Life In 19x19

Go Journal Entry

No not that long. Only a bit over one month instead of two

August
August was a very slow month regarding go. With the yunguseng season over and the next one starting in september there was nothing to really force me to play or study. As a result i only played seven games in that month with winning 3 out of these 7 games. So my slump of loosing more than 50% of my games on average continues.
Still the break from so much go-activity was refreshing and helped me clear my head for a bit. While i was so depressed and down at the end of july, that i wasn't even sure if i wanted to continue playing go, my mood recovered during the month. It recovered so much, that i registered for another two seasons of Yunguseng.

September
Only one week in September i already played as many games as i played in the whole of august. Obviously this can be attributed to the new yunguseng season. However my slump continues and may have even become worse, with me currently standing at 2 wins against 7 losses. Thats a devastating winning percentage of 28%. Also it includes a loss against a 3k, my first one in ages. (Which is partly because i was 1k for quite some time and usually only play in a 1-stone range)
The emotional baggage after loosing a game is also still there, but i (hopefully) found a way to cope with that.

One of the great things of the yunguseng program is the personal report i recieved after my first season. It includes an assertion of my strength and weaknesses and also a recommondation for study. What should i study to improve and roughly in what proportions. And the biggest part of my study should be studying pro games to learn proper and basic moves and shape. I should spent half of my study-time with this and till last sunday i replayed exactly 0 pro games.
Now how can i expect to improve and stop loosing so much games, when i ignore this big advice from my teacher? I realised that i can't.
On sunday i had played my second yunguseng game (rescheduled) and lost miserably again. What a great way to spoil a nice sunday by becoming angry and depressed over a simple board game in the afternoon.
After the realisation, that i didn't replayed any pro games so far, i sat down and did exactly that. And my mood increased greatly. Replaying the pro game had calmed me down and lit my desire to become stronger again. Maybe just replaying the game, instead of playing it myself, allowed me to enjoy the game without emotional attachment.
The loss against the 3k that evening also didn't hurt that much, so i hope that this not only helps me with my play, but also with the emotional problem i've been experiencing these last months.

Future Study plan:
To keep the fire burning i decided on a small study routine, that i can hopefully keep this time. Basicly it is just putting the recommendations from my go report into action and setting a certain minimum time i want to keep. To keep the time proportion from the report i'm counting the time here, not the actual items, aside from the pro games, which i treat as the baseline

• One pro game per day (~ 30 minutes)
• Two hours of playing games per week
• ~ 1,5 hours of watching old reviews of my games

The pro game isn't so hard to keep since it isn't as exhausting as playing a game, or requires that much mental involment as rewatching a review. And the other two are easily done in bulk, for example on the weekeend when i'm really in the mood for go.
In total this amounts to spending roughly seven hours a week or one hour a day on studying go.

I should mention that this plan is in addition too the currently running yunguseng. So my league games from yunguseng don't count towards the two hours and the new reviews also don't count for the watching review part (As it clearly says old reviews)

Too much, not enough or just right? We will see, but for now i'm just happy that i can enjoy studying again.

I used to not be able to play Go that much, During the last 12 months I have only gotten to play exactly 3 games over the board against a player of my strength. So I play mostly online, but I still wasn't able to play much Go and felt pressurised to win my games because of the uncommon opportunities to play. I spent most of my Go-Time studying Go, doing tsumego or pro games mainly, until I could *finally* play (about less than 2-3 times per week). To combat this pressure, I joined more Go servers to play "fun" Games, and did better than on KGS. Also, I had a period of free time where I was able to play more games. I was finally able to see the fruits of my studies! finally improving in rank! But then...

Second it wasn't only the fact that i lost so much, it was how i lost these games. In many cases i made a simple mistake, because i misread an easy situation or just played stupid without a reason. This made me very angry about myself after these games, and more problematic was the fact, that the wins i made during this time, didn't felt rewarding. Even in those games i had the feeling of playing "crap" and only won because my opponent didn't punish my mistakes or made a lot graver errors on their own.

I also found I had lost passion for everything, including Go. Just when I had free time to play Go, for the first time, I didn't wan't to.

I knew I needed to re-motivate myself. Instead of playing games, I started using a special technique called embodiment when reviewing pro games, which I talked about in a different thread on L19.

I would basically sit down on a board, replay an insei game that was commented by a pro and try to believe that I'm an insei, trying to think of the next move for one side exactly as if I were playing the game while trying to "become" the player and play using their style. It works as a perfect substitute for actually playing, so somewhere in the back of my mind I believe that I was the one playing the quality moves of a 5d+ while a pro reviews my games!

More of my post can be found here: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... 40#p172640

This has helped me to get somewhat back on track, by "touching" the dream, and works with anyone who is 10k up.

I hope this helps you in some way!

