Life In 19x19

So, in order to improve faster and better, and to find out what may happen, a small "plan" or "regime" might be a good idea.

Not to make excuses, but, one reason for the lack of training, and therefore growth, was fatigue. So one needs to be more disciplined (and not get too big for ones shoes...). It may not be a good idea or even useful to rant about my planned regime, but maybe it's more likely to be done this way .

I'll probably aim to solve approximately 150 tsumego a week (50% easier, 50% intermediate) with 25 pro games, but the more major training will occur in July. For now, I'm mainly going to try to play more games; due to the low number of recent games spread over different servers, my rank is, in plain terms, erratic and unknown. If I can get a solid 1d account on two servers by the end of june, that would be great! . If I can win against EGF 4ds by the end of Decemeber, that would be brilliant! But 2kyu by december is a more realistic goal . For now, I'll just play experimentally without taking it too seriously, until July. It's up in the air from here... (Although I should probably day sonething akin to, "It's time to fight from here on!" , but it's maybe a little too cheesy)

Elom wrote:Not to make excuses, but, one reason for the lack of training, and therefore growth, was fatigue. So one needs to be more disciplined (and not get too big for ones shoes...). It may not be a good idea or even useful to rant about my planned regime, but maybe it's more likely to be done this way .

Certainly, you're right.

One thing I found that help me (it might be different for you, of course), is to set up a daily routine, and give yourself goals for each day. So, rather than saying you want to do 150 problems per week, you try to do 25 per day. It may work even better if you do them roughly at the same time every day. It can be while eating breakfast, or before going to sleep, or at some other point that you find suitable.

It's certainly better than to find yourself do only ~10 problem per day until the last, where you try to do 100 at once, and get tired and bored because of that.

Bki wrote:

Elom wrote:Not to make excuses, but, one reason for the lack of training, and therefore growth, was fatigue. So one needs to be more disciplined (and not get too big for ones shoes...). It may not be a good idea or even useful to rant about my planned regime, but maybe it's more likely to be done this way .

Certainly, you're right.

One thing I found that help me (it might be different for you, of course), is to set up a daily routine, and give yourself goals for each day. So, rather than saying you want to do 150 problems per week, you try to do 25 per day. It may work even better if you do them roughly at the same time every day. It can be while eating breakfast, or before going to sleep, or at some other point that you find suitable.

It's certainly better than to find yourself do only ~10 problem per day until the last, where you try to do 100 at once, and get tired and bored because of that.

Thanks bki, I think that's a good idea-- in fact, I thought of splitting 30 a day into 3 sessions at regular intervals. The factor of accomplishing tasks must certainly be a good thing! Maybe it depends partly on if the will is there or not .

Hi, this is a game from the OGS Mingren Tournament. In an effort to improve with the best quality training, I've decided to regularly attempt the most challenging or riskier line of play for the time being; even if a move doesn't seem like it would lead to victory, it should still be played if it provides the the harder game or means taking on more responsibilities. This means that there's a lot of short term losses in this plan, especially when combined with the fact that it seems as if I've had to somehow re-coordinate my go since the short break from actual play, leading to erratic results despite maybe "feeling" slightly stronger compared to before.

In this game I wonder where the best move for black is around 102.

Having now played correspondence, I've very much warmed up to the change of pace and would play it more regularly. It's especially exiting when I don't refer to joseki books and make sure not click the stones for reading-- stretching your reading is one of the beneficial aspects, and after all, I have to fight...

nb: it seems OGS is weaker than KGS, so I increased the rank two stones here.

Your aim is to do 150 tsumego a week. Where are you finding them all? I'm aiming to do more tsumego and need a good source of alot of them.

Elom wrote:In an effort to improve with the best quality training, I've decided to regularly attempt the most challenging or riskier line of play for the time being; even if a move doesn't seem like it would lead to victory, it should still be played if it provides the the harder game or means taking on more responsibilities.

Deja vu was hitting me in the early stages. Could be that you are working on a rationale for the way Kajiwara used to play?

The query you had about 102: I don't have a pat answer.

I think playing out all four corners in the fashion you did wasn't beneficial. The lower left should be the key to analysis, since you got a somewhat broken overall result there.

I don't like - I think J3 would be more like it. I also dislike quite strongly. A knight's move looks for power here. A diagonal for an extended attack. Herding White towards the right is in tune with fundamentals.

is a shape, but not I think enough. My style would be to play B18, trying for the corner. You need something to attack in this game, so let White extend along the side. (Patience, in a word!) The other guess is E17.

So something had to work in this game for Black, but the fighting sort of blurred into one ...

