win against a KGS 1k in a rated game (11 February 2014, own rank: 2k?, color: black, Komi: 0,5), first win against a KGS 2k in a rated game (12 February 2014, own rank: 3k, color: black, Komi: 0,5)

_________________

Sorry for the delay, the last days were quite busy (although not related to Go, unfortunately).

@EdLee: Thanks again for your comments, they are much appreciated! Yes, I wsa lucky several times during that game, especially in the upper left corner. I had absolutely no idea how to play there and the Ogeima seemed like a good idea at the time. Now when I saw your correct answer for white in the upper left it was quite obvious that it was a very bad move..
And thanks for the comments on the lower right. I completely messed it up, not only by playing some fancy move that didn't protect the cut at all, but also by producing broken shapes again. Thanks for pointing that out! It will need (probably a lot ) more time and more broken shapes and pointingat them to correct that I fear, but every remark helps.

_________________

Congrats to your excellent performance at the tournament. It seems you really have improved. Now I am curious about your weekly report.

@ karaklis: Thank you very much! It really looks like it, doesn't it? To be honest, it still feels a bit unreal.. ^^; And it's a shame that you weren't there! At least I couldn't find your name on the player's list, I sincerely hope that I didn't pass you by without talking to you… >_<

Weekly Update #10

This was a week full of ups and downs…

In the end, I went home and only started to play and study again on wednesday. Family always comes first. I was really happy to play again, but that happiness was somewhat.. flawed by the fact that most of the seven games I played until friday evening were crappy (fortunately NOT including the game I played for the Group Class), including a rare misclick on my part (I never ask to take them back as it's my fault - in this case I was very close to resigning anyway so at least I could speed that up and end the game) and a total misread. After the last game I was really doubting myself again. Feeling so rusty after only one week of not playing and studying was in fact very disheartening. Suddenly all the gaps in my knowledge became so obvious to me and the little "knowledge" I have accumulated so far seemed even smaller compared to all the questions that regularly come up, so naturally I got very nervous. You know that feeling you always get on the evening before an important presentation or test you were prepared badly for? That's what it was like.. That's the reason why I discarded my plan to start as a 5k and instead played 6k again, hoping that it wouldn't turn out too badly. I definitely didn't arrive in high spirits on saturday and if I hadn't already bought the train tickets a few days before, I might have even decided to skip the tournament altogether. That's the good thing about pricey tickets, you never want to waste them. Because what happened on saturday and sunday I wouldn't have dared to dream of.

To make it short, I won five out of my six games on that weekend. I didn't really outplay anyone (although one or two results were by a comfortable margin), but instead took advantage of several of my opponent's mistakes - AND was lucky enough they didn't care very much to punish mine (severely). Because I eventually made quite a few of them.. ^^; Although my opponents on the second day were (considering their rank) weaker than on the first day - where I only played against 5ks - these games felt a lot harder to win somehow.

I'll post the loss here. My opponent played what to me looks like quite an extreme overplay-invasion and in the end managed to live with the large dragon with just 2 points.. My large moyo was gone and all that influence I got in return was practically of no use to me as nearly all of my opponent's black stones were played on the third line and had already taken a lot of solid territory. I had not enough good points left on the board and couldn't compete with black's points. As I was disappointed that I couldn't kill what I thought was not able to live, I resigned. Plus it was saturday evening and I was tired. ^^; It was a little annoying to lose the game like this but that's how many of these moyo games tend to end, the first one to make a mistake loses the entire game. Not why I personally like, but that's how it is. Next time it might as well be the other way around. However, this is something I still have to work on, coming back from a disappointment. Although I'm absolutely sure that I couldn't have turned this game around. But I shouldn't make a habit of this, either. Anyways, here is the sgf. Maybe someone has a good idea how to kill it or can tell me how I should have played instead:


This is another game, from the fifth round. I was white again and faced a sanrensei opening, something I haven't payed against in a long time. I had no real clue how to tackle it. Playing from the inside looked like a bad idea and he also seemed confident with the pattern, so I tried to play from the outside. Looking back it seems like a good idea but I might have very well lost the game if he had attacked that floating center group of mine at the right time. Near the end I made a mistake and lost two stones in gote. I could have played a ko but as I was already leading I gave in at that point. Any ideas on how to play against sanrensei (or general comments) are much appreciated:

(on a sidenote: The European Go Database says this was was my 100. win at a tournament.)