Thanks for your comment.
Regarding your technique i do something similar, when i replay a pro game. Instead of just putting the stones on the board, i always ask myself "where would i play now?". Even if i don't get the exact move right, pretty often i considered a move in the same area, meaning the pro and i agree on what the most important area currently is.
Of course then there are more than enough moves that totally confuses me. This seems actually enough to calm me down, to enjoy the game without getting so emotionally attached like in a real game.

Weekly study report
Let's see how long i can keep this up.
While i made a new study routine and started to follow it, quite motivated i failed to reach the weekly goal already in the first week. Not a good start.
However that is partly due to the fact, that i was away the whole weekend, which left me with less than the seven days per week i planned with, when creating this routine.

I did replay two pro games in the last week, spending about 30 minutes on each, so 1 hour in total for pro games. I also played a game which took roughly one hour and i watched around 25 minutes of old reviews of my game.
Total time spent: 145 minutes
Pro games: 41%
Playing games: 41%
Old reviews: 17%

I should spent more times with pro games, lets see if i can manage my goal this week. Unfortunately i was slightly ill the last two days. So the only part of my routine i did was play a (planned ahead) game yesterday, which took around 90 minutes.

My overall game-count for this month stands at two wins and six losses. You can calculate my winning percentage easily yourself. (Hint: It's not so good)
Anyway the most important thing is, i'm still motivated. Hopefully i can break through this long slump this month.

You can study what you like of course, but don't expect any impact of studying pro games on your winning percentage. Do tsumego instead and work on those things that seem to make a difference for your winning percentage. Those 6 losses, what are they due to? Think outside the box too.

Those 6 losses, what are they due to?

Mistakes because i played outside the box, mostly because i didn't know the "normal" way. Making an early mistake in a joseki because you don't know the joseki can really screw the whole game up.

I don't want to dismiss your advice, but i'm currently enrolled in the Yunguseng dojang and the teacher said (after having reviewed several of my games) that this (not knowing the normal way) is my greatest weakness and that i should replay pro games (older japanese pro games, not modern ones) to work on that.
My reading is actually quite good. Could i win more if i spend more time further improving my reading? Maybe, but i would very soon hit another wall, because reading just isn't my weak point at the moment. Unless i work on my weakness everything else would just be short-term. I'm more interesseted in the long-term benefit.

If you have a professional coach, ignore what I say. Good luck!

Go Report
Another week went by and again i didn't do that much for go as i would have like to. Still there are some good news.

Pro Games and more
In the past i said that i should and want to spend around 50% of my extra study-time with replaying pro games. After consulting my go report again i concluded that this isn't strictly correct. Replaying pro games should be part of this 50% chunk, but also study of opening and joseki, since that is my weak point. Just replaying pro games will not neccessarly make me better in the opening.

So last week i did replay one pro game, but also watched an older lecture from yunguseng about the opening and started reading "Opening Theory made easy" again.

Games
Not much to report here, i only played two games this week. The first on tuesday was in a private league and i lost, quite miserably. The second was a rescheduled yunguseng game on sunday evening. Maybe it was just luck or watching that opening lecture had some positive effect but i won that game. Not only did i win but i also had the feeling of playing really well in the opening. Even if i hadn't killed that big group in the end, i thought i was still slightly ahead.

Other remarks
Yesterday was another lecture, tips about what is possible after several often played joseki. Really helpful and i will certainly watch this again this week. It was just too much to remember everything at once.

What's next?
This evening i have my last yunguseng game, since i can't play on thursday. Hopefully i can rewatch yesterdays lecture before that. With a win it would still be possible for me to stay in my current yunguseng league, so i'm crossing my fingers on that one. Even though the most important thing is probably playing good in the opening.
This thursday the german "bundesliga" starts again, that's why i can't play my yunguseng game. I have no idea who opponent will be but i hope i can play a good game and apply the things from yesterdays lecture. (yay Homework )

Next week i have a bit more free time, friday is our national holiday and i took the liberty of taking some extra days off. A bit more time to study go. Also on the 4th october there is a small tournament where i will participate. The long tournament summer-break is finally over. I'm eager to test if my current slump carries over to the real board or if there is maybe some small improvement thanks to the yunguseng.

I will keep you posted.

Go Report
Since another month is over and i'm at the start of a long weekend, i decided to make another report now.

The last week (22.09 - 29.09) wasn't really good in terms of go. I didn't study or played additional games. During this week i only played two games, my yunguseng game on tuesday and the bundesliga game on thursday.
While i lost both, it gives a little hope.

During the yunguseng game i had the feeling of playing good in the opening for once in a while, or at least not playing the usual mistakes. Unfortunately, the last time i had this feeling, it was crushed in the review, when it was pointed out that i had indeed played bad in the opening.
This time however the review stated, that i played quite good. Overall the game was close all the way to the late middle-game. When my opponent threatened a group of mine, i tenukied in order to take some big profit in the middle - and the threatened group died later.
But, and that is what i really like about the review, my tenuki was indeed correct as my opponents move was a mistake. In the end i just made a tactical mistake that allowed my group to be killed, but i could have lived - and then i would have been leading.
So even while i lost the game, it's the first game where i really played well.

