Hi. I decided to create this journal to share games I play. I plan on posting all of my games (I don't play that much) and commenting the ones I lost. Hopefully someone will find this interesting and we'll get some discussion going, so all questions and comments are welcome.

First time I tried go out was around 9 years ago on a terrible website called flyordie. To be honest I really didn't like it at the time and preferred to play chess instead. However over the years I kept coming back and playing for a week or two before going back to other things. Last year I discovered battousai's go videos and they inspired me to play go more seriously. I played for about 3 months that year until I got really busy with work. I came back again this year and been playing fairly regularly ever since. Currently I'm rated 3k @ KGS and have played around 250-300 games in total(very rough estimate).

I play go to have fun - I don't have any goals, I don't have weekly game target or a study plan and I don't force myself to play if I'm not feeling like it. However, when I do play I do my best to win, as I get fairly involved in the games I play and losing feels horrible.

The absolute majority of my studying is reviewing my own games. Depending on how difficult the game was for me I will spend anywhere from 10 minutes to a few hours going over it. I have some books but I haven't finished any of them (although I really should get around to reading attack & defense) and I don't do any go problems. I also go over pro games every so often, but it's mostly for entertainment and inspiration as I don't really understand what's going on in those games.

I feel that the biggest weakness in my play right now is time management. I play medium time settings on kgs automatch games and I'm yet to find anyone who is a slower player than me. In fact, it's not even close, I'm usually out of time by move 70 and play the rest of the game in overtime. If any kind of complications happen I'm in a big trouble since my opponent can read for 15+ minutes and I only have some seconds on my clock. I will be participating in europe go congress in 1.5 months and I'd really like to bring this problem to manageable levels until then.

My last 3 games, to start thread off.

Just a little random note on the last move in your last game (that's the only thing I looked at, really):

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . O . . . .
$$ | . . X O O . . . O O . .
$$ | . . X . X O O O X . O .
$$ | . X . . X . . . X . O .
$$ | . . . . . a b c . . . .
$$ +------------------------[/go]

In this shape you generally want to connect the black stones with a monkey jump (a or c). The keima in the middle (b) doesn't work.

If you want to practise reading out connections, check out gokyo shumyo section 6. It covers a lot of basic shapes one ought to know by heart. (Beware that alongside those easier problems are some quite tough ones, though.)

edit: now I've done it D:
Guess I'll have to include a list of easy problems from that section now, before anyone stops playing go out of frustration.

Hi, just a minor comment - that diagram reminded me of something I read in Tesuji and Antisuji. - that although (a) & (c) connect (a) is preferable since if White plays one stone above (b) as a ko threat and black ignores it then one less stone is lost.

btw thanks leichtloeslich, I should have a go at gokyo shumyo, I've got a nice chinese paperback copy I haven't even looked at yet.

edit: the OCD in me had to look it up, the connection example is model 2, pages 32-33

_________________
I am John. John-I-Am.

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My recent games in European pandanet tournament went like this: we were starting with 60 minutes and byo yomi was 10 minutes for 25 stones. In move 80-90ish i was in my second byo yomi and my opponents had spent 15 minutes...