Hello everyone. As this is the end of 2012 and the beginning of a new year, I would like to start anew and pronounce at the top of my voice that in 2013, I will become very strong! This is going to be a year of hardcore improvement.

This journal will be updated atleast once every week. I'm currently 3-4d on tygem (That's about 1-2d on kgs I think, but I'm not sure) and I'm going to be playing on both tygem, wbaduk and kgs. I don't have a definite plan at the moment, but I'm looking at atleast 1 hour of tsumego daily, playing out some pro games on my board for enjoyment and to check pro developments in fuseki (I do this for fun, but I think it helps too). I like to alternate between a pro-game from www.gokifu.com and a batch of tsumego. When I get bored of tsumego, I replay a pro-game and vice versa.

I will set a strict rule for my games this year. I will review every single game I play. even If it's a 2 min review of 1 glaring mistake, that is enough.

That's my plan for now, I'll be adding in more detail at a later date.

There's one last thing I would like to try though. On wbaduk and tygem, I sometimes run into pretty strong players who are willing to play me again and again. When I lose, I challenge and they accept. When they lose, they challenge and I accept. This goes on for like 10 games in a row.

I found that this actually gives me a kind of insight into my own mistakes and defects in my playing style. I would like to try this theory out by having a consistent playing partner with whom I can play and review games. My partner must be around my strength, but if he/she is a little stronger or weaker that's okay. The important thing is the willingness to devote oneself to improving with me. (We could even play by ''old'' rules, if someone loses enough games, they take black no komi, then 2h). If this seems interesting and if you're willing to improve very fast with me, then feel free to send me a pm with some info so we can play some test games to see if it can work

Cheers for a happy new year of improvement!

Good luck with hardcore improvement:) I'm considering starting a study journal for myself, but I'll be happy to reach 2-3 dan kgs (now 1k kgs) so I wouldn't regard that as a hardcore improvement.

Maybe we could play together, considering the gap in our levels would become smaller.

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Formerly Gorim

Hey Gorim! Thanks for the encouragement. I also hope you improve alot. I'm definitely up for some games and I created an account on KGS recently. I forgot to mention it though. It's called Broodlord, so feel free to add me and we can hopefully play some games together

I'm also quite curious as to what people think about the idea of practice partners who regularly plays games with you. How does this compare to the normal random games? What benefits, if any, would there be? I hope to find out, but if you have any thoughts pertaining to this idea feel free to share them:)

Well, playing some guys (about even) regularly at local club, I feel the biggest insights have come from seeing different playing styles played consistently in different situations. And of course from the irritation from "falling behind" in development with somebody - or leaving them to eat the dust.

Btw. I could try to play you too - currently 2d on KGS, but, that was a drift I think, feel more like 1k-1d. Same nick as here. GTM+2, playing around 20-23 local time mostly. Sometimes during day too, but rarely.

Sounds good! Just add me on kgs and hit me up then we'll figure something out.

At the moment, I am working my way through LCH tesuji and Tsumego. I'm on vol 6 of tesuji and vol 5 of tesuji.

Weekly Update.

So I haven't been playing as many games as I'd like, but I'm following my review rule and also doing a fairly large amount of tsumego. I'm currently on vol 6 of the LCH tsumego set.

All in all not a bad week, but I'm hoping to improve on the amount of scheduled games that I play against regular opponents. The problem seems to be my irratic ways. I need a set time and place in order to play those games, and I will have that in a week or two at most. Until then I'll just proceed as normal, no real change in my plans but I'm starting to wonder what problem collections/books I should look into doing after the LCH series.

Oops, forgot to update:)

Lately I've been doing tsumego in an interesting way. A few days ago, I did the first vol of the LCH tsumego to try out the easy tsumego theory. I pretty much did the whole thing in one sitting, though I took a break halfway through to get some tea and stuff. I found that extremely effective and can recommend easy tsumego in large quantities to anyone. I'm also doing it with tesuji and getting similarly good results. I'll continue doing this while playing on tygem and kgs.