Ah, I see what you mean. Well, here's the thing - I looked at your games, and in all of them, you're averaging 7s to 12s per move. It is extraordinarily unlikely that you will ever lose a game with 30s byo-yomi unless you change your playing style a great deal. Because to lose even a single byo-yomi period, you need to think for at least 30s. So I'm not going to promise you any miracles if you use your time efficiently, but you definitely shouldn't be afraid of being in byo-yomi.

'On average' is a bit of a deceiving measure here. We need to take a look at the distribution of the thinking times. Specifically, e.g. for how many moves during the game it took more than 30s to reply? These can be followed by a quick sequence, which will take the average back to 7-12 seconds per move. So, if you tend to stop and read deeper several times during the game you will feel very uncomfortable in byoyomi (when some important semeai or L&D can be decided).

On a related topic. It seems to me that if your playing style is to play solid and safe (for your level), without leaving too many weaknesses, then it is probably less of a problem to play in byoyomi towards the end of the game.

A good point there musai, but I took a look through my games posted here, and I'm not using more than 30 seconds on enough moves that it'd likely cause me to lose a game, aside from fear anyway.

Not really sure what I'd call my playing style other than saying I have a territorial bias. My earlier games I tried going for the centre because it looked big, but that got brutally beaten out of me by an SDK or two. Beginning to try to use influence now, even have the odd game where I lose all four corners which not long ago I would have felt like I should just resign.

PeterN

Progress Report: -

New rank: 7 kyu!
Tsumego: About three quarters through Graded Go Problems for Beginners III
Games Reviewed: 2 lost games
Elementary Go Series: Finished reading Attack and Defence, barely started The Endgame

I'm still agreeing with my previous comment on the third tsumego volume being a considerable step up in difficulty, I'm getting a higher success rate on them than when I started, but the time taken on each problem is going up. It's worth it though, just going through these is prompting me to try to read out when I really need to cut or connect in a game, when before I'd just lob a stone down and hope I could brute force it. I'm also realising I only have these two tsumego books and going over the same two books is probably not going to be particularly helpful.

Reviewing of the lost games was concentrated on how to not die with an eyeless dragon, beginning to start experimenting with jettisoning a part of the group so some of it can live... but it feels like I'm sacrificing more stones than I should be to do this.

Also took a little time out from the tsumego to finish reading Attack and Defence, more just to let the ideas perculate inside my mind than anything else. I'm a fan of reading through a book once, then trying to understand it properly on a second read through. The Endgame feels like a lot of effort is going to be required.

Overall felt like a good week, now to see how I fare with one stone stronger opponents!

PeterN

Congrats on the rank. Although it probably has no meaning by itself, but it usually doesn't come for free. Good job!

I don't think having only 2 volumes of tsumego is a problem. It will become a real problem only once you can do all of the problems in a few seconds each. Until then, your reading will improve every time you go through them. I'm now working through Cho Chikun Encyclopedia of L&D. Elementary level is not easy at all for me, especially not having the answers. In addition, you can get a ton of free tsumego on Wbaduk (and they have an Android client, if you want to do it on the go).

The Endgame - I have seen some negative comments on this book here on this forum. Something along the line of "too many errors".

I know an increase of one stone doesn't mean much in itself, but it still feels good

You're probably right about two books not being a problem, guess I'll find out when I go through one a second time and see if the problems just feel familiar or not. Didn't realise there were negative reviews on The Endgame, thought the whole series was well thought of.

PeterN

The reviews are not really negative. However, there are claims that there are mistakes in the book, so if you don't understand something, it maybe the case.
Here: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=143824#p143824

No, The Endgame is really quite good. You can learn a lot from it. One of the better volumes of the series. Perhaps 200 Endgame Problems is a better resource hour-for-hour (I wouldn't know, never read it), but I think Bill was concerned about technical details of how they approach counting, and insufficient focus on endgame tesuji. I think you can still learn a huge amount about the endgame from it, whatever it's imperfections.

I've been playing endgame moves somewhat randomly up to this point, just looking and guessing (hoping?) what's the better move, so just about anything should help

On another note played a really fun game yesterday which I think I lost the way I did due to being in byo-yomi, though I'm certain I should have lost the game earlier anyway (for instance if W did not tenuki at 139). Almost certainly not a good way to play, but oh well



PeterN

Thanks for the comments Ed, I really should have been happy to let him crawl along the 2nd line, but I'm honestly glad I didn't as the game became so fun. And I know that thinking won't help me get better

Progress Report: -

Tsumego: Read through Graded Go Problems for Beginners III (86.7% correct) and started volume II again.
Games Reviewed: 1 lost game, 2 won games (all on the ASR League)
Elementary Go Series: About halfway through The Endgame

Despite an earlier post about only having two books of tsumego not being a problem I'm now beginning to wonder about that. The answers to a large number of the problems in volume II are jumping out at me immediately without me doing any reading, so I think I'm somewhat remembering the problems somehow. Will need to see if this continues through the book or not as the problems get harder.

