Overview

Once again I’ve decided to trim down on my training regimen in order to up the quality of training. This means more time spent on each topic as well as increasing repetition in order to further solidify what I’m learning. In other words, I’m no longer simply looking to find out what the correct answer is; but to instead really try to immerse myself in it so the reading ability becomes more ingrained in me.

In terms of gameplay, it has been a rather abysmal week. I got into a weird mood and ended up losing 5 games in a row. It was pretty awful considering my go deteriorated to the point where my final game was a resignation against a 4k. Playing on tilt is just not a pretty sight for me at all. Haha. But on the upside, I did manage to recollect myself enough to manage a win for my Yunguseng Dojang match. So hooray for that!

And as mentioned earlier this week, there are some changes coming up on the blog that should hopefully improve the reading experience and value that this blog has. So I’ve been working on that as well and trying to iron out some of the changes I’m trying to make. Fingers crossed it goes smoothly!

Training Regimen

• Play 3 games a week.
• Complete 1 section of Jump Level Up 1 per day.
• Work on Get Strong at Life and Death.
• Work on Get Strong at Tesuji.

Games

• Pandanet-IGS - 1 game
• KGS - 9 games
• DGS - 6 ongoing games
• OGS - 6 ongoing games

Books

• Jump Level Up 1 by Baduktopia
• Get Strong at Life and Death by Richard Bozulich
• Get Strong at Tesuji by Richard Bozulich

Lessons Learned

• Playing on tilt has consequences… like dropping two stones in rank on KGS. Hahaha.
• Take all your opponents seriously regardless of their rank. I’ve posted about this multiple times, but it’s come to bite me in the butt again.
• There is a huge difference between winning a game and crushing your opponent. Taking one attitude versus another has a profound impact on your approach to the game mentally, but more on this later.
• This might sound utterly basic, but I seriously need to use my brain more when I play. I miss the most common variations in my blitz reading. I read one variation and think it’s good and fail to consider other obvious alternatives. Oy vey.

Introduction

After my third game in Yunguseng Dojang, I became a lot more comfortable playing White. Maybe it’s because I’ve started to really appreciate having komi. Either way, I’m glad to have broken away from my fear of playing White.

This game was the first one I played after being dispelled of that anxiety of playing White. And believe it or not, it was actually a rather calm game where no dramatic battles of life and death occurred. See for yourself below!

Game Summary

no,Category,Good,Bad
1,Opening,Move 30 - Using the knight’s move to gain sente from the 3-3 invasion was a big reason why I could get an advantage this game., Surprisingly I cannot find any fault with my opening. Please let me know if you spot something I missed!
2,Middle Game,”Overall it was quite peaceful and neither played created any big weak groups, but I managed to take more territory overall.”, N/A
3,Fighting,”To my surprise, there wasn’t much fighting in this game.”, N/A
4,Endgame,Move 164-175 - I was proud to find this sequence that reduced a lot of Black’s points in sente., Hard to find any big flaws in my endgame. It seemed I was stronger than my opponent in this area.
5,Overall Reading,Move 100 - Finding this preparatory move for the resulting sequence was a big step forward for me.,Move 52 - I completely missed the double atari when I played here. Shame on me.
6,Strategy,Move 78 - Realizing that it would be difficult to continue severely attacking the Black group and simply cashing in on territory is a move I used to find it impossible to do.,”Move 52 - Even if we assume this move works, there wasn’t much strategic value here since White did not have great potential in the center nor a weak group to attack.”

Lately I’ve been reconsidering what direction the blog has been heading in. Although it’s been great starting a new series and having content flow consistently, lately the blog has felt more like a newspaper or e-magazine of sorts instead of a personal journal. For example, the game reviews that are being published are now usually like a month behind where I am now, which can be confusing for you as a reader and also throws my blog into a weird clashing timeline.

As a result, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I can do to fix that, and I’ve come up with the following items in order to better optimize my time and produce content that better fits my vision for the blog:

Starting next week…

1. Thursday Go Tygem will now be discontinued in order to pave way for #2 and #3.
2. Monday Go Meditation is going to undergo a reboot with an updated format that takes some elements of Thursday Go Tygem and should improve the overall quality and value of the weekly column. In addition, I will be clearing out the queue in Monday Go Meditation in order to make way for current games and realign the blog with the games I’m currently playing as opposed to games I played weeks or even months ago.
3. There will be a new post every weekday (i.e. Mon-Fri). This might seem extreme and be a point of concern for some, but I’ve reached a new level of comfort with my blogging that should make this very viable. I’m hoping that this should help the blog start to return to its origins of being a chronicle of my journey (in real-time).

In addition, you’ll start noticing little changes around the blog like new tagging or categories appear as I restructure the content in order to make it more user friendly, but those shouldn’t impact your reading experience on the blog much.

