Cluelessness is good. It indicates an open mind, one ready to learn.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Or a lost cause depending on the circumstances.

It's a well documented phenomenon that the unskilled think they are more skilled at something than they actually are, because they are not competent enough to assess whether they are skilled or not. It follows that as you become more skilled, you think you are worse because you realize how much you don't know. But don't worry... I hear this fades slightly by the time you become a pro.

For reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

That makes a lot of sense.

It looks like I'll be going to the go tournament depressed. I won't bore ye with the details. This is a real pity as I've been looking forward to it for months. I don't want to go but I will make myself because I'll just beat myself up if I skip it. I'm very negative though, I thought I was losing a game last night when I was ahead by more than 50 points at the end. The good thing to take from that game though was that I didn't curl up and accept "defeat" but kept fighting and reducing.

I'll probably enter the tournament at 10k based off what the stronger players in the club have been telling me. We'll see how that goes tomorrow.

I hope the tournament cheers you up, or rather has a positive impact on you! Just finished setting up the room and it looks lovely, it's going to be a wonderful tournament!
See you there tomorrow and rememeber keep fighting

_________________
我が道を行く。
I'll do it my way....

Playing terribly, got hammered in two games, won the first one. First game was a straightforward win, I made a bigger moyo, he tried to live inside, he died. Second game was a complete mishandling of the Chinese Opening (my mind went blank and I didn't even recognise it for what it was). Third game was another mind ****, I didn't even recognise a ladder breaker when it was played. Various things led to another and I lost by 30 odd points. I hate playing whilst depressed, doing it under tournament conditions with short time settings is even worse. I really felt like I'd entered at too strong a rank at 10k but I know it's the depression clouding my mind more than anything else. It is nice meeting all the go people though, that's been very pleasant. We'll see if I can scrape together another win tomorrow.

The games are fast so I'm not recording them this tournament.

One good thing is playing "strangers" (either players I've never met before or people I've met once). I feel a lot more like playing online now that I've had some embarrassingly bad losses against people I don't know well.

Played a bit better today though I was still making silly mistakes. One win against an 8k by 20 odd and one loss to a 9k by 17.5 (I made a silly misread and ignored a 12 point threat). I noticed one thing, all my losses were when I was white and I hardly ever play as white since I lack someone my own rank everyone is either stronger than me or so much weaker that I'm giving a handicap. I need to get more practice in playing even games as white, it felt very foreign to me.

Good things to take away from the tournament:

Despite being depressed I was able to not fall into the trap of beating myself up over losses. Disappointed sure but not building it up into something it's not.

All the life and death puzzles paid dividends, I succeeded in three life and death situations over the tournament and failed in none.

Go people are nice and a reason to go to these tournaments in themselves.

Lessons to take:

I need a lot more game practice and exposure to different styles of play.

I should attack more, close combat was the most fun for me during the tournament.

I need to invade more. I delayed invading a few times over the tournament only for my opponent to turn the area into territory.

Finally seeing the light
Our games should get much more interesting from now on.

_________________
我が道を行く。
I'll do it my way....

Attack more doesn't mean all out madness.


In happy news the 1200mg of Lithium is kicking in and my mood is lifting which is quite welcome. Too late for the tournament but eh, I'll take what I can get health-wise. Lithium seems to be working for me but the hand tremor seems designed to annoy a go player. I don't have it too bad though so again I won't complain.

Me, all out madness, very unlikely

Glad you are feeling better this week!

_________________
我が道を行く。
I'll do it my way....

I continue to feel a bit better. The EGD rankings are up and I've come out of the tournament as a weak 10k. I don't feel like one though, I struggled badly in those games from a combination of lack of practice and depression. Anyway, the main thing I was going to talk about was online go anxiety and my problems with it at the moment. I feel more like playing online since the tournament and I know I need the practice but I just can't bring myself to play. It's rather annoying. I think it's a fear of playing badly but I'm not sure. All I know is that I get really anxious about the idea of playing and this stops me from turning on Automatch. So I play an AI instead, something is better than nothing after all, which was what I was doing between club meet-ups for the past few months. So at the moment I'm playing 10ish games a day against Crazy Stone (Champion Go on the iPad), turning up the difficulty so I'm getting beaten solidly and have something to think about. It's not ideal but until I get over this anxiety about playing online it's the best I can do for daily play. I really need to sort out the anxiety problems though.

I had two enjoyable games with Tom tonight.

The first, B+Resignation:



The second, W+15.5:



2 stones seems to produce interesting games between myself and Tom and we both find it tough going so I suppose it's the right handicap right now.

Some comments on the opening.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Thanks for that Bill.

A narrow loss to skydyr:



I think and the sequences that followed it are what costed me the game. at f5 would have been far better. Along with the usual problems of playing too passively and following my opponent around too much.

A couple things... 39 was too early to enter the corner, as you saw, and you attacked the white group rightly. Once that group is a wall of 4 stones, you can keep attacking. That double hane should have gotten me in a lot more trouble than it did.

At 72, as you said, just throwing a few stones in the centre would almost guarantee a win, especially with white's cutting points. A big centre is white's only real chance of making enough points to win at that point.

A brief review.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Thank you for the review Bill, and for the comments skydyr.