I intend to track my progress on a daily basis to track my improvement at this wonderful game. Below are my personal expectations.

1) Play a game of Go on the IGS servers. All games must be saved in SGF format. A paper kifu must be kept in a binder as well, with moves being quickly analyzed as moves are written by hand.

2) Study tsumego at least an hour a day. This hour does not need to be consecutive: problems are alright to solve in between doing other things. (Breaks at work, waiting for the microwave, etc.)

3) Review particularly close games on a physical board. (The actual board is better for me visually.) Losses, no matter how close, must be reviewed.

4) Submit losses to the forums for review. Make sure to focus on 2-3 things for improvement from these reviews.

5) Once a week attempt a personal review of a high-level game.

6) Once a week watch a 45+ minute lecture online on various topics.

End goal: Attempt to reach 1 Dan rank by March of 2015.

So far, for 3/1/14 to 3/3/14, goals one and two have been met each day. Game results are as follows.

3/1- Victory by resignation
3/2- Victory by resignation
3/3- Victory by resignation

The game from 3/2 was very close in the early game, my midgame gave me a solid lead. I will want to review this one.

Hi Rich fish, I don't have any advice to give I just wanted to say good luck. That's a very ambitious schedule but I'm sure it will pay off if you manage to stick to it.

Update: 3/4/14 game- Loss by 2.5 points with a 3 stone handicap for myself. I will post my initial thoughts here that I also posted in my review request. Lessons learned will come after I can devote some time to sit with this one.

Hello, all! This is my first game that I am submitting for review. Below are a few of the areas that I am concerned about with this game in particular.

1) I am black in this game. This was the first game that I have played with a handicap on IGS (3 stones). I was against a 15k+ player. (Not sure if + is better or worse in IGS's ranking system.

2) I feel that I was thwarted in several fights. Perhaps these blunders were caused by attempting to hold onto too much territory, leading to loose moves? I'm not entirely sure. I also did not read thoroughly enough: I need to take a bit more time to plan my moves, I think. I'm never running out of time in my games.

3) I'm not sure as to the strength of my direction of play in this game, and I'm sure that if I fumbled my direction in this game the same issue will pop up in others.

4) I feel that I probably got caught up in trying to win local fights instead of taking big plays elsewhere. Where would these plays be? When are they best taken?

5) (Small note, I was so embarassed.) Move 246 was a misclick. I meant to play it one space to the left. Considering the game was decided by 2.5 points, these little embarassments add up.

6) (Extra small note) For some reason my SGFs get saved upside down from IGS. Is there an easy way to fix this?

Edit: Moved my post to the analysis thread.

3/5

I woke up early today to get my game in before work because my shift is long. I'm not sure, but I think I may play better at 5 AM!

My game today was a victory by over 50 points against a 16k player on IGS. I will need to record the kifu and get it in my binder when I get home. On today's agenda later I am going to review the lost game from yesterday using the comments given in my analysis thread. I also plan to read the second chapter of "Lessons in the fundamentals in Go." Good ladder reads from chapter one have won me 3 of the five games over the past few days, so at least at my rank the book is proving to give effective advice!

Yesterday was rough: Worked all day, came home to record kifu from that morning, went to bed. Still, I got a good amount of tsumego done throughout the day. Most of the problems below about 13k are solved within a few seconds now, which is nice considering they most certainly weren't such a quick reflex before.

Does anyone else have any experience with the TsumegoPro app on Android? It seems extremely polished and the progress mode is great for forcing you to read out solutions since it punishes you for incorrect plays by hitting your rating. As you go it unlocks harder and harder L&D and tesuji problems.

Tonight I need to get my game in and record it. I am also going to play a game with the wife on my board, so that should be fun.

3/6 game results

Below is my latest game played against a 15k+ on IGS. I feel like I was absolutely destroyed: I felt like I was being guided by the nose all game long.

My observations:

1) I feel like my shapes are too loose. I was trying to keep my opponent out of my moyo in the center (failed miserably at that) and by doing so I may have broken up my strength.

2) I had a few majorly sized groups cut off and captured over the course of the game, which was disheartening to say the least. I'm at a loss as to how I could save them.

3)I'm sure many of my issues are stemming from a very week early game. I've been primarily studying lots of tsumego, which I THINK is helping me in other games, although I didn't feel much impact here...

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. I want to break through the funk!

Hi Rich,

Basics problems. Bad sente moves.
Basic shape problems -- In particular, for , see Toothpaste.
For , , , , , , , see Small Gaps.Your biggest problems, in this game, are bad basics: bad sente (forcing) moves. Bad shapes (in particular, broken shapes).This is not because W destoyed you -- W also has bad basics --
Rather, it is because you made terrible shapes and you destroyed yourself! Again, and again.

3/7

I played two games this morning. One was a silly loss due to a major mistake where I did not read out a few moves and instead played quickly. My main lesson from that game was to just play more slowly.

Game two was a win by a fairly decent margin against a 17k+ on IGS. I still want to review the opening of the game: I felt like I was behind until my opponent made several life and death mistakes. While my constant tsumego practice does seem to pay off in mid-game once shapes start getting established, I feel like I have an issue getting favorable shapes to actually use this strength unless my opponent makes a blunder.

Does anyone have any input on the idea of playing more than one game a day on top of all of my other studying? I thought that I would be coming back with a strength above 17k, especially since I tend to float around 11k on L&D problems, but that doesn't seem to be the case. If I want to hit Shodan by March 2015, I may need to fit in even more practice than my readings, problems, and video watching give with only one game a day.

If your main goal is rapid improvement, for the game-playing part of your study plan I suggest playing even or low handicap games on a small board (9x9 or 13x13) and posting them here for review. The small board provides fast feedback, perhaps encourages you to think more carefully at each move, and at your level still provides plenty of opportunity to commit all possible mistakes

This is a pretty hefty goal and it will be difficult to achieve, but I wish you the best of luck in it!

Unfortunately I can't really give any advice on the number of games, but you seem to have a lot to do already, especially if you're keeping both paper kifus and sgf files.

PeterN

I haven't updated in a couple days: I am a teacher and my schedule is hectic this week with testing. I have still managed to get a game each day (not much more) and I just finished my first read of "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go." My next steps include going through all of the diagrams from that book on my board and going through my next book, 501 Opening Problems from Kiseido.

My last game on IGS also promoted me, which was really exciting! IGS has me sitting at 15k now instead of 17k, which I will take. Onward and upward!