Hey all, thought a study journal would be a good idea to keep myself on the straight and narrow and get back in the studying groove. I haven't studied hardcore since training in Korea two years ago, and I want to get back to feeling in shape, Go wise that is. My goal is to get to 7 dan, and I'm not sure how long it's going to take because my ability to improve is wildly unstable. Sometimes I'm riding high and other times I feel like I'm 5 kyu again. I want to get to 7 dan so I can be in the strong player's room next time I go to congress. Not that I'd be really competitive with anyone there, I'd just like to be in with the special people I figure it will take at least a year of solid effort to reach it. My problem with Go studying is that it really just breaks down into:

Play lots of games
Review lots of games (preferably with someone stronger)
Do tons o' tsumego
Review pro games
Watch Baduk TV

Lather, rinse, repeat.

In Korea it was really easy to get games in real life, and playing with strong little kids was a great way to sharpen my fighting skills. I won't have that here in the stix of good ol' Michigan where the next Go club is miles and miles away, so I'll have to play on Tygem. Also, having a 9 dan teacher was awesome.

The question is, what would be the best regimen? How many games per week? I don't know anyone that's 4 stones stronger than me to review my games, so I'm gonna have to review most of them myself and do it slowly with a database to see how pros play and compare it to my own. I find that studying your mistakes and mining through your games works more so than trying to play 20 times a day. Besides I wouldn't have time for 20 serious games.

So, here's my regimen:

At least 3 games a week but bonus for playing more.
All games are slow and serious.
At least 30 seconds thinking time per move unless it's blatantly obvious or joseki. This will help me stop playing so fast. One of my biggest weaknesses is that I play entirely too fast and make mistakes that don't need to be made.
Do at least 20 problems a day. I have plenty of tsumego books and I have to stop being so lazy and just sit through them and solve problems like I used to.
I already watch a ton of Baduk TV, so maybe take more notes and try to memorize new joseki patterns.
Study Joseki - I actually don't know very many of them as I mostly just figure them out, so I think I can crack open a joseki book I've been meaning to read but haven't.

We'll get started tomorrow. I'll play a serious game and post it here with self analysis, but would love any comments from the peanut gallery.

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Nein Mann, ich will noch nicht gehen, ich will noch 'n bisschen tanzen.

What do you consider "slow and serious" time settings?

At least 25 minutes main time and a minute byo yomi. 35 minutes would be pushing it. I mean, hour long games are fine in real life tournament settings because there's people around and I won't be bored, but staring at a screen for more than 35 minutes to play Go would probably fry my brain

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Nein Mann, ich will noch nicht gehen, ich will noch 'n bisschen tanzen.

Good luck and I look forward to reading about your experience. I think you are the strongest player to hazard a public study journal here, for a long time anyway. Also with your background as a Go author, I hope you will not be shy about keeping us updated.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

yithril, Good luck! If you set up a nice physical set near your computer,
use slow time controls (45 minutes at least? Much slower than your 'pushing-it limit'),
and you relay both your opponent's and your own moves, then you can enjoy your time mostly on the nice set,
and very little on the screen.

That only works if I have a live human being at like...a tournament. I have weird go tics. I can sit in front of a go board for 45 minutes if there is a room full of people also playing. It makes it more fun. I really would prefer to play on a real board and interact with another person, but like I said, not looking like much of a possibility

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Nein Mann, ich will noch nicht gehen, ich will noch 'n bisschen tanzen.

Thanks I'm actually going to create a website with Go videos soon, so I wanted to boost my strength before it's released so the quality of my lessons can improve.

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Nein Mann, ich will noch nicht gehen, ich will noch 'n bisschen tanzen.

Just wait until we've finished our game or something!!

Just kidding, obviously - sounds like a superb idea and good luck

Okay so today started off pretty well. I did 20 tsumego problems and played a fairly slow game. I broke the 30 second rule twice and paid for it. I gotta come up with some system to suppress my need to play as fast as my opponent plays. It cost me dearly this game. I came out ahead though.

Here's the game I played with some comments from my review. I don't agonize over game reviews and try to psychoanalyze my every move. That's not important. What's important is to be sure I'm following fundamentals, reading as well as I can, and finding the major mistakes.