The bundesliga-game was also a close game, one that i lost by 1 point (bundesliga is played with 7 komi). At least i could finish the game properly, that is not resigning, like i loose most of my games these days. I'm not out of my long slump yet, but i see a first glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel.

This week i played a game on KGS, just to get some practice but the only thing i learned is to avoid fast games. It was a 20/6 (20 Stones in 6 minutes) game and my opponent played very aggressivly, cutting everywhere. This kind of game looks so wrong and unproper, that it basicly screams "punish me", which makes it even more painfull if they succeed. And my opponent did, he made it into a capturing race (one i thought i was winning) but then managed to cut some stones off with a clever tesuji and i was one liberty short of connecting them back.
I attribute this to the fast pace, as it was too fast for me to properly read it out and it seems that reading is my strong point.
So i will stay away from fast games, i may play less games but hopefully better ones.

September
Overall september was a really bad month. I only played 12 games during the month and only won 3. However the only one to blame for this is me. I'm not studying enough and not playing enough to put the learned things into practice. So of course i can't expect an improvement.

My initial goal of playing 1k at the berlin kranich tournament (end of november) is out of reach now, but i will still push forward. My new goal for this year is getting out of this slump, playing better in the opening and pushing my overall winning percentage for the year, clearly over 50%. (It is currently at 48%, but that includes the game-heavy strange month of april, where i won 70% of my games)

Yunguseng
A little report about my time in the yunguseng dojang. As to be expected when you are loosing nearly all of your games (won 1 out of 5) i dropped down a league. But as the last review of my game showed, i am on the right track especially since one of the good moves i played in that game, was a move i learned about in the previous yunguseng-lecture. At least something from the lecture sticked.
This evening i have my first game in the october-league and i hope i can finally stop this downward spiral and at least hold the league for a month. For this i have selected an old lecture i will watch and try to play at least one game before this evening to practice.

The big potential
Starting today i have a really long weekend as tomorrow is a national holiday and i took today and next monday off. So including the weekend i have 5 free days, where i can spend time to study and play go.
This also includes the small 4-round tournament on saturday, for which i have to prepare myself. I think it is the first tournament for me after i entered this big slump, so i would really hate to drag this also onto the real board.

I plan to report back on monday with my tournament results and a report about all the studying and playing from this weekend. But now the yunguseng-lecture video is loaded - i'm off to study

Well it's not monday, but i think tuesday morning is fine.

To keep the metaphor with the long dark tunnel - the light flickered on thursday but has become stable and is slightly growing.

After watching the lecture on thursday i played two games before my yunguseng game and lost both of them. I don't remember much about them but i probably didn't play that horrible in the opening - i messed up later.
But the yunguseng game i finally managed to win. Granted it was more a case of my opponent losing, than me winning. But i managed to avoid the usual big mistakes i made in the past so i was able to properly punish my opponents overplays.
Still i allowed him to complicate things at the end, which nearly cost me the game, i plan on playing more to correct this.

On friday i played another game, even though i lost i am still satisfied with it. For these past months there was some sort of pattern in my results. If i played against a 3k on KGS, i would in most cases easily win but playing against a 2k or even a 1k i would lose pretty fast without much hope.
But on friday i managed to play quite well against a 1k. The game wasn't decided by some stupid mistake in the opening or a fatal misread in the middle game. In the end i lost by 1.5 points so the game decided in the endgame. Quite a refreshing feeling to reach the counting stage in a game with a margin below 10 points

Fall tournament
The small fall tournament on saturday was also quite a success. I played 2-2 in those four rounds but i think i played well in most of these games. Which give me hope, that my long slump is finally reaching its end. Only in the last game i played like my old self - choosing a joseki i don't really know is seldom a good idea. End result was i lived inside his corner with him getting an influence which spelt "game over". Funny thing though, he played very passivly and slow, allowing me to convert most of the unplayed board into a huge moyo and he invaded it when the game was basicly over. This game showed me i need to work on my positional judgement, because till the end i was convinced of loosing or just winning by a small margin but with komi (i was white) it was nearly 30 points

On sunday i played another game against a japanese 3k on KGS. This game was weird. My opponent started with tengen and then continued to play mirror-go. Now i know the theory behind playing against mirror-go but applying that correctly is another thing. Also this threw me totally off, i was unable to formulate any kind of plan in the opening, because i knew he was not going respond with normal moves.
Even after i attached tengen and forced him to abandon mirror-go i played around a while with no real plan. Thankfully i managed to not give in to his aggressive style and just took the territory in most cases. The end result was a 7.5 win for me. I'm mostly happy that i didn't give him the win with such a weird style - he does regulary plays mirror-go when he gets black.
I attach the game, in case anyone wants to have a look.

