Friday Go Forward: Week 65

Overview

During the past few weeks, I ended up skewing my training to playing games and sacrificing study in order to re-acclimate myself to playing games again. As a result, my weaknesses became very clear as I would lose game after game after game.

After discovering my Master Wu, my training has once again gone under another stage of growth as I really begin to immerse myself in practicing “deep learning” as is discussed in The Talent Code. And though it’s too early to tell if it’s working, I feel like the wheels of progress are beginning to turn. Fingers crossed that I’m not wrong. Haha.

Training Regimen

• Play 3 games a week.
• Complete 1 section of Level Up Review 2 per day.
• Study 10 life and death patterns/problems.
• (Time Permitting) - Replay 1 game of Go Seigen.

Games

• Tygem - 1 game
• Pandanet-IGS - 1 game
• KGS - 1 game
• DGS - 6 ongoing games
• OGS - 7 ongoing games

Books

• Level Up Review 2 by Baduktopia
• Shape Up! by Charles Matthews
• All About Life and Death - Volume 1 by Cho Chikun
• The Com­plete Game Records of Go Seigen - Volume 1

Videos

• Analyze the most often played patterns: Star point chapter

Lessons Learned

• Though difficult to grasp, learning how to make proper trades throughout your game is one of the key milestones to being a strong player. This is particularly evident in the way Go Seigen plays (and yes admittedly difficult to do).
• As I replay more and more of Go Seigen’s kifu, I’ve realized how constricted my go has become. It is missing the freedom that is so glaringly exists in Go Seigen’s games.