Yes, and it's a very hard instinct to untrain. I find it somewhat easier on a real board to take a step back and look at the global situation but I still have a lot of problems there. I very much think this overly local focus of mine is going to be a serious barrier to progress for me.

Edit: At least I can see it as a problem in my game in reviews and after making moves. That's an improvement over the blind ignorance to the issue that persisted before.

As a side note, putting all the stones on ones side onto the 3rd line is usually not the best idea, as they're slightly more robust against cutting if you mix it up between the third and the fourth, and it gives you much better moyo potential and influence, because it's more costly for your opponent to cap.

Also, in the beginning, it's fine to choose to ignore white's approach to the bottom right and take the other corner. If you're worried about the taisha (I remember it came up recently), you can approach the top left as a ladder-breaker to get into a more simple variation, and if your opponent persists in attacking your bottom right corner, just play in the top left and exchange.

Yeah I was having a bad fuseki day I'm afraid.

It's discipline (some may call it strength). Yes, bad habits die hard.
If you discipline yourself to do some kind of checklist on every move, it should help; for example:
- do I have any weak groups (force you to look globally)
- does my opponent have any weak groups (force you to look globally)
- is it good for me to reduce or invade (force you to look globally)
- is it good for me to just expand my moyo/territory (force you to look globally)
- what's the score (force you to look globally)
etc. etc.
If you do this consistently, it becomes a good habit,
and (hopefully) with some positive reinforcements, eventually second nature.

I'm mostly at the moment preparing myself mentally for the long grind that will be the next few stones. I feel like my progress has stalled this past month. Regardless, this doesn't really bother me much, I quite like the idea of having to work for each stone! Now if I'm stuck for several months at some kyu level I'll definitely be eating my words (replace that if with multiple whens to be honest!). But I wouldn't mind having a stable rank for a while to give me a chance to consolidate what I've learned so far in a stable environment rather than one where I'm constantly faced with changing handicaps before I mentally feel ready for the change. I don't feel like I have to race anyone, I just need to work to improve my strength, mindset and general knowledge of the game and the rest will hopefully take care of itself.

Not that I'm pessimistically saying that progress will definitely be slow, I just expect it to be an awful lot harder from now on and want to prepare myself mentally for that to avoid disappointment etc if my rank stays fixed for a while. Not that I don't want to improve quickly, I'll work to make that happen as best I can with a family etc. I just don't expect that to happen in the SDK ranks.



So as always a plan!

1) Play more games. This will happen naturally as my club starts to meet twice a week in two weeks. hopefully I'll be able to deal better with my personal version of online go anxiety too.

2) Study! I'm working on tsumego mainly at the moment and some shape problems. But mostly tsumego, I feel my reading is weak and I notice elementary mistakes in my reading when doing problems. My theory reading is mostly for fun rather than progress. But I badly need to finish working through Tesuji by Davies, I'm not finding it the easiest of books to get through unfortunately.

3) Get lessons/teaching games. Well I've gotten a few lessons from Murugandi on KGS, mainly because we get on quite well since we met at an Irish tournament. Do I need lessons at my level? Probably not. Do I enjoy lessons? Very much so. Topazg is also giving me teaching games which I'm very thankful for.

4) Play stronger players on reduced or no handicap. I do this anyway at the club. If anything my problem might be not playing people my own level even.

There are also valuable lessons to be learned from playing weaker players, especially with handicap. A lot of the time, a stronger player may avoid something you are in the process of working on because it's become second nature to them and they read its appearance and adjust before you know it might occur. Also, playing against a handicap teaches you how to play lightly and efficiently, and how to complicate the game when you're behind.

Not to mention that it's good karma to help people the way others have helped you

I agree. I just don't know that many weaker players, I try to give teaching games when I can though.

Too depressed at the club to play a full game. Concentration just couldn't take it. Annoying.

So I should update properly on the club because we had new players! This is a rather big deal in a tiny city in a country with a tiny go community.

They both got a lot of small board games in and had a lot of fun from the way they've been going on about it in Skype this evening. This is great since one of them is the friend I talked about earlier as having been bitten by the go bug.

So my friend had his first ever win at go, B+15, 4H 9x9 against an EGF 6k, which is nice within 10 games of go! We'll have the new college season starting soon and we're hoping for a new bunch of players to join up. It's wonderful seeing people take up this game with enthusiasm.

