Hi all:

I am currently playing go games on Tygem almost all the time. There's no other go players close by as I am living in PNG at the moment.

I want to improve my level so badly but I am lazy sometimes. just like to play games online rather than reading books and reviewing games.

So I plan to record my study, trace my progress and supervise myself by creating this study journal.

Current rank : 5D at Tygem
Objective : 7D at Tygem by end of this year

Strategies :
Reading books
doing life and death problems (acctually also reading books)
playing games( at most 1-2 games per day)
reviewing every my own games closely
reviewing one professional game at least per week

I will update this journal regularly from 1st March.

Stephen Yang

Hi Stephen, welcome. What/where is PNG ?

PNG: Papua New Guinea

Plan of March 2015

focus on : improving Endgames skills.

others:
joseki (takamoku and mokuhazushi)
XuanXuan Qijing
Review Professional kifus(only on weekend)

How difficult is XXQJ for you?

A few minutes per problem? Maybe half a minute?

I'm planning to tackle it eventually, after a lot of other work. I just wonder what it feels like to you.

To me, it feels like "haha, no" for most problems. I suppose I could recognize the solved position if I systematically went through all the possibilities, but that's both very slow and not that useful when I could be more productive doing easier problems.

most of them should be done in 5 to 15 minutes. some maybe never be solved for my level now (i.e no matter how long I have spent on them, I cannot find the answer now).

half a minute? only to those I have done before.

Well, then I feel a little bit better about it being mostly impossible for me.

I just hope that changes, eventually.

I terminated my go study about 10 days due to family urgency from end of March.

summarize of March
1:completed joseki (takamoku and mokuhazushi)
2:reviewed professional games(2 games per week)

result: my rank on Tygem down to 4d.


Plan of April 2015
1:review professional games(2 games per week)
2:Xuanxuan
3:Endgame skill learning.
4:play game and review myself (1 game per day)

Summarize of April
1:Endgames skills learning
2:reviewed professional games
3:Xuanxuan (done 80 problems)

rank: 4d.


Plan of May 2015
1:review professional games(Commented Games by Lee Sedol)
2:Xuanxuan
3:midgame fighting and position analysis
4:review my own games

how much can you get from analyzing professional games?

my own opinion, junior players could not get too much from pro-games because they acctually don't know the reason the pros play the stone.

from my own experience, I seldom review pro games before 3d. Even now I don't think I can get much from pro games without comments.

so I suggest that Kyu players should spend more time on joseki,tesuji, fuseki,life and death games, end game skills, playing more games and reviewing them in earnest.

I'm not sure I totally agree. As a SDK, I can certainly start to appreciate the beauty of a professional game, and because of that it is by itself an enjoyable activity. As such, it provide a change of path to solving problems. Maybe I would get more by solving more problem using the time dedicated to study pro-games, but I wouldn't do so anyway, so I might as well study those games.

Plus, by playing over the games, it gives you a sense of good flow of the game, of good shapes. It allows you to correlate the joseki played with the whole board situation. If the game is modern, it also helps studying fuseki (though at the Kyu level, I guess even if the game is ancient it is beneficial : better to play well in the XIXth century still than play badly in a modern style).

Also, there will be move played that will puzzle you when you first place them on the board. Then it becomes instructive to try and understand why is it superior to the obvious (to you) answer. Then, if there are comments, finding whether you were right (and sometime, finding that the move played was a mistake). It is also instructive, when reading the comments, to find which moves that you didn't think was strange was actually a remarkably good move. (Do not that I play at least one time the game before replaying it by reading the comments each move.)

Ever sinced I read about vent sexing to determine a chick's sex (or better said the training to do so), I became convinced that replaying professional games on a regular basis does help your Go - in the long run. Our pattern loving brain subconsciously picks up good shape and a certain flow of the stones even if you consciously cannot really make sense of the moves. You have to let it happen, though (see Mushin and this post by John Fairbairn).

That's why I am not in favour of in-depth commentary and even less of presenting a lot of variations. That is, if your goal is first and foremost improvement.

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

For the past May, I completed the 3 books "Commented Games by Lee Sedol 1,2,3(chinese version)". Acctually I only replay Lee's games on weekend. I spend lots of time on reviewing my own games last month.

I think it is very important to review their own games for the people who really want to improve your level because the weakness and wrong moves can be found from reviewing their own games.

I planed to read some books on mid-game skills but did little on that.

rank 5d

plan of June:

fuseki chinese Opening
enclose juseki(how to play after juseki)
xuanxuan
review pro-games on weekend