Starting in July…

1. I’m going to update the format and change the schedule of Friday Go Forward - Although some don’t realize it, Friday Go Forward currently captures my progress from the last Friday afternoon/evening to the next Thursday evening since it gets published every Friday morning. In order to better capture my weekly progress, I will be changing it to Saturday so it fully captures that week. In addition, everyone’s feedback was really helpful on figuring out next steps, so be on the lookout in the future for an improved format!

Whew. Been meaning to unload that from my brain for some time. I’m hoping that you’ll like these new changes; but as always, please be sure to leave feedback in case I’m missing something or you see something I can do to improve what you’re seeing here on the blog. See you around!

Overview

The theme of this week has been: Ben needs to improve his reading abilities. Haha. Many thanks to all those who commented on my WGW post and helped me refocus my time and energy on the correct area of weakness. I even had the pleasure of hanging out with local go player Justin (AGA 7d) who helped to straighten me out a bit. It was a fun time of playing and going over some variations on joseki that I should be familiar with. It certainly showed me that there is still much more I can do to improve, which is always motivating.

Finally, as I continue trying to improve this blog, I have to keep in mind the time and energy required for each post along with whether or not that material I’m writing is even relevant anymore. After all, all of this is meant for your reading enjoyment (and a small percentage for chronicling my own journey)! As a result, over the next few weeks, I’ll be asking for feedback on what you see on this blog to help optimize everything.

To start, I wanted to do a quick poll on your thoughts on this weekly series: Friday Go Forward. So if you don’t mind, please leave a comment below to let me know if you think this series is worth keeping around and/or anything I could do to improve it (i.e., specific things you’d like to see me talk about in my Overview section since I’m sometimes unsure of what to write in here). And if you think it’s good the way it is, it would be good to hear that as well. Thanks!

Training Regimen

• Play 3 games a week.
• Complete 1 section of Jump Level Up 1 per day.
• Work on life and death.
• Work on tesuji.
• Replay 1 game of Go Seigen (Time Permitting)

Games

• Tygem - 0 games
• Pandanet-IGS - 1 games
• KGS - 3 games
• DGS - 6 ongoing games
• OGS - 6 ongoing games

Books

• Jump Level Up 1 by Baduktopia
• All About Life and Death - Volume 1 by Cho Chikun
• Get Strong at Tesuji by Richard Bozulich
• Get Strong at Life and Death by Richard Bozulich

Lessons Learned

• One must not underestimate the power of “ordinary moves.”
• My idea of being “creative” on the board is the equivalent of stupidity. Haha. And though it sounds hurtful on paper, it was actually a very helpful comment.
• I really need to work on my reading abilities if I want to take my game to the next level.

Introduction

This opponent was a unique one since he thought longer than I did and took his time. He actually ended up in byoyomi early on in the game and used most of his byoyomi time which is really weird for Tygem since most players I’ve encountered play pretty quickly and I’m the one usually running out of time. Overall though, I felt that I was in control for most of the game. Hopefully you’ll agree! And if I’m totally wrong, please let me know!

Game Summary

no,Category,Good,Bad
1,Opening,Move 9-11: Ignoring White in the upper left was good in that I did not unnecessarily strengthen my opponent by trying to struggle.,”Other than the inconsistency of Move 21, I don’t see any egregious errors in regards to the opening.”
2,Middle Game,Move 39-63: It felt like I did a good job attacking White while gaining nice 4th line territory on the right.,Can’t see any major mistakes at the moment.
3,Fighting,Overall the fighting seemed to be in my favor most of the game. Nothing terribly complicated.,Didn’t see any real weaknesses in my fighting this game.
4,Endgame,Move 219: Ignoring White’s atari at M1 to make an extra point showed I was not making automatic moves and trying to look for bigger plays.,Move 164: Letting what get the diagonal here first was rough.
5,Overall Reading,Move 121: I was proud to be able to read out this attachment and know it could not be cut without some loss to White.,Move 70: I could sense there was double cut aji here but failed to read it out properly.
6,Strategy,Move 81: Sacrificing the F3 group in exchange for breaking up the left side seemed to show good judgment.,”Move 21: Though successful, the 3-3 invasion seems to be contrary to my initial plan at making a moyo. So negative points for inconsistency.”

Weekly Go Wednesday, Issue #44

Up until a month or so ago, my go had become quite rigid. In fact, it could be compared to an ice sculpture where the curves and angles have all been predefined. And though it is admirable in one aspect, it also represents a sense of rigidity and does not have much room for growth. And since my goal was to build something way better, it was only natural that it was time to set it on fire and let it melt away. And now that I am left with this pool of water, while the prospect of building a grand ice sculpture sounds great, it’s been rather difficult figuring out where to begin.

For those who don’t use Twitter, I recently tweeted about picking up Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go by Kageyama 7P again. You might wonder why I’m doing this. After all, I’ve read this book at least four or five times at this point. However, I’ve noticed that my progress in go has reached a vulnerable stage. It’s not stagnant, yet it is not necessarily progressing either in the traditional sense of climbing ranks. Instead of complaining and being frustrated however, I’ve decided that this is as good a time as any to return to the fundamentals.

Read More

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.