Five Stones in Six Months

[Nikolas73]

Hi there! Some of you already know about my goal of reaching shodan by January 2011. I love this new forum and will copy my goal - it will be a lot easier to report little updates here. I don't have much planned out for this thread specifically, but we'll see how things go and I'll try to keep it a little entertaining.

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Starting Rank (May 2010): 6k KGS
Current Rank: 5k KGS, 6k CGA
Latest Updates:

• Focus - June 30th - How to Stay Focused on Goals and Concentrate in Games
• Progress - May 24th - How do we Improve?
• Goalsetting - May 12th - How to Set Goals

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I will play as 1-dan by January, 2011.
To accomplish this, I will take the following steps:

Study from Go books.

• I will follow Toshiro Kageyama’s advice and read no more than one chapter per day of his book, Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go. After I finish the book I will reread it, again, at the pace of no more than one chapter per day.
• Every day, I will read at least half a chapter from Elementary Go Series, Vol. 5: Attack and Defense. This should help with my middle-game.
• Every day, I will read one chapter from either Elementary Go Series, Vol. 3: Tesuji or Vol. 4: Life and Death.
• I will finish reading Cho Hun-Hyun’s Lectures on the Opening, Vol. 1.
• Beginning in August at the latest, I will start to re-read Keshi and Uchikomi: Reduction and Invasion in Go by Iwamoto Kaoru.
• When I have extra time I will reread from books I have already read.

Do Tsumego.

• I will spend at least 20 minutes per day studying tsumego.
• I will study from Graded Go Problems for Beginners: Vol. 3, by Kano Yoshinori, and from my SmartGo (software) collection.
• I will not read the answers to the problems, if I get “stuck” on one I will simply move on and try it later.

Play and review games.

• I will play at least two rated games on KGS each week.
• I will review the games, with a stronger player whenever possible.
• I will play slow and “serious” games in the Canadian League Internet Go system.

Play teaching games.

• I will take advantage of what I have access to: KGS Plus lectures, commented games, and people willing to teach me.
• I will offer at least two teaching games per month to weaker players, possibly more if I have time or find this helpful.
• I will use services like the Go Teaching Ladder or post my games on the Life in 19×19 forums for review.

I will report my progress here at least once a week, and change my study plan if necessary.

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That's it! Of course any suggestions or comments are welcome. I would love to write more, but I have some tsumego to do .

[LovroKlc]

Too much books to little playing Id say.

[quantumf]

Too much books to little playing Id say.

yep

[Jonas]

Am I the only one who finds it very hard to read about several topics at once?
When I read an opening book and afterwards read something about tesuji, than endgame etc. I think the new knowledge has no time to settle because it gets washed away with other new knowledge.

Kageyama says 1 Chapter per day, whats the point when you read one chapter a day and then additionally 4 chapters of other books? Reading 5 chapters of kageyama in 1 day should be the same.

[Nikolas73]

Hmm, thanks for the comments. I hadn't really thought about that, Jonas. To be honest, I haven't found it very difficult. I don't read all the books in one session - I will read one for 20 mins in the morning, do something else, read from another book, do something else, etc. and so far it has been working out pretty well; after two months I am almost 4k (any day now!).

Perhaps I wasn't clear about playing games - two games per week is a minimum, right now I usually play at least one or two each day. Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I am almost finished with my second reading of Kageyama's book, at which point I will put it down for a while, and that should free up some more time for playing/reviewing.

[Nikolas73]

I will report my progress here at least once a week...

Oops! XD

I forgot about this thread, but I have kept up with the plan so far. I recently hit 4k on KGS (though it has since dropped back to 5k). I am going on a little vacation for a few days, but I will be bringing the tsumego book with me. When I return I think I will focus a little more on Life and Death, which I have been neglecting recently... and I will try to keep this thread updated

[Nikolas73]

Well, after returning from a "slow" period we're up to Four Stones in Five Months. I really want to improve before playing at the Canadian Open from Sept. 4th-6th. I am really proud today after winning my first even game against a third kyu, I posted the game here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1360

[Nikolas73]

Needless to say, this isn't going so well .

After something of a winter hiatus I finally have time to study again. I recently purchased Invincible: The Games of Shusaku and find it very interesting.

I'm doing well against 4k players on KGS, but still struggle against some stronger 3k players. I will try to share some games soon.