Friday Go Forward: Week 64

Overview

As some of you may have noticed, I decided to return to the KGS scene to play some ranked games again. If you’re wondering why I decided to do so, you can blame frozensoul for challenging me to do so. And the results have been pretty bad since I’m on a losing streak at the moment.

Though I’d normally feel more frustrated by this, I am actually in a decent place compared to my typical “on tilt“ mood. So while it sucks that I have been losing, I’m trying hard to take it in stride and not put myself in a position where I have to win in order to reset my emotional stability. Not an easy task, but I’d like to think it’s a step further towards the path of my zen go.

This week also marks the start of a new way of viewing acquiring skills. In this week’s Weekly Go Wednesday post, you can read about my little epiphany and new view on approaching my study of the game. So there’s starting to be some change in regards to that.

Finally, I was unable to win my last game and thus will drop to League B next month. Oh well. It is somewhat disappointing, but life goes on.

Hope you all had a good week and have a great weekend.

Training Regimen

• Spend about 50% of your time playing games.
• Complete 1 section of Level Up Review 2 per day.

Games

• Tygem - 6 games
• KGS - 6 games
• DGS - 5 ongoing games
• OGS - 4 ongoing games

Books

• Level Up Review 2
• Essential Life and Death 1

Lessons Learned

• Just because you are struggling to learn something doesn’t mean you don’t have talent for it, it just means your brain is working hard to make that new skill more instinctive. Don’t give up.
• I’ve stated this more than once on the blog, but seriously: don’t underestimate your opponent just because his rank is lower than yours. It usually leads to overconfidence that can allow for a rather tragic loss.
• Don’t make any big decisions or any decisive evaluations about yourself when you’re feeling down. Your head is just not in the right place to do so.