Yesterday i didn't do anything go-related but the yunguseng lecture in the evening. Next thursday i have another yunguseng game and the japanese embassador cup is on next weekend. I plan to play a bit before both to practice a bit.

I'm happy that it finally starts to be looking like my slump has ended, or will end in the near future.

So last weekend was the japanese embassador cup and it was overall a great tournament for me.

First of all: Finished 200 Games
As you may remember i set myself the goal of playing at least 200 games in 2014 and i finally reached that number last weekend. But with still 2,5 months of time this year i'm thinking about increasing the limit a bit. 300 may be a bit much, but possible.
Since one of my weakpoint (apart from joseki/opening) is lack of game experience (it seems not playing at all in 2013 really took its toll) this might be an extra motivator to play a lot.

Then the tournament itself:
I played against another 2k, two 1k, a 2d and 1d - and only lost against the 2d.

Ok in the second round against a 1k, i failed to invade his moyo at the proper time and was behind. I decided to make one last attempt at living in his side/corner and already decided to resign if it failed but i succeeded. I played on and counted him around 10-15 points ahead. Quite a margin, but with good endgame nothing unbeatable.
In the end he didn't want to give any extra points, allowing me to complicate the game and after starting several big kos he lost on time.
One interesseting thing is, against the 2d i also failed to invade his building moyo early enough. I misread a fight by one liberty and had to resign, but even without this he would have won. No hard feelings there, as i managed to play some good moves in this game too.

But the win against the 1d in the last round is what i'm most proud of. Unfortunately i have no game records (45min main time was a bit short for me to record). My opponent was a strong 1d, judging by his rating. Over 2100 points, around 240 points more than me. In the past these kind of 1ds always beat me, leaving me wondering where the game went downhill.
But this time the game was even for quite some time, even a bit better for me. In the after-discussion we found out how different we judged the game in the late middle stage. I saw him slightly ahead (5-10 points) but with good endgame potential for me but hew saw me widly ahead (around 20 points). That's why he played a sequence to cut of some of my stones on the side (4-5 stones) allowing me to gain more thickness towards the center.
Which was good because he had a weak group floating in the center and this new thickness blocked it's last escape route. In the end, i managed to kill this group and win the game.
I made 60 rating points in this tournament alone, i can't remember the last time i had such a good tournament result. I'm even considering playing the next tournament (propably Berlin Kranich at the end of november) as 1k.
Which was one of my mid-term goals for this year. Funny though, one month ago i would have thought that i could be lucky to be able to play even 2k at the Kranich.

It seems my slump is finally over (*fingers crossed*) and it made *click* in my mind. All the training and study in the yunguseng over the last few months finally begin to influence my game in a positive way. Joseki remains a weak point of mine but i learned and memorized some more patterns and i even begin to see joseki mistakes in my opponents play.
I focus on playing more calmly and normal in the beginning avoiding the big opening mistakes in the past.
Of course there is still a lot to be learned - i'm not 1d yet.

Taking a look at the game count:
October stands at 11 wins against 9 loses - finally a positive result again with 55% winning percentage. The whole year so far stands at 98 wins against 101 loses and 2 jigos/unfinished games.

Not much happened since the last post. I played my yunguseng-game on sunday and it looked pretty good for me in the opening. But i somehow let it slip and the game became close again - in the end i lost by 2.5 points.
The game isn’t reviewed yet, so i can’t be sure where my big mistake lies but it seems i tend to value influence to much. An observation i also had in some other games i played is, that i pretty often choose to gain influence instead of protecting territory. It’s not because i like to fight or want to fight but more because i overestimate the value of influence.
Probably something that can be cured by playing more.

So far i have only played two games this week, both against KGS 3k. The first one i lost, which is annoying, not because my opponent was a 3k, but because he played many overplays. He created two big weak groups, because i didn’t want to give me any territory it seemed. At first i rejoiced because this mean the game should go in my favor, right? Maybe i played the attack wrong or i made a tactical mistake somewhere but he managed to save both groups and be still ahead in terms of territory.

The second game my opponent also played pretty strange but thankfully not in a crude overplay-way of things. Instead he started with tengen and continued to play for influence, but without the prospect of a big moyo like you could have with san-ren-sei.
I won, but only by 1.5 points which is a bit annoying, i thought i should have been able to get a bigger lead.
Probably the lack of practice in endgame made me a bit worse in that area (i once considered myself quite good in the endgame) so i tend to lose a lot of points there (or i fail to correctly assert the endgame in my prior counting). But it is hard getting to the endgame when you are loosing the game before move 50 (like i did pretty often in the past).
Still the fact that i am bringing games to the endgame-stage and also win them sometimes is a big improvement over the last few months.

I can also feel the improvement in my games against KGS 3ks. I see their mistakes, the big amount of mistakes they make, but currently i am unable to fully profit from them. Thats why i will probably stay some time on 2k, but i know i am improving. I am also considering of promoting me to 1k for the Berlin Kranich tournament (end of november), which was one of my goals for this year.