While playing I also tried to avoid broken shapes and produce them in my opponents positions. At least with the latter one I think I was pretty successful. But I think that was rather because my opponent paid less attention in this area than that I was really forcing them to do so.

Overall I was really happy with my game because I was much, MUCH calmer in this tournament than in any other I played before and can remember, because I was able to play the moves I wanted, because I counted regularly (which I'm too lazy to do when playing on the computer - however, here it came to me so naturally.. strange, isn't it?) and because I used my time well (although I still have to get to like byoyomi). It was really nice to meet and talk to some old friends I hadn't seen for quite some time, too. Unfortunately I missed the opportunity to meet a fellow student of Guo Juan's who also takes her Group Classes at the moment (although he is another group). Maybe there'll be another opportunity..

To sum it up this tournament was a greater success than I could have imagined before. By this I not only mean the result but the fact that I could play way more relaxed than before (overall - there were still situations where I was very nervous again, but THIS is normal) which for me is an achievement at least equivalent to the five wins. This again proves that I'm making the right decisions at the moment. I wonder how far I might get by the end of the year… now I definitely want to know! For the next tournament (mid-March) I'll take the next step and play as 5k for the first time ever - actually promoting myself to a new rank for the first time in five (!!) years. I cannot say how happy that makes me right now and I can't wait for the next tournament to come!! ^^v

The week of vacation and the tournament also helped me to catch up with my number of monthly games to be played. I played 13 (!) games last week (plus one unfinished game at the tournament site which I don't count) and now four days before the end of the month only four games are left to reach this month's goal of 34 games. Sounds good. But to imagine that I even played these games due to that cold in only three weeks is kind of crazy (for my standards). Four weeks before I even found it quite hard to play them in 28 days..

Since I definitely slacked off in the last two weeks with my studies in favor of playing (or getting healthy again), I'll put more emphasis on that in this week. I want to continue with After Openings by Kim Sung-rae (still have to finish studying the 4-4-small-keima approach moves..) and of course with the remaining lectures about shape on Guo Juan's website. Sounds like (more than) enough food for one week to digest.

Until soon!

Ember

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+++ Playing statistics +++
Date: 24 February 2014
Games played/to be played: 65 / 335
Days passed/to come: 55 / 310
Games won total: 36
Games lost total: 29
Jigo: 0
Winning percentage total: around 55%
Landmarks: First win against KGS 3k on 5 January 2014 (unrated game, own rank: 4k, color: black, no komi), first win against KGS 3k in a rated game on 19 January 2014 (own rank: 4k, color: black, komi: 0,5 points), first time hitting 3k by playing and not by not-playing (25 January 2014), January: succeeded in playing the 34 games needed per month to reach 400 games by the end of the year, first win against a KGS 1k in a rated game (11 February 2014, own rank: 2k?, color: black, Komi: 0,5), first win against a KGS 2k in a rated game (12 February 2014, own rank: 3k, color: black, Komi: 0,5), scoring five wins out of six games in a tournament as 6k - first time I played better than 3:2 als 6k (February 2014)

_________________

In the first game, I'm very amused that black tried on you. You can push in and pull back safely, provided you take care of the cut instead of going to kill afterwards.

Regarding the end position, I'm not convinced that white has lost. White has overwhelming center strength, and there's a lot of aji on the right side to aim at, plus big moves on the top and threats against the topside two space extension.

While it would have been nice to kill, and white needs to take care of the corner soon, black only got a couple points with his big reduction, and white still has the same strength to use. Whether white can use it effectively is an open question, but I wouldn't have resigned at this point myself.

That said, looks like an overplay. Perhaps white could just reinforce the right group and let black figure out how to run while white attacks?

I will say, though, I don't really like the joseki white chose in the lower right. It seems like it works much better with the pincer stone in place already, as black has no real complaints this way.

@ skydyr: Thanks for your comments! You're not the first person who commented that I shouldn't have resigned and I must say it was an impulse after I had to admit that the dragon lived, I didn't even think about it. I should have taken the time to look at the board again, but while working on that dragon I talked myself into that I could resign if I couldn't kill it. As I mentioned before, I guess that's something I should definitely work on...

