Yes, I know, not very original, but up is hopefully the only way. On top of that, my wife has given me extra incentive by agreeing to buy me a goban of my choice, if I reach this rank. I'm thinking of: http://jzool.com/product.php?productid= ... =481&page=

Anyway, my plans are:

Do at least 100 Tsumego per week (currently over achieving).
Play at least ten games per week (almost there this week).
Review my serious games (printed out kifu to record my in person games..my next game is in 3 days)
Achieve SDK within 2 months

Any suggestions on this? Any imbalances in my plan? I played a 15K player at the local club and won after giving him a 4 stone handicap, so, I'm not sure my estimate of 20K is accurate...I plan to play a lot on KGS etc...to check my rank. Is there a better server for me to play on to guage my rank, or should I just use those rank-graphing charts to gauge my rough rank?

Am I missing any vital elements in my plan? I figured at my current rank, replaying pro games wouldn't be of much use.

Thanks!

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Sounds like a good plan to me, and good luck to you for getting there!

Make sure you are enjoying whatever your plan is, as that keeps the motivation up. If you like goals, set them and try to hit them (such as "complete this particular set of tsumego by xx/xx/xxxx") - including performances (such as xx% success rate on a tsumego set).

Post away on your progress, and post games here that you lost and have no idea what you were doing wrong

IMO 100 tsumego/week for 10 weeks is not as good as 10/week for 10 years.
Consider realistic goals that you can consistently achieve
over an extended period of time, lest you burn yourself out quickly.

Good luck on that nice go set.

Study is going well so far, and I seem to have started to overcome my habit of clicking without thinking, and my results have improved markedly.

Played a few games at the club against a 4-dan and a 12Kyu....slaughtered by the 4-dan, but highly educational

I now have a study partner to play against once a week and to go over games etc...I'm fairly sure this should help my game improve as well. As for the problems, well, 100 was perhaps a little eager...about 40 seems reasonable per week given my spare time I'm also playing games on OGS in my spare time...I'm starting to see Go stones even when I don't close my eyes lately

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Hah, I know how this is! I'll be doing homework or even just relaxing and my mind will start creating positions which I then choose the best move in etc... I wonder if this kind of thing improves our reading skills .

Best of luck getting to shodan - hope you make it! That goban looks so nice ^_^ .

I'm not sure if this is a good thing, but that goes away after a while. I hypothesize that it's just an adjustment phase as your brain learns how to see the stones on a go board as more than just noise.

Well, I've already gained a few stones...it's hard to find the time to play a lot of serious games, but I play whenever possible. Here's my current study plan:

Study at least 20-30 minutes of Tsumego a day
Play at least 5 serious games a week online
Play several social games to relax and experiment
Play each Sunday afternoon against my study partner and review a historical/Pro game
Play on OGS to reinforce thinking through my moves
Reading Invincible
Attend Go Club and get as much advice as possible

With any luck, I'll get into SDK within another month....we'll see how close I am by the 19th of May!

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Well, still going well!

We have an 8p coming along to our Go Club tonight, in preparation for our states annual Go Tournament. Looking forward to it! Also have a game tonight with a friend in prep for the tournament. The tsumego, as some predicted, aren't going as fast as I'd like, but, overall, my rank is now estimated at 10K, so, I definitely think I'm making progress. SDK, here I come!

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Well, that was a pretty solid weekend of Go. I've no idea how many games, but, I managed to get a decent amount of time with http://senseis.xmp.net/?AnYounggil. I also spent my down time there reading Opening Theory Made Easy, and finished that without too much trouble. Almost to SDK...I'm pretty sure with some more solid study, I should get into that territory shortly!

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If you're finding it hard to play many games its worth opening up 30 or so games on OGS.

I find it hard to play more than two real time games a week. On OGS my game rate (when I'm playing 30 games) is 1.3 games per day.

The standard on OGS seem to be quite high..Im not sure as to the ranking but it has more of a club atmosphere.. There's strong players who play fast ( a game can be finished in 10 days..)


What I have found useful is games such as :

http://www.online-go.com/games/board.php?boardID=271112

where you justify each move before you make it...

Strangely the guy I work with ( a 3rd Dan- whos teaching/beating me very badly all the time) keeps on promising to play in real (we moslyt play on OGS).. we even have a board. BUT..as he says..playing with a board isn't as good as the real thing - using a computer..!

Just opened an OGS game earlier as I've finished five or six recently But you're right, I should open a few more to get some more games in.

Hehe, that's an interesting way of looking at it. I prefer playing in person myself, mostly because I enjoy the atmosphere and the psychology involved, but, there are definitely advantages to the computer, like being able to have the computer passively record your game as you play and obviously, the ability to play against people all over the world

I took a fairly bad beating this weekend, but, it was educational, and the people were great...always willing to review the game afterwards.

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