Statistics
On the statistics front things are also looking a bit better. The october stands at 16 wins to 11 loses, nearly a 60% winning rate. This also brought the overall winning rate for this year back above 50%.
The increased goal of 300 games this year will hopefully motivate me further, since i still have to play 92 more games in the remaining 67 days left. But with around two weeks of vacation still coming up i’m confident in reaching it. Maybe i can even get the total winning rate for 2014 up to 60%

Yunguseng
The yunguseng-league remains to be the only place that is looking a bit grim. Only two games left for this month and i’m still at only one win. Which means if i loose one more game, chances are i might drop another league. But then the yunguseng is about learning, not about winning so i’m trying to have a positive view of it regardless of my results.
The next game is tomorrow afternoon and i hope to get a bit more practice (playing games and replaying pro games) in before that. Maybe it helps that the next night is a hour longer than usual

Go Journal Entry

Nearly a month since the last post, sorry about that. It’s not that i haven’t got the time, but somehow i was never in the mood to sit down and write another journal entry.
But i haven’t forgotten this journal and i still intend to update it (and yes, i still play go )

So lets recap what has happened in the different go-areas since the last post.

Study/Tsumego
Actually not that much here. The yunguseng is continuing, so i watch the lectures and my game reviews (more on that later), but no dedicated study of opening/joseki or any other theory-related area. I was using my go-time more for playing than for study.

However one big change has occurred. I finally got a smartphone (been avoiding them for a long time). Now what has that to do with go? Thanks to it i’m now using my commute-time (around 20-30 min in each direction) to solve tsumego on the phone. Currently quite easy ones but even those can never hurt.
So finally some sort of regular schedule in tsumego training, which is good.

OGS
Another major change - i started playing on OGS again. On one day KGS was giving me a lot of connection troubles, serious lag and lost connections so playing was not possible. Since i wanted to play i looked for alternatives but i never really liked the way how to get games on IGS (at least in my client) so used OGS.
Since then i have been playing several live games on OGS, i’m avoiding the correspondence games, because i play a lot worse in those than in live games.
However i was ranked 6k on OGS (now 5k) when i started playing there again - a rank i obtained from the countless correspondence games i played there before the merge with Nova. And like i said, i play a lot worse in correspondence games (mostly because i use them to play „slow blitz“, using a lot less time on average per move than in a normal live game), so i felt (and still feel) that i’m a bit under ranked there. I continued playing there partly to correct my rank to get it more in the region of where it should be for live games (probably at least 4k).

Since i didn’t consider these games to be perfectly even i was a bit rectulant to count them in my statistics but a game is a game. I decided to count them normally but also note the amounts of win/losses for ogs-games separately, so i could calculate my winning-rate without this „pollution“.

Yunguseng
The last playing month of this season is nearing its end. After being in a big slump for most of time in the last two yunguseng-seasons things are finally improving a bit. After three games i’m standing at 3-0 wins.
Despite the bitterness of the last months were it seemed i would always lose, regardless of how well i played, i learned a lot. My game has changed, improved (i hope) so i would do it again.
Actually i will do it again as i’m already registered for the next season
But still there is the november to finish, one additional lecture to learn from and two more games. It may be a bit ambitious but i hope to finish this month with a 5-0 score

Games
Like i have written in the first section, i spent most of my go-time with playing. I finished october with a total winning percentage of 58%, played 36 games in total with a 21-15 score. (OGS counted for 3 wins and 1 loss)
November is a bit slower in remarks of games played, so far only 14 games have been played for which 7 were played on OGS. However the winning rate is great. I am standing at 11-3 with OGS counting 6 wins to 1 loss. That is a whooping 78% winning percentage - even without counting the OGS games i stand 5-2 which is 71%.

The only month this year that comes close to that is april, where i played 17-7 (70% winning percentage). April was a bit unreal, mostly because it didn’t felt like i deserved all these wins. It felt just like pure luck that my opponent were messing up so much, that they lost the game.
This month in contrast it feels a bit more real. It feels more like i am playing reasonably well and then win because i played well instead of playing crap and winning just because my opponent played bigger crap. So i’m quite happy about it.

Since i updated my year-goal to 300 games, there 69 games left to play, but only 40 days remaining. I somehow doubt i can reach that goal but i will still strife for it.
Another interesting statistic is my overall year winning percentage. Since i had so many bad months it is just 52%. Nothing great to indicate growing stronger, but the year hasn’t ended yet. I’m curious if i can raise this number and if - to what extend. With already over 230 games played (231 to be exact) it will be pretty slow to change.

My current game
Despite all these positive news, there are still a lot of problems in my current game. When i started Yunguseng earlier this year my biggest weakness was the opening. I would always in get in bad situations and then had to struggle to make the game even again - not even thinking about gaining a lead.
This has changed, more often now i’m the one gaining a lead in the opening - but pretty often i can’t hold this lead during the middle game. In-seong said „i can’t finish the game“ that is turning my lead into a definitive win. I’m probably a bit to inflexible in the middle game, especially if i think i’m clearly ahead. I go into „easy mode“ and overlook all the nasty things my opponent can do and then give him plenty of chances to catch up.
One really nice example is the game below.