After reflecting a bit, this game is indicative of my Go in general. I've got an okay opening, I have a decent grasp of positional judgment and I have basic fundamentals in place. I never win because I played a globally super efficient move, it's always because I just come out the victor in ambiguous situations. If I get a whiff my opponent is overplaying I get aggressive and invite local mistakes which pile up to a global win. I've always wanted to play more stylish moves that reflected deep strategy, but I guess a street brawl is what ends up happening.

Woohoo, Lee Sedol is playing Baduk TV. I'll catch the game and that'll be my studying for today.

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Nein Mann, ich will noch nicht gehen, ich will noch 'n bisschen tanzen.

This may be a stupid question, but in your loose ladder variation starting at move 92, can White not get out at the end, starting with G9?

Missed that, nice!

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Nein Mann, ich will noch nicht gehen, ich will noch 'n bisschen tanzen.

Want to practice with me? I'm horribly out of shape since my trip to China last year, and I want to get back into shape. It'd be nice to play some serious games - when I play these days I tend to just throw trick plays out until I win or lose.

Sounds like a plan! Let me know your KGS handle and we'll set a time to rumble.

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Nein Mann, ich will noch nicht gehen, ich will noch 'n bisschen tanzen.

I play mostly on Str1fe these days, but I don't log on regularly. Let me know here what times are good for you

So I did ze problems today and have cracked open "After Jungsuk" by Sungrae Kim. It's a pretty decent book and goes over some joseki variations that really actually do come up in games. It's a short book though and it's really for those of us that just need to learn new shapes. My slow game for today went well. I was losing though, because my opponent went full force after losing a lot of points in the beginning. I have to stop making my opponent desperate and causing them to give it their all to win I won by 8.5 in the end, though, because I made mutual life in the corner and he just didn't believe that I could



I had a good game at the beginning, but ran into spots where it was not clear to me what the best way to play was. Towards the end though, I practically gave points away, which I cannot do. I've got to be more flexible and be willing to lose some stones to go for the big prize.

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Nein Mann, ich will noch nicht gehen, ich will noch 'n bisschen tanzen.

You're surprised at black move 9 but I'm watching a game between Gu Li and Xie He and Gu Li does play a very similar move. (B31)

http://gokifu.com/s/10rf-gokifu-20120719-Gu_Li(9p)-Xie_He(9p).html

However it's a game commented by Nie Weiping who says the move is useless.
The position is different but the condition similar imho

There must be some kind of idea behind it though if Gu Li plays it.

Hm, you mentioned you play on tygem, and I know KGS is a bit weaker, but even in the KTL there are some stronger players. Although they might not be as strong as you or many stones stronger, I think they can at least review with you? And maybe throw out helpful ideas? (I'm lucky because I'm so weak that everyone in the KTL helps me. ^^)

I'd also like to add that it's really cool to see how someone much stronger studies. Did you do similar things to get to 4d?

@128: why connect? Just seal him in, that cut doesn't do anything.

I don't see how that made a difference. You took gote twice to reduce the corner from 8 points to 3. Saving the three stones at the top of the board seems vastly bigger to me (and I arrive at a White win if that's played instead of the descent to A4).

Wow, keeping up with 20 tsumego problems a day is proving harder than I thought it would. I need a routine in the morning to help out. I've got a lot of projects and don't want to burn out, but it's so easy to think "I'll just stick them in later in day" and then day becomes evening

I'm back to learning joseki. After Joseki was really too short for me and I only got to learn a few new shapes, some of which I don't think I've ever played in one of my games. I also have this other book, in Korean, called "Son e Japhineun jeongseok." It has a lot of basic joseki and variations which I'm going over to make sure I've got them down.

I didn't study joseki much until I got to be a dan level player because I never understood them. The basic ones I knew, like some 3,3 invasion joseki, but a lot of them I just never learned because the whole idea of memorization went against my own basic style. Even when I tried to do joseki in context, it still took some of the thrill of the game out of it.

Now I'm trying to learn all of the kicks and punches to the game so I can string them together. A lot of these josekis are actually pretty easy to figure out because the reading makes sense to me now. I'm also learning a lot of the reasons why we don't play certain moves.

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Nein Mann, ich will noch nicht gehen, ich will noch 'n bisschen tanzen.