the obvious

[p2501]

No matter where you look for advice on how to get stronger at go, usually the item listed first (if not obmitted because it is taken for granted) is playing. Yet somehow I managed to almost replace it with doing tsumego, playing on dgs/ogs and reading books.

It reminded me of:

Sakata Eio actually wrote a mini-essay about this, on the absurdity of trying to "become strong in secret, while no one's watching."

Yesterday I played two games on my iPad in Bed on tygem. My account was still 11k so I started a game via automatch. 20min games with 3x30s can bet pretty rough when all you are used to is dgs/ogs and club games. Yet I secured a more than advantageous position, up to the point where I played self atari and bam lost the game. Losing a game as a supposedly 4k on the 11k tygem level was pretty shocking. I played him again and won by 44 points.

My account is now a 12k. But I'm actually happy. I can feel how playing will be much better for me than doing something else.