Weekly Report 11 & 12

Shame on me! Since that amazing tournament experience two weeks ago I totally slacked down and I have no idea why. Theoretically, I should have been brimming with motivation to go on and continue with the work I started and which brought me a nice way up to now. But somehow, the drive has vanished since. To be short: Apart from a few tsumego (ok, these I still regularly do while commuting) and a handful of games and watching another two lectures on shape rather half-heartedly, I have done NOTHING related to Go in the last two weeks but instead indulged in another few hobbies which have suffered a lot since I started playing Go again so much. Last week I even forgot to attend the last group study lecture... On sunday I was too ashamed of my lack of studiousness that I didn't post anything at all here in the journal. What should I have written? (maybe what I'm doing now..) I hoped that it was somehow connected to going back to work an just having to get used to that again, but the last week was just the same and I honestly do. not. like. it. There is still so much to learn and such a long way ahead! Could someone please grab me by the scruff of my neck and give me a good shake? Please? Although I guess it was just a matter of time that I get to this point it is very annoying indeed and I definitely want to get back into my study routine because it worked out so well. Not tomorrow, but today - after the last bits of housework I'll go right back to KGS and get another one or two games in. It is even interesting to see in my ranking graph on KGS that since the afore mentioned tournament the rank goes down significantly while before it was climbing at a nice rate.


Before I'll look ahead though, I'll finish off february first since I still owe you the monthly overview:

FEBRUARY

As you can see, I wasn't able to fulfill my goal of playing 34 games in February even though I had a good chance of doing so and played only 31 games - which is still not too bad considering the number of games I played before I started the whole thing. Thanks to the tournament I was able to finish the month with 17 wins to 14 losses which means that my winning percentage was slightly better than in January. But its only half a percent so it's actually not anything noteworthy. Overall I'm slightly behind the schedule, but it's definitely not worrisome yet.


THE ROAD AHEAD
Looking ahead I do not have the time to keep on slacking off. The next two weekends I'll be playing in tournaments and since I was brave enough to register as 5k I have a lot of work in front of me if I don't want to be crushed (I wonder if that was a good idea ). So I'll try and resume with what has helped me so far:

• play 8 games a week (or more if I can) and review them myself and with a stronger player (2k) afterwards
• do tsumego while commuting
• watch the first three lectures on shape in Guo Juan's Pro lecture library before next saturday and the remaining ones before the tournament one week later
• repeat what I have learned so far from After Openings for next saturday and after that continue with the book, looking at one or two moves (and the corresponding follow-ups of course) per week

I'll also watch a few lectures in the pro library, but since I cannot really say how much time I've left for now, I won't specify a number until I know or "finish" the shape lectures and move on to the next "buidling site".

Since the lectures from the group class have ended, I won't have the chance to get my games commented (apart from kind reviewers here on L19x19 ). Right now, I'm considering if I'll take the group class again, although at the start of this thing I said that I wanted to take all three terms. While I still believe that getting games commented is extremely important for imrpovement, I must say that I was a bit dissatisfied with this term and with what I got out of it. This, however, was not really the fault of the teachers, who did a very nice job (!) and presented interesting subjects very well, but because of the games I played. I had some really interesting games outside the class which I would very much have preferred to get reviewed instead of 3 blunder games of mine (out of 8 games in total) in which the tenor was (sometimes) "pay more attention" (really?!) or "do more tsumego" (which I already had done for months at that point, on most days of the week) and which left me quite frustrated. These were not the kinds of hints I was looking forward to when I signed up for the lessons and which I thought might point at a weakness I hadn't been aware of before. Also, I think it's not very advantageous that the lessons are only on the weekends because I'm going to play more in tournaments and therefore would miss the lectures (which this time unfortunately are not recorded). That's why I'll think about alternatives and I hope I'll find a good solution.

By the way, I had not only one but two Go sightings this week, this must be an omen! One was yesterday in the subway where an Asian looking guy two seats away from me was playing a game against a computer on his smartphone (I got out my smartphone, too, and solved a few tsumego, but he didn't look my way and left the train without passing me by) and the other one was today when I was reading an articel about healthy food and children where one of the authors told a story from his childhood in which he visited a friend and which involved them talking about the subtleties of chess and Go. Kind of cool because it's on the webpage of a very large newspapers here in town (although the articel now seems to be behind a paywall and it must have been sheer luck that I could access it before they put the wall up).

That's it for today, many words and little content. I hope that next week will be better.

Thanks for coming by, see you then!

Ember

_________________

That's a lot of games Ember, congrats! I struggle even to fit 4-6 blitz games in a week!