My go style was described as "old man go" by the other newbie after he'd played some games with the others (I play like how he'd expect an old man to play, safely). This amused me greatly. The same new player made a bet with me that within six months he'll be beating me even. Makes life more interesting with a bet on the line.



I am depressed at the moment. My concentration is terrible. This obviously affects my go, as well as life in general. Nothing to do but batten down the hatches and get on with things as best I can. I can't see myself playing much serious go like this, I play 10 moves and then don't know what to do next, it's extremely frustrating. But I can do problems I suppose (badly) and other forms of go study if I make an effort. My outlook on life has been very negative the past few days, to the point where I question life's meaning and such. We'll see how things pan out, I'll call my psychiatrist in the morning and see about getting a script for Lithium sooner rather than later, being off mood stabilisers is just not panning out well for me right now. Anyway, I'm not sure when I'll next post a game as I'm not in a fit state to play at the moment but I might whine a bit about being depressed, we'll see.

I really dislike this book too. I have been having much better luck with "Get Strong at Tesuji". It's almost entirely problems, six problems per page with brief answers on the flip side, all levels mixed together but graded with one to three stars. If it's too hard now, you'll maybe like it better than Tesuji once you hit sdk.

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I write Go-ing Shodan, a blog about trying to get through the sdk's. If you want to check it out, tenuki.

Yeah I like that book a lot, I've been doing one and two star problems for quite a while. I'm starting to do the occasional three star problem for reading practice also. Thanks for the advice.

Starting Lithium tonight. Fingers crossed etc.

Clubs day at the local university went very well and there seemed to be a good bit of interest in go.

My mood is better today. It's been quite labile off the mood stabilisers, I hope it stabilises with the Lithium.

A friend loaned me "A way of play for the 21st Century" so I could take a look at it. It's way over my head. Loads of interesting ideas in it but I'm just not strong enough for them to be that applicable on the board for me. Fascinating book though, just what I needed this evening to put me in the mood for more study. I think I'll try and get some more of Get Strong at Tesuji done tonight. I don't feel up to playing a game unfortunately.

Lithium, well, the side effects are a bit interesting (I was spitting up blood for a short while...) but no nausea which would have been what I feared the most, I had a bad experience on Epilim (sodium valproate) and severe bouts of nausea. I'm on a low dose at the moment (400mg), so we'll see what happens when that's most likely trebled.

By Go Seigen?

Yes. Highly interesting.

Indeed, the fellow who's style is impossible to understand, let alone try and imitate, but one must try.... one must try

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我が道を行く。
I'll do it my way....

They say, a good pro to model your style on might be someone like Otake Hideo or Takagawa Kaku. Their games are famous for showing how to play in a solid and shapely way. Don't get me wrong, Go Seigen is wonderful, but at our level it`s probably easier to get mileage out of studying Otake. He also wrote a great book on the opening, which your might want to read. It`s called Opening Theory Made Easy.

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Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

Just went through some of Otake Hideo's games there and they're beautiful. Thank you Tami.

Concentration is terrible at the moment. I'm doing a fair few problems but it's very draining. It's stemming from a complete lack of focus which is leading to great boredom on my part. It's very nostalgic, I was like this for years and years before I was on medication but never recognised it as "something wrong," it had always been there since childhood. It's only on medication that I've been able to focus fairly well.

But anyway, mostly working through 1001 Life and Death Problems at the moment. Some supplementary problems on gochild as easier "brain food" when I've a few free minutes.


Tomorrow I'll be attempting to teach go to strangers for the first time at an gaming (board/role/wargaming) event. It should prove interesting.

For what it's worth, I found playing go most difficult when I was around 10-11k. For the opening, I had learned enough to think that I had a good reason to play one move or another, but as soon as the fuseki was over, I was at an utter loss. I had no idea what I should be attempting to accomplish, and each move felt like trying to find a lost shell on beach. Well before the endgame, I was typically mentally exhausted and many games ended in disastrous embarrassing blunders.

A few stones later, the middle game now feels like the fuseki did then. I at least have the sense that there is something I'd like to try, so I do, and sometimes it succeeds, more often not, but I don't get the feeling of being too overwhelmed to concentrate anymore. I still lose track of whole-board issues in the midst of a local fight, but it's not as bad as it used to be.

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Patience, grasshopper.