The only cure for that is more playing, so that is what i’m going to do.


At move 96 i felt pretty good. Black had probably a bit more territory than me, but he had two weak groups and i had a bit of strength around. I thought i could surely kill one of the groups, that it was impossible to save both.
Move 151: One group is already saved, the other managed to start a big ko.
Even if i didn’t connected on move 156 and instead killed the upper right corner - black would still lead the game.
I still think i had the better position in the middle, with black having to manage 2 weak groups, but i wasn’t able to gain any profit from it - or enough profit (if i had killed the corner).

This is the main problem that is haunting my games. I feel confident that if i can fix this, i can easily play 1k.
Actually next weekend (29/30.11) is the Berlin Kranich, a big tournament and i will try to play as 1k there. I want to play more exciting games, where i really have to give my best and i want to see how well i can fit in as a 1k.

Another month went by without any journal entry from me. Actually i didn’t want to have such a huge gap between entries anymore but it sort of happened, sorry about that.
But december was a non-go month for me until now, so not much to report has happened. Regardless this will be a long post.

Kranich Tournament
At the end of november there was the big berlin tournament the „Kranich“ (Crane). If you remember the goals i set for myself at the beginning of 2014, one was to play the kranich as 1k. Of course i could always promote myself to 1k but i wanted to be confident, that i have the strength to play at that level.
I’m not fully certain, that i can call myself a 1k but i played as a 1k none the less because i feel stronger than the typical 2k. Sort of in the boundary between the two levels, a strong 2k or a weak 1k, depending on how you look at it. So i thought promoting myself to 1k for this tournament wasn’t that much of a stretch.
The main reason however was not fulfilling my goal, even though that was nice, the main reason was to play more games against stronger opponents. In the yunguseng i have dropped so much, and the league levels are so tight, that i mostly played against players of my strength or slightly weaker. (According to the YD rating, all were around 1 rank weaker than me - not counting the fact, that i dropped a full rank in rating over the last season)
And also on KGS i got more 2k and 3k in auto match than 1k. I wanted to see how i fare against good german 1d in a tournament-setting where everybody tries to play at its best.

I finished the tournament with 2-3 and didn’t play against that many 1d, but i’m still satisfied with it. From all the games i got the feeling, that i can play as a 1k if i get more experience and don’t blunder that much. Oh and my current main weakness (according to In-seong) showed itself again but luckily i was able to win the game none the less.

Since i recorded all games i will post each game.

Game 1
A game against a strong 1k. I think i made a judging mistake with move 33. If i had moved my weak group out, black and white would have had a weak group. Sort of like a running battle. Neither would have died probably, but neither of us would have made any big points with it. I think i was afraid that she was the sort of aggressive player that would love this kind of thing and i wasn’t that confident in my reading and tactical abilities.
I had decided that giving these two stones away and building influence towards the center would a possible option - one that involved less fighting. But with the two white stones on the upper edge it was dubious what i could gained with this influence in the middle, while the cash she got from taking this two stones was quite certain and big.
On the upside, the lead she probably gained there (around 20 points) didn’t grow. Nearing the end, when i tried to life in the lower left corner i counted myself behind around 20 points and this corner was my last attempt at catching up. So despite this error in the opening i didn’t mess much else up it seems. Of course there are a lot more mistakes i made, but they evened out with the ones she made.



Game 2
While my opponent called himself 2k, he was a 1k not long ago. Even though there was probably a good reason for him to demote himself, this meant he was a strong 2k.
Still i think i managed to play quite ok. The part at the upper left to negate blacks influence was probably a bit too much, but it turned out ok.
I’m certain i lost it starting with move 90. I tried too reduce too much and produced another weak group of mine. In addition there was still the aji of R8 so in the end, together with the group at the upper left, i had three weak groups floating around and i had to keep all of them to win the game. It is easy to see, that this was impossible.
A lighter reduction at move 90 like O5 wouldn’t have produced that much problems for me and i could have taken the game to the endgame stage, maybe with a slight lead.
But i’m satisfied with my game up to that point.



Game 3
After losing the first two rounds it was natural that i got weaker opponents and so i played against a 3k in the third round. Actually i think the gap in playing strength showed itself quite clearly in this game. During the opening i didn’t feel that much under pressure like in the other two games and i could easily gain a lead. For example allowing me move 83 was painful for white, even more so defending the moyo at move 86 then. Move 102 is also a big mistake by white, but here my main weakness showed itself. Despite having the better position i can’t „close the game“ as In-seong called it. I always give my opponents big opportunities to catch up. After move 108 white can not life in the corner. T18 instead of T17 kills.
I let my opponent life in my corner, so instead of punishing her mistake of 102 she gets a big reward from it. And most of all it was sente for her allowing her to play the big move E3. (Actually i wanted to exchange R18 for S17 first and then cut with D3)
I had big opportunities to gain a certain lead, but screwed up both.