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

@ RBerenguel: Thanks for your comment! Yes, that's a bunch of games - although if you get into the rhythm like after 4-6 weeks, it is much less burdensome than when you start and much easier to fulfill your "quota". I hope you reach that point yourself and can see for yourself, too.


Weekly Report #13
I'm a bit late because of a hectic yet (overall) nice weekend and I'll try to keep it short today because I just wrote a monster of a post in another thread that took me very long to compose.

I don't want to beat around the bush, I didn't reach more than one goal from last week. Here's what I wanted to do last week and what I actually did (marked green):

• play 8 games a week (or more if I can) and review them myself and with a stronger player (2k) afterwards
• do tsumego while commuting
• watch the first three lectures on shape in Guo Juan's Pro lecture library before next saturday and the remaining ones before the tournament one week later
• repeat what I have learned so far from After Openings for next saturday and after that continue with the book, looking at one or two moves (and the corresponding follow-ups of course) per week

Tsumego have become a faithful companion in the last few weeks, not only since I got a very nice Android app called TsumegoPro. I'm doing them five days a week at least and that really helps, not only in that one game I played last week where I could really take advantage of all the tsumego practice. Talking about games: I played 6 games last week, including four games in a small one day (swiss) tournament - the very first one I played as a 5kyu. The result was 2 wins and 2 losses which is a very good result (although it was considerably flawed by the last game. I won't elaborate on that here, you can read more about what happened and what conclusions I drew from that here).
I didn't watch any lecture on shape before the tournament, however, I watched the fifth one today in my lunchbreak. I will try to make a habit of this, watching lectures of a max of about 30 minutes two or three times a week. It's very relaxing AND entertaing and forces me to bring my own food and keeps me from going out to buy it (which takes time away from my study time and is pretty costly, too). I'll try to watch more of those lectures until saturday but I doubt that I'll be able to watch them all as this week will be very full of other things. That's also why I doubt I'll be able to even open After Openings and this is pretty annoying but cannot be helped this week.

What was good this week, however, was that I got my "drive" to play Go back (although this is restrained by the acute lack of time ). And guess what it was that I needed - playing on a real board. There's nothing better than that, the internet will never be able to really replace this. This and the announcement of a thing which I do not want to talk about in more detail now - IF I can really get a bit stronger in the next few months I'll tell you then and that'll be soon enough - sorry for the tease.

Let's hope that next week will be better and that I can still play at least three games before the next tournament which is on saturday already. This will be the first two day tournament as 5kyu and will feature longer thinking times so I'm really looking forward to that.

I wish you all a splendid week!

Ember

_________________

I'd still find impossible to play so many games: I don't have 1h+ free stretches of time unless I schedule them in advance... And I already struggle to schedule my NGA games and lectures. Like last week, I had a hard time fulfilling my meagre quota of 4 blitz games, and they only take 15 minutes!

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Thanks It seems you had a splendid weekend
You're keeping us on tenterhooks

*sneaks in*

Weekly Report #13

Um.. yeah, here I am again! Quite a few weeks have passed since my last post, some of which were not very nice and some of which were pretty good - although all of them haven't been filled with as much Go as they should have been. But sometimes a break is exactly what one deeds and from this week on, I hope I'm back on track! But first I'll sum up what has happened since my last post.

Last weekend I played my third tournament as 5k and I'm happy to say that I finally accept that I really may call myself 5k, after four long years! I played in two small one day tournaments of four rounds in which I scored two wins each. In the third tournament (two days, the one karaklis referred to), I scored 4 wins - although I believe it's rather 3:2, because that one win on sunday morning was a win by default as my 2k (man, was I mad to get a 2k!! ) opponent didn't show up and I "only" hat to sit there for an hour waiting for his time to run out... I'd have much preferred to play, even though I very much doubt I'd have had a chance against him. But at least, I'd have learned something! Solving a few tsumego while waiting of course is not an adequate replacement for a real game.. Still, I won't keep on sulking. I finally got over that wall and there are still SO many 2kyus to beat up in the future! I already took good aim last thursday in the German Bundesliga, when I defeated a 3kyu by resignation. I was already leading pretty comfortably and only wanted to bite off a little bit of his not-so-healthy-looking group, but in the course of things it somehow... died.. However, looking back I must say that he didn't really put up much resistance. Surely, he could have attacked some of my groups much harder and cause some more trouble but somehow.. that didn't happen. So, is this a reason for happiness? I don't know.. Here's the game, so you can decide for yourself:

Here's the graph for March:

MARCH

The overall happiness is spoiled a little bit by my laziness. In march I played only 18 games, 16 less than I should have played according to my schedule. Catching up those games won't be easy.. But I'll do my very best! Easter is coming up and a few other holidays, too, so I have hope to gradually get back on track again!

