With 3.5 games per day (guesstimating 3 blitz 9x9 as worth something like one normal game) you'll have played 1270 games in a year. The cliche is 1,000 games to shodan, so if you keep to this schedule consistently, get some of your losses reviewed, and also do a decent number of tsumego you'll have as good a chance as anyone ever does.

@skydyr I'm reviewing myself almost every single game.
And regarding playing stronger opponents, yup, everybody speak about that.

@jts I just hope that one year is enough for those 1k+ games to be absorbed by my brain properly

It's worth noting, of course, that 1000 games is a number that has been kind of pulled out of thin air as a vague approximation of effort, which may vary by person and by the way the games are played, if it's even accurate.

Yeah, absolutely. I hope I made that clear by calling it a cliche, rather than a proverb. I keep hoping that people will follow my and Boidhre's example in posting their cumulative games played on KGS by rank, because that would give us some interesting data. I guess maybe not enough people started on KGS or played continuously on KGS to think their numbers add any information? Or maybe people don't like doing addition

What I do think is valuable about the cliche:
(a) It makes clear that in the final analysis it's about the amount of experience you have, not which concepts you need to read about, not which joseki you need to memorize.
(b) The amount of experience you need to reach 1d is something like an order of magnitude larger than what you need to reach 10k.

I'd love to post the numbers of games I've played, but most of my playing has been done offline for the past couple years . I'd estimate I've probably played around 400-500 games or so in my life, at most, not counting 9x9 games where I'm teaching beginners what atari is, and I'm probably 4 or 5k on KGS (my rank there is very unstable).

I do agree that what one needs to know for shodan is highly variable, and you can get there on the strength of one or two things alone while being quite lacking in others. I think it requires a basic competence in all levels, but for many of them, you could get by with the knowledge that a 10k has in that area, provided you make up for it in others. This is all to be taken cum grano of course, as I'm not yet there myself.

Well, here is my humble addition to your analysis, jts:

10k -> 9k, 22 games, 10 days, on 27/04/13
9k -> 8k, 97 games, 27 days, on 24/05/13

I'll keep this statistics for the future ranks as well.

Good job. I am glad that you understand improvement is not linear.

Keep it up!

_________________
- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

Thank you.

I'm halfway to my next milestone of 7k. Feeling very excited about the fact that I'm beating a lot of 7 kyus which was unimaginable for me two months ago.

However, during last two weeks I was on vacation and didn't have much chances to do tsumego or read books. Just playing.

From next week, I'm coming back to my routine: 30+ tsumegos per day plus "Attack and Defense" plus "Opening Theory Made Easy" plus playing.

The most important thing to me right now is that even my progress is slow I still find enormous enjoyment in every aspect of playing or studying go. It just keeps pushing me further. I wish I had that urge 20 years ago when I first heard of go and had all time of the world.

Here, in Belgrade, Serbia, opportunities to buy a book about go don't exist. Nobody is even importing books in English or other languages, not to mention that nobody publish go books in Serbian.

To order books online is pretty expensive from here due to pricey customs and tax expenses, so book delivered to Serbia is usually 2-3 times more expensive than in the EU or USA.

But, in a week or so, my cousin from Toronto, Canada is coming to visit me and I have a chance to order some books from him. I just have to specify him location where he can buy books and which books to buy.

So, I've got two questions:

1. Where in Toronto books about go can be bought?
2. Which books to order? I'm talking about newer books that can help me because classics like Elementary Go series, Graded Go Problems for Begginers series, Get Strong series, Cho Chikun's L&D books are already available to me. Since I'm only 8kyu, I need improvement in every area.

Thank you very much in advance for fast responses.

I don't know about Toronto specifically, but generally even in a large US/Canadian metropolitan area, you are lucky if the largest book stores carry a single basic introduction to go book. Everyone I know orders them online and has them delivered, but if your cousin is visiting in a week, that's a pretty tight turnaround. Unfortunately, my guess is that your best bet is to hope someone on here is in the Toronto area and wants to sell go books.

Thank you. At least I know what to expect.

Hi vpopovic, Graded Go Problems for Beginners series, The Second Book of Go.

I think as you are already 8k, I'd say that you don't need Vol. 1 and 2 of GGPB any more. Vol. 3 and 4 are excellent problem books.

@EdLee @karaklis Thank you, guys.
However, I mentioned that I have those classics along with other classic most important books in English.
I thought if someone can recommend me some newer books in English of same or similar quality.

My line would be: if you have GGPB, EGS, Cho Chikun, and Get Stong already, you absolutely do not need any other books to reach shodan.

If you absolutely need to buy something - a joseki dictionary, a tesuji dictionary, Invincible...

Thank you, jts. I won't waste my money then.

Regarding my games, I just established nice mixture of moyo/fighting style, untill couple of days ago.
Since then, suddenly I just find myself in a bloodthirsty battle/chase to life and death across whole board. More often than not I manage to kill, but not so rarely happens that my target escape and I just sit back and look how my opponent uses my shape defects to tear me to pieces.

On a rational side, I don't want to play like that.

How to avoid that berserker-state-of-mind I fall into without even noticing it?

This may sound cliche, but I think one of the keys is to make sure you are getting something while you are chasing. You don't need to kill, you just need to solidify your territory near the group being chased, etc. Ideally, your opponent is running on points that will turn into dame at the end, and you are making territory or walls that will support later invasions or the like. So long as you get enough, you can let your opponent live and they will have conceded the game by living, since you got so much profit in return.

I also play way too aggressive at times. A good principle is just trying to forget about ever killing anything (that doesn't mean that you shouldn't attack, though) and being conscious about your own weaknesses.

Also, it's important to realize that weak stones don't have to be attacked immediately. They are a burden to the player who has to care about them. If you just leave them and resume play somewhere else at some point the player with the weak group will have to make ugly moves (solidifying your territory where he maybe could have invaded had he not had that weak group nearby), probably even in gote.

On the other hand if the weak stones have obvious nice vital points which solve most of their problems in sente, it's necessary you take those points away from him and not tenuki.

Basically just watch those weak groups very careful, make sure they stay weak and you will be sure to profit somehow.

In addition to what's already been said, one thing that I've found helpful is to think in terms of relative strength. Instead of trying to make your opponent as weak as possible, aim to make the difference between the strength of your group and his as large as possible.

Thank you, guys.