Kodey wrote:Your aim is to do 150 tsumego a week. Where are you finding them all? I'm aiming to do more tsumego and need a good source of alot of them.

Free sources (for your level):
http://senseis.xmp.net/?BeginnerExercises (340 problems)
http://senseis.xmp.net/?KyuExercises (212 problems)
https://gogameguru.com/get-better-at-go/go-problems/ (131 easy ones)
http://www.hitachi.co.jp/Sp/tsumego/past/index-e.html (996 elementary problems)

Books (for your level):
Graded Go Problems for Beginners vol. 1-2
Tesuji by James Davies
1001 Life-and-Death Problems

SoDesuNe points out some good problems .

Charles Matthews wrote:

Elom wrote:In an effort to improve with the best quality training, I've decided to regularly attempt the most challenging or riskier line of play for the time being; even if a move doesn't seem like it would lead to victory, it should still be played if it provides the the harder game or means taking on more responsibilities.

Deja vu was hitting me in the early stages. Could be that you are working on a rationale for the way Kajiwara used to play?

The query you had about 102: I don't have a pat answer.

I think playing out all four corners in the fashion you did wasn't beneficial. The lower left should be the key to analysis, since you got a somewhat broken overall result there.

I don't like - I think J3 would be more like it. I also dislike quite strongly. A knight's move looks for power here. A diagonal for an extended attack. Herding White towards the right is in tune with fundamentals.

is a shape, but not I think enough. My style would be to play B18, trying for the corner. You need something to attack in this game, so let White extend along the side. (Patience, in a word!) The other guess is E17.

So something had to work in this game for Black, but the fighting sort of blurred into one ...

Thank you very much! Especially for pointing out 41. 71 was also very helpful never realised it seemed as if I was mimicing Kajiwara, I'm not sure of how he used to play!

About tsumego goals, I think it's more useful if you set a time spent goal for each day or the entire week as a total. The number of tsumego is (not entirely, but still quite) irrelevant, compared to the reading practice you get out of it. People often recommend doing alot of easy problems, but if you never challenge yourself with problems just a tad above your current level, then how are you going to get stronger Go muscles? 150 easy/your own level tsumego a week isn't a very tough goal to achieve, but 150 challenging (again, not impossible, just challenging solvable in 5-15 min) tsumego a week is quite a different matter. That is why I recommend setting a time for yourself each day, like 1 hour or whatever you may be comfortable with.

Thanks, that's a nice idea. It would probably take around 60 minutes in total to solve 15 elementary and 15 intermediate problems on hitach (solving thoroughly but at a challenging speed). Maybe you can use a hybrid system: X amount of problems per day within X time frame, and use whatever time left to solve more tsumego .

b83 is probably a mistake.
b89 too.

This is one of the more interesting games I've played recently. The strategy kept changing throughout the game.



- Experimental, white seems well off...

Because of the deficit.

feels very weak now,

black can't win unless all the center is killed, but...

Maybe the first losing move.

Losing move, probably, this has to be at b14

In move you make a small one-point jump from an already alive ("super strong") group, thereby forcing white to solidify his upper territory and removing all possible aji (e.g. for future invasions if the flow of the game allows). In terms of points, this moves gains almost nothing for black, while the board is still wide open in other areas. is even more extreme in this sense, apart from that it violates the heuristics "if you peep into a keima you must cut". I once made a move like in a league game, and one of my team members complained that my move made him getting nightmares afterwards (it was the losing move btw.)

Edit:

Maybe the first losing move.

IMHO is the first move where normal operation is resumed.

is definitely a mistake and white punishes correctly in the game. Yunxuan's video about this joseki is pretty good, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy9P8WQf5sE

schawipp wrote:In move you make a small one-point jump from an already alive ("super strong") group, thereby forcing white to solidify his upper territory and removing all possible aji (e.g. for future invasions if the flow of the game allows). In terms of points, this moves gains almost nothing for black, while the board is still wide open in other areas. is even more extreme in this sense, apart from that it violates the heuristics "if you peep into a keima you must cut". I once made a move like in a league game, and one of my team members complained that my move made him getting nightmares afterwards (it was the losing move btw.)
IMHO is the first move where normal operation is resumed.

Yes, 33 and 35 are definite mistakes, but I didn't want to flood the board with my comments

schawipp wrote:In move you make a small one-point jump from an already alive ("super strong") group, thereby forcing white to solidify his upper territory and removing all possible
Edit:

Maybe the first losing move.

IMHO is the first move where normal operation is resumed.

I meant move 137!

Sennahoj wrote: is definitely a mistake and white punishes correctly in the game. Yunxuan's video about this joseki is pretty good, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy9P8WQf5sE

Thanks for the link to the video! I'll definitely take a look.