Her cut at L9 (Move 152) was also very painful. Since i had already screwed up at the upper part i felt like i was throwing the game away again, like i had done with many games in the past. I think my reading here saved me, even though giving away the G14 group was big. Another big point for her, thanks to my screw-up.
Afterwards it is only normal endgame but the fact that i still won the game, even though it was only a small margin of 3 points, speaks for itself.



Game 4
Another 1k, one i already had played against plenty of time. He likes to play a very influence-orientated game, something i have big problems with. Somehow i can never find the right moment to disrupt the building moyo or when i do, he makes more than enough territory to compensate.
This time however i somehow was able to manage. At no point in the game i felt so behind, that i had to take desperate measures. Maybe he was leading a bit, but it was not with 20 points or more, like it was in other games against him.
Surely that i won this time, was partly luck, because the mistake he made at the end is not a typical 1k-mistake. But i’m more happy that i could hold myself against him this time than i am about the win itself.



Game 5
Finally a 1d. When i think of previous games i played against strong 1d in a tournament it was usually me resigning around move 60 without any idea what went wrong.
I still can’t surely pinpoint where i lost this game (maybe i could directly after the game, but i don’t remember) but i didn’t had to resign. I could hold myself well enough to bring the game to the counting stage and lost „only“ by 7 points.
Funny story with this game is, that we actually counted that i won by 3 points. Only after we had already cleared the board an observer said that we had miscounted blacks point, that black had 10 points more than what we counted. Since the board was already cleared the only way to check was using the recording-app on my smartphone and it clearly stated black had won by 7 points.



If i only take a look at the actual results the tournament was not a big success, a 2-3 is nothing spectacular especially if one win is against a 3k - considering i called myself 1k this time.
But looking at the actual games and comparing them to my previous experiences i still think my first tournament as a 1k was a success.

Yunguseng
I was standing 3-0 when i wrote my last entry. In the end i finished the month with 3-2. Every winning streak has to end sometime. Also both lost games were quite interesting and i played well in both of them.
In the first one i gained quite a lead, then was too aggressive in reducing (where i have i heard that before?) but then was still leading with komi.
But my opponent found a, according to In-seong, hard to find sequence to kill one of my groups and the game was over.
The last yunguseng game was against my girlfriend and it was a close game. I lost by 0.5 points and according to In-seong i had plenty of opportunity to win, as i was leading going into endgame, but made several big mistakes during the endgame. I attribute that to the fact, that most of my games in past ended with resignation (most on my part), so i lack endgame-practice =).

Thanks to a bit of luck and the other results in the yunguseng-league i still ended on place 2, which means i will move up a league. Well at least in theory, as a new season begins in january, new members will come and a bit of shuffling is to be expected.

Other stuff
Yunguseng has a break and you could say i also took a go-break after the tournament. I still do some problems every day when commuting to work, but not that much.
In total i played four games this month and strangely enough won all of them. Of course this doesn’t say much as one game was the bundesliga-game on KGS, where my opponent was a 7k. And the other games were played on OGS and at least one game i should have lost. I was behind but my opponent lost on time.
I still haven’t found my „drive“ again. I’m usually to lazy to read really deep and just play something that looks good. Even though i don’t see it that way, reading and tactical ability are my strong points and if i don’t use them, because i’m too lazy, my game will suffer.

But now i’m on christmas break and have lots of free time. Hopefully i will play some more games until this year is over.

Some statistics:
In november i played 15-9, a winning percentage of 62,5%. In total i have played 245 games this year so far, with an overall winning percentage of 52,65%.
I doubt i can put that percentage up very much, too many months in summer, where i lost many games. I hope to at least play 5 more games so i can get at least 250 games.

This year was a hard year for me and my go. I had to go through some very painful months but i think the yunguseng overall helped me to improve. I probably still lack a lot of experience due to not playing as much but at least my opening has improved.

I’m optimistic for 2015 .

Feels like ages since i been here, but it was already a little over two months. I once wrote i didn't want to leave such a huge timegap here anymore, sorry about that. Time to recap december, 2014, january and february.

December 2014
Overall i have to say december was quite a slow month for my go. Despite the extra free time due to my christmas vacation i didn’t play that much. I managed to play some games during my vacation but still it was overall one of my weakest month in terms of games played.
I played 9 games, with winning 6 of them, which puts me at a nice 66% winning percentage.

Year 2014
So what did i manage to achieve in 2014? Overall i managed to play 250 games. Of these 250 games i have won 129 and lost 119, resulting a meager winning percentage of 52%.
I liked keeping track of my games the last year, as it wasn’t that obvious to me, that i had such a normal overall winning percentage throughout the year. It also showed the progress which might have otherwise deluded by memory.
For example April was a great month with 17-7 games, a whopping winning percentage of 70%. From June to September there was a steady decline in winning percentage, from 42% and 44% in June and July, to a devastating 25% in September. But also showed the increase afterwards, with reaching 66% in December.

