Section 1

I don't feel like I've made much progress lately. I also feel like I've been slacking on my studies, spending too much time on the computer and watching television and not enough time playing and studying.

I have quite a bit of free time currently and I'm planning to go to the US Go Congress this year so I'd like to improve as much as I can before then.

I'm hoping that recording what I do to study will help me to be more consistent and disciplined. In this journal I will record what I do each week and if something notable happens (getting a new book, increasing a rank on kgs, gaining a new/better understanding of some concept) I may post more often.

What I've done recently is read the Dictionary of Basic Tesuji by Fujisawa Shuko although it's taken me 3 weeks and I haven't finished it yet; the material is too dry, I find it hard to read more than 2 or 3 sections a day. I've also played a few games on kgs. That's about all I've done this month and I'm not going to improve much (if at all) if I keep going that way.

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Section 2
To improve the 3 things I'm going to focus on are playing more games, doing more tsumego, and memorizing pro games.

If anyone would be interested in regularly playing a game with me on kgs (2k or stronger please) I'd be happy to play you. I think that having regular opponents to compete with would be helpful for both players to progress.

For tsumego I'm going to Kinokuniya in New York this weekend, I'm planning on buying Life and Death from the elementary go series and maybe 1001 life and death problems. While I'm there I'm also going to ask about ordering Maeda Tsumego (前田詰碁) and The Book to Increase Your Fighting Strength at Go (囲碁の力を強くする本). By the end of this weekend I'm also going to try to solve all of the problems in Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of Life and Death - Intermediate level from tasuki's website.

I'm also going to try to memorize all of the games in Invincible. The main reason for choosing Shusaku's games in invincible is that it's the only game collection I own besides Kamakura (which only has 10 games). I'm going to try to keep a rate of 2 or 3 games per day.

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If anyone has any advice on staying motivated or modifications to my ideas (especially since my ideas are pretty vague at this point) please let me know.

Also advice for getting over anxiety when I play would be welcome, it usually settles down part of the way through the game but it sometimes gets to the point where online I just don't play sometimes even when I want to. This is important if I'm going to play more games since the local club only meets once a week.

Wow, this is some determination! So much life and death! 1001 life and death problems is a beautiful book, some time ago I worked through one move problems and felt like my life & death improved. Life and Death from Elementary Go Series seemed too hard then and I'm sure it's still too hard for me, but an excellent book nevertheless. And you working through all of Intermediate Cho's life and death is simply amazing to me since elementary volume is tough for me at the moment.

How's your progress with Invincible?

I've actually gone through all the games in the first part of Invincible before reading the commentary while I play out all the moves on my board. This time I'm just memorizing all the games up to around move 150 or so. This is because memorizing the 100-150 endgame moves would mostly be an inefficient use of time I think. The main things that I'm hoping memorizing games will help me with is the opening and middle game so there's no need to memorize the entire game for that.

That said I also only just started a few days ago so I've only memorized a handful of games at this point.

I'm only up to problem 400 (out of 861) so far in the Intermediate level problems. They're taking me a bit more time than I expected and I find it hard to focus on tsumego for more than 60 - 90 minutes at a time. I still want to finish them in the next few days though.

In the past week I haven't done as much as I was planning to do.

First, I underestimated how much time it would actually take to do all the problems in Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of Life and Death. I just finished it last night, that's 861 problems in 7 days.

I was able to memorize some games from Invincible, I'm up to game 10 (I started with the 4 games in chapter 1 then moved on to Shusaku's games).

I only played 3 games. 2 at the club last week and 1 online. I really need to get ovre my aversion to playing online if I want to improve since there are so few Go players living nearby.

This next week I'm going to continue memorizing games from Invincible, read The Endgame from The Elementary Go series, and read the sections on endgame tesuji in the Dictionary of Basic Tesuji. I'm also going to work on the problems in 初段合格の死活150題 and 初段合格の手筋150題. That's only 300 problems between those two but The Endgame has a number of problems in it as well. I'm also hoping to play some more games this week than I did last week; my offer from my first post still stands ("If anyone would be interested in regularly playing a game with me on kgs (2k or stronger please) I'd be happy to play you").

>that's 861 problems in 7 days.

that's astonishing, you do study hard.

>my offer from my first post still stands ("If anyone would be interested in regularly playing a game with me on kgs (2k or stronger please) I'd be happy to play you").

I'm keeping steady 2k rank for now, so if you like I would gladly take you up on that offer.

I have go club tonight so I can't play you tonight and I may be away for most of the weekend but any time next week will be fine. Just let me know when you want to play, you can message me here or on kgs.

In the last week I've only played two games, both face to face. I lost one due to a large mistake late in the game, I won the second game. I had some computer issues the past few days so I couldn't play online even if I had wanted to.

Over the past week I did all the problems in the shodan life and death and shodan tesuji volumes from the Nihon kiin dan level series. I've read all of the Endgame from the elementary go series and I've read the 7 sections on yose tesuji in the Dictionary of Basic Tesuji. I also continued memorizing games from Invincible, about 3 games a day this week.

I'm just going to continue with basically the same study plan but with more tsumego next week (since I don't have any unread theory books right now). Hopefully I'll get to play more games but I probably won't if I don't get over my aversion to playing online.