Cornucopia's study journal

cornucopia · Post by **cornucopia** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 2:53 pm

I think the time has come for me to take things seriously and create a study journal so I can keep up with the (lack of?) progress ...

I'm currently a 9 kyu (EGF and Belgian Go Federation). Online my rank is around 5 kyu so I think my real strenght is somewhat in between.

My goal would be to gain 2 to 3 stones in strength the coming year, everything extra would be a great addition.

My current strategy would be:

- Play a lot more serious games online and at my go club and to review them afterwards (with the help of a dan level player if possible). I really hope to be able to play at least 5 serious games weekly and post some of them here.

- Identifying and getting rid of my bad playing habits, the baddest being my undying love for thick territorial moves which are just too slow. I'm currently working on this with the help of a dan level go teacher on KGS.

- Increase my reading abilities, with a special focus on tesuji/local fighting/avoiding bad exchanges etc etc ... (tsumego grinding!)

- Start to study the joseki sequences which came up in my games and try to see what went wrong, what are some other options ... By doing this I hope to be able to improve my "mental library" of options in the fuseki.

- Go through lectures on BadukTV when I have spare time, to get exposed to some new ideas.

The main pitfall : lack of time! I have a busy day job and a 16 mo old baby girl so I hope I can make it work.

I hope to be able to post some games here the upcoming weekend.

Greetings,
Philip

cornucopia · Post by **cornucopia** » Mon Feb 23, 2015 12:10 pm

Time for an update. The latest months I mainly played games with my go teacher on KGS and reviewed them afterwards. This was very interesting as it gave me some insights into what exactly is wrong with my thinking. In short, I'm way too nice. He said I should fight a lot more.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to play real life games and I couldn't go to the recent tournament due to illness. So I mainly played online (KGS and DGS). I uploaded my last game on DGS. I think that I made 2 big mistakes (on the right side, I had to reduce much sooner; and on the bottom, were I became involved in a pushing-battle and gave white too much points in the center). In the end I resigned because I didn't see any other options.

Greetings,
Philip

cornucopia · Post by **cornucopia** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 4:16 pm

I'm wondering what to study first, shape or joseki? I feel that a lot of mistakes that I make result in bad corner exchanges or giving my adversary too much influence for the territory I gained. You can also see this in the game I posted. Any advice would be extremely helpfull :smile:

Bill Spight · Post by **Bill Spight** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 6:57 pm

cornucopia wrote:I'm wondering what to study first, shape or joseki? I feel that a lot of mistakes that I make result in bad corner exchanges or giving my adversary too much influence for the territory I gained. You can also see this in the game I posted. Any advice would be extremely helpfull

Study shape first. There is overlap between shape and joseki, but shape is more generally applicable.

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 7:27 pm

cornucopia wrote:I'm wondering what to study first, shape or joseki? I feel that a lot of mistakes that I make result in bad corner exchanges or giving my adversary too much influence for the territory I gained. You can also see this in the game I posted. Any advice would be extremely helpfull

Study shape by studying joseki

Strong players can often recreate joseki they don't know because of their shape and tesuji knowledge, along with their sense of an even exchange. All of these things can be learned through joseki. It's key, though, not to memorize the joseki itself alone, but the reason for each move and why other moves aren't played instead.

Bill Spight · Post by **Bill Spight** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 8:31 pm

Some coments on the opening.

cornucopia · Post by **cornucopia** » Wed Feb 25, 2015 12:36 am

Thanks for the feedback!

cornucopia · Post by **cornucopia** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 5:10 am

After a very long time of inactivity (interference due to daily life activities) I was able to take up go again very recently. I plan to visit my go club more regularly and play more (serious) games online (KGS and DGS, maybe Pandanet) and posting them here.

I was fortunate enough to see Kirby's post about the Relentless study group so I could join in on the fun just in time!

cornucopia · Post by **cornucopia** » Sat Mar 28, 2020 11:59 pm

Hello everyone,

After many months (even years) of serious inactivity, I decided to take another shot at "breaking through" my current rank. No clear goals for the moment, except for casting aside my anxiety when playing. I was/am too fixed on "not losing" that I just couldn't enjoy the game anymore.

So for the moment, I plan to play games more regularly, aside from doing tsumego and tesuji problems to improve my reading. I don't think I will be the most active member of this community, but I will try to post regularly.

cornucopia · Post by **cornucopia** » Thu Apr 09, 2020 1:17 am

Time for an update.

Restarting to play online has made my rating drop 3 stones, probably due to being 'rusty' at reading. It was very frustrating to be honest, but I managed to keep my motivation going and more importantly to keep playing and doing tsumego/tesuji problems.
I have the feeling my playing level has stabilized now after about 2 weeks.
Losing my focus and becoming frustrated is an important pitfall for me as a go players, especially when I play online because this has always given me a certain type of anxiety (very short time limits, fewer people wanting to play longer games and so on). I tend to run away from the game at these moments, so I have to be very careful.
I have signed up for the NIGC (https://nigc.nl/), a Dutch spoken online tournament. Looking forward to playing in this online tournament.

Life In 19x19

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