Was interesting to go over some games I won with other people, though our ranks were close enough that we're probably not spotting a lot of errors on both sides, but looking from the view of "if you played there I would have lost" is a better way to see overplays I think.

The Endgame is still a slog to get through, but thankfully the maths calculations seems to have stopped already. Hoping by the next progress report to have finished reading through all the Elementary Go books a first time (excluding 38 basic joseki) and work out which one to start reading more thoroughly first.

PeterN

Really funny game, maybe you should not try to kill all groups of your opponent in parallel

An interesting situation is arising around move 184 etc. Here, your central group (around tengen) is clearly in danger, while all of your other groups around the big white dragon are already fully settled (how that could be is another good question... ). Thus, if you just manage to save your tengen group, the big white dragon would be simply dead. Since this would yield you more than 100 points in an instant, it should be enough to win the game, no? .

Instead, in move 186 you already left your endangered group and seem to attack white J8 stones (which is rather futile in this position). Instead you could have played move 184 on G7 (cannot be separated from H9 group) and continue to enlarge the number of liberties or even find a connection to your lower left group (I cannot read that out completely but it looks like worth a try...). If you would have managed to settle your H9 group, you would have won the game on big scale.

Progress Report: -

Tsumego: Read through Graded Go Problems for Beginners II (97.9% correct)
Games Reviewed: 2 lost games myself, 1 lost game by opponent on ASR league, and went through 1 of the games at the back of The Endgame
Elementary Go Series: Finished reading The Endgame

I am attrocious at endgame. My answers to the problems in the book should have been better if I literally picked at random. While I understand the concepts of counting, sente, and gote I am not recognising sente and gote moves well, nor is my counting accurate. This will need further work sometime... lots of further work.... The only bright side is I did avoid the blunder answers that end up in outright death.

PeterN

Good start.

How did it feel going through the same problem set once again? Do you think you gained something from that? (recognizing shapes, vital points etc. became easier/quicker/more natural?)

In addition to how you felt (qualitative), how was it quantitatively different ?
How long did it take you the first time, and what was your time the second round ?
You can measure your times objectively, for all rounds.

It definitely felt quicker and easier going through it the second time, the first quarter or so of the book seemed completely automatic but then after that settled down into needing to read again. How much of this is down to having just gone through a set of harder problems so it felt comparatively easier and how much was down to having done the book once before I couldn't say. Spotting vital points is something I feel I was reasonably good at before, however I would lob the stone into them too early, or choose the wrong order if there were multiple points pretty often. Think there was a line about that being pretty common at a certain level in Fundamentals of Go. Recognising nakades on the other hand feels a lot more natural now.

Despite feeling that I spot vital points quickly I still don't feel that I recognise shapes well. Lots of diagonal stones making a shape (not really sure what to call this... interlinked ponnukis maybe?) feels an especially strange shape, and just confuses me for the moment.

Unfortunately I can't say how long it took me the first time round to read through the book as I'd already got part way through it before making this thread so don't have anything written down to give me a timeframe, nor have I been timing myself, just didn't occur to me to do it and I'm not in the best environment for doing that accurately either. I do the problems on the train and this time took nine journeys, which taking account that I also read through the paper a bit gives me a time of something like 180-225 minutes to go through the book. Not having the book to hand so not knowing the exact number of problems I think that's an average of 30-45 seconds per problem, and the time usage was heavily skewed towards the later half of the book.

PeterN

Progress Report: -

Tsumego: Continuing with Graded Go Problems for Beginners III, however I slacked off and only did about half as much as usual this week.
Games Reviewed: 2 lost games
Elementary Go Series: None

Not much progress for this week, partially because of work but mostly because I just didn't get round to it. Both games I went through concentrated on me making silly mistakes which pretty much instantly ended the game and the moves that were leading up to them.

PeterN

Keep up the good work!

How many games do you play that you don't review?

I'm trying, getting back into tsumego on the train again.

Far too many games played and not reviewed, quick count shows 26 games finished last week and only 2 reviewed. Won't have the chance to play any this week due to work, so maybe I'll get a few more of these reviewed.

PeterN