Overall i would say the last year was a success. 250 games is a nice number of games, that is nearly 5 games per week. For other people that might not be so much, but for me it is quite an accomplishment. Also noting down the number of games i played (win/lose/jigo) proved to be valuable, for example to see where i played a lot of games and how that influenced my winning percentage.

That is something i plan to continue in 2015.

January 2015
This was also another slow go-month for me only eight games played. But 5-3 is a nice winning percentage (ok, i have to account one Bundesliga-game against a 5k) and also in Yunguseng it starts looking a bit brighter.
This month i played 3-2 in yunguseng which meant i could hold the league even though one of these wins was due to a time-win after my opponent had a serious lag on KGS. Which is a bit of a shame, since i was not in a winning position in that game.

February 2015 so far
February is currently at 6-2 games, which is quite a good winning percentage of 75%. Also i won all four of my yunguseng-games so far. There are still some days left but i’m currently sick, so i don’t know if i can play much more games this month.

Things are looking a bit better but both months so far are deep below the required average of 21 games per month, to achieve the year-goal of 250 games. But there is a big event coming up which might help me with that

Osaka Go Camp
My girlfriend and i will be attending the osaka go camp this year. Flights and hotels are booked, days already taken off. We both hope that this 3-weeks intensive program will help us improve our go strength. At least i want to stabilize my 1k till then, maybe become 1d afterwards, who knows.
And the sheer number of games we will probably play there will help me with my 250 games plan.

A bit over one month passed, so time for another entry.

My big winning streak at the end of february continued for the first half of march. I ended february with 11-3, that is a winning rate of 78%.

During the first two weeks of march it seemed this would continue, i had a winning streak of 8 games on KGS. This pushed my account over the border, so now i’m a stable 1k on KGS.
But all good things must come to an end and so eventually i started loosing games. It evened out and i ended march with 8-7 games, a meager 53% winning percentage.

Also if you add the numbers up you see, i’m still not playing the required 21 games per month. Even with the Osaka Go Camp coming up, i doubt i will be able to hit my 250 games-goal this year. I guess i did play and study so much for in the last year (at least for me), that i’m a bit over saturated with go and other hobbies take over my free time.
That is not a bad thing because i know i will come back to go after a while, at latest in june

Despite the sharp decline in winning percentage in march i’m still satisfied with my game, something i had real trouble with in the last year. The reason is that i can now see that i’m playing better than last year and maybe i have gotten enough distance to not be discouraged that much by my mistakes. At least a day after the game or so.
When i started the Yunguseng program last year my main weak point was the opening. Very often i would „loose“ the game in the opening stage. I would make a joseki mistake or a mistake related to judgement and put myself in a bad situation very early in the game. The rest of the game i would then try to recover from that mistake, sometimes succeeding sometimes not.
After a while in the program my opening improved, i still make the occasional joseki mistake, but not in every game. Sometimes i would start the middle game with a better position than my opponent. Only to screw this up in the middle game. Reading, tactics and proper attacking/defending became my main problem. Or like Inseong said once „finishing the game“, that is converting a winning position into a position where the opponent had no chance of recovering, i would always leave them plenty of opportunity to make trouble.

And now? Well i can’t say for sure, since this screwing up in the middle game still happens from time to time, but like with the opening it became rarer, sometimes i go with a lead into the endgame or late middle game.
And you guessed it, messing it up there .

To illustrate my point i will post a game i played in yunguseng this month.



My game went really well and i had a really nice situation, until black played the cut at 147. I had seen the cut, but thought it might not be such big trouble like it was - and it wasn’t as it turned out in the review. Basic reading and tactics bit myself again and i lost this game in the end. What i found amazing during the review was the amount of chances i had to win, to make life with the upper group and then just win the game. (I could have captured the cutting stones in a net, 165 was not sente against the corner, i could have easily lifed, i could have threatened to make a second eye at the top or kill the corner in a capturing race) Somehow i had managed to avoid every one of them.

What i want to illustrate here is that my game-loosing mistakes tend to shift to the later parts of the game. Not always, there still games where i make an earl mistake or screw up horribly during the middle game, but compared to the earlier „screw up every game before move 50“ there is a great improvement.

I’m confident in playing 1k and will so tomorrow at the china cup in Berlin.

As for yunguseng, it was great and i attribute my growth and increase in strength fully to it. I even played 3-2 in the march-league despite being the second-lowest player, when ordered by rating.
But because of my over saturation and the osaka go camp, which will take place during the next yunguseng season, i decided not to continue with it - at least for the summer season. I will however probably come back in fall.
And who knows, maybe i’m 1d by then (One can still dream)