Catching up is a good keyword. Today I played my eighth games this week and In the beginning it definitely didn't go nearly as well as I wanted it to go. In the middle of the game I was close to resigning when my opponent had considerably reduced my moyo and his territory looked overwhelmingly large. My last hope was to somehow invade and thus destroy some of his territory on the right side and somehow I succeeded. In the end it becam a VERY close game, which I lost by half a point. I'm still quite happy with that game because I managed to get back after such a bad position - although, of course, I'm aware of the fact that the reason for this is not my brilliant play but perhaps some smaller mistakes my oponent made here and there which I could take advantage of. However, I'd be very grateful for some comments on this game, especially up to around move 81.


For next week I want to reach the following goals:

• play 8 games, including the 100th game since the beginning of this year!
• watch (at least) two lectures from Guo Juan's Pro Lesson Library: they are really good for lunchbreaks!
• solve tsumego while commuting: I hope to finish Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of Life and Death volume 1 this week, for the first time from cover to cover! It's only 10 pages to go..
• resume my study of After Openings: finally finish Shape 1
• play some more on Easter: as much as I can, maybe another 10 games to set a goal

18 games in one week, huh? Sounds hard.. But not impossible with two days off work and if I hang in here. I'll report back on monday evening how far I got.

I wish you all a great week, some exciting games and a nice holiday, until next time!

Ember

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+++ Playing statistics +++
Date: 13 April 2014
Games played/to be played: 96 / 304
Days passed/to come: 103 / 262
Games won total: 54
Games lost total: 42
Jigo: 0
Winning percentage total: around 54%
Landmarks: First win against KGS 3k on 5 January 2014 (unrated game, own rank: 4k, color: black, no komi), first win against KGS 3k in a rated game on 19 January 2014 (own rank: 4k, color: black, komi: 0,5 points), first time hitting 3k by playing and not by not-playing (25 January 2014), January: succeeded in playing the 34 games needed per month to reach 400 games by the end of the year, first win against a KGS 1k in a rated game (11 February 2014, own rank: 2k?, color: black, Komi: 0,5), first win against a KGS 2k in a rated game (12 February 2014, own rank: 3k, color: black, Komi: 0,5), scoring five wins out of six games in a tournament as 6k - first time I played better than 3:2 as 6k (February 2014), first win under tournament conditions against a 3kyu (10 April 2014, own rank: 5kyu)

_________________

Congratulations on the tournament and being able to accept yourself as a 5kyu now

18 games in a week doesn't sound too bad... think I hover around 10-15 games on KGS most weeks, depends what else you do though. Maybe I play too much... *sneaks out*

PeterN

Thanks, PeterN!

Well, to me 18 games really is a lot. I'm working fulltime and don't want to blitz. So it does get kind of tricky to play all these games. But I won't complain, it's fun.

@ playing "too much": Is it possible to play too much..?

_________________

Yes, but it won't reflect in your skill on the board, just your personal life.

I wasn't being partiularly serious with the playing too much comment

Although what time settings do you usually play at? My games are either 10 minutes or 25 minutes main time per player, with probably a smallish majority being 10 minutes and a fair number of the 25 minute ones not hitting byo-yomi. That could drastically change reasonable number of games.

PeterN

Me neither.

@ PeterN: Concerning the game settings: You're right, the time settings are a decisive factor in reaching that goal, too. I usually play the slowest possible settings in automatch, that is 25 minutes basic thinking time and a byo of 5x 30 seconds. (I'd prefer Canadian byo, but that's not an option.. ). That's what I play most of the time on KGS and that's the fastest I'd go for, because I do want have time to think. 10 minutes would be way too fast for me, I'd automatically click on what I know and am comfortable with and miss the chance to try out some new ideas (some moves - be they good or bad - just "pop up" and absolutele have to be played, I cannot get around them at that moment.. and which usually provide some interesting study).
If the game doesn't end in resignation, I (or my opponent or both of us) usually end up in byoyomi although I don't know where I spend that time, it just flies by..

So far, I only played 1 game.. but I still have plenty of time!

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