2016 retrospective!
I came back to go this spring after a long time away, and spent a fair amount of time just trying to get back to the level I had been at in the past. At some point I decided that I see a path forward to 1 dan (let's say AGA for concreteness). I'm rather lazily sauntering down that path, so the odds are good that I'll get distracted by something else along the way, but I really do have the confidence I can get there within a few years if I keep my focus.
My confidence is largely based on one postulate, which I have no proof of:
1d is not really all that good.I don't mean that it's easy to get there! It's obviously quite hard! But the more I play and watch and talk to dan-level players, the more I think that 1d play consists largely of good fundamentals, good reading, the lack of blunders, and the willpower to play at one's best all game (all things I need to get much better at), rather than, say, superhuman talent. Even 1 dans are putty in the hands of 4 dans, and 4 dans get beaten up by 7 dans. So how good can 1 dans really be?
My two main current methods of study are:
- Record every serious game and go over it in detail with Crazy Stone
- Lots of spaced repetition
I think that Crazy Stone has been my secret weapon the last few months. It tells me so many big mistakes (I don't worry about the little ones), and I really try to internalize the resulting lessons. On the spaced repetition side, I now have flashcards for every problem in
Get Strong at Tesuji, and am now going through
All About Life and Death. The latter may be a fool's errand, and if it becomes a burden I'll stop, but it's been fun so far.
My trudge through Maeda vol. 1 slowed down a bit because I have been doing 10 problems a day on
101weiqi.com. I recently got to 1k there, and I can tell that my tesuji and life-and-death flashcards have helped a lot in spotting good ideas. I am up to problem 153 (out of 225) in Maeda vol. 1, with a 67% success rate, which is a nice challenging level.
One big difference from previous times I took the game seriously is that there is now a really great and vibrant local scene. I've made a bunch of friends among local players, many of whom are right around my level, and the healthy competition is a great spur towards improvement. The social aspect gives me some hope that I'll stick with the game this time.
One thing I really do have to do is get over my fear of playing. One thing that has helped is that every game I play is fodder for a Crazy Stone analysis session. The local group has started playing AGA-rated games lately, so that may force me to put aside my fear.
My AGA rating jumped from 4k to 3k after the one tournament I mentioned earlier. After that I lost my next three rated games (none were disasters, and I learned plenty from them), so that might put me just on the wrong side of the 4k line. Whatever. In 2017 I'm going to pretend I can play like a 2k and see where that takes me.
at 
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at 
). Anecdotally, for me the difference between playing this way and playing in a more casual or distracted way is easily as much as 2 full stones, at least in the extreme cases.