Managed to win the first round of Yunguseng Dojang tonight. Contrary to most people’s expectation however, I’m not feeling particularly good about it. I don’t know. Hard to say. Because it feels like to some extend, the games I win I don’t like, but then the games I felt good about are the ones I ended up losing. But my head has been in a bit of a haze lately, so it’s hard to say if what I’m feeling makes any sense at the moment.

What I will say at the moment however, is that I definitely feel like my journey has come to a culmination point where everything seems to be contradicting. In an effort to not play automatic moves and think on a whole board scale, I end up ignoring my instinct to play a move which is actually the proper move that I end up talking myself out of for X reason. Games I win are games I dislike while games I lose are ones that I feel are better. North is south and east is west. Oy vey…

I imagine that others who have gone through this must find it quite difficult. It definitely seems easier to just throw in the towel instead of subjecting myself to being neck deep in this confusion; but this is the time when I’m reminded of the quote:

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

• Thomas A. Edison

Going to keep calm and maintain my bearings… Onwards… Always moving forward….

Part I - Part II - Part III

Overview

With one month of Yunguseng Dojang (YSD) in my pocket, I was ready to take on this next month with a whole new perspective. However, this month would not be the bright new sunshine that I thought it would be.

Read More

Over the weekend, in the midst of my slump, I decided to step back and take a hard look at what I had been doing and what I had to show for it. And though many of you might think otherwise, I realized that I was far behind the pack when it came to what I had accomplished so far.

Upon that realization, I decided it was time to take a sledgehammer the systems and processes that I’ve been using over these past few years. As a result, I invested a lot of time, energy, and money into getting myself back on track. After all, people out there changing the world have the same hours that I do during the day, so it was time for me to make a change so that I could join the ranks of those hyper-productive people.

What does this have to do with go? Well, as many of you know, running this blog consumes a lot of time and energy. And though it would be awesome if this were my full time job, I have many other things in my life that I need to attend to as well (i.e., my job, my girlfriend, friends, family, etc.). On top of all that, let’s not forget that I am also trying to get stronger at the same time as well! So when it comes down to it, the more inefficient I am at using my time, the more sporadic my results will be when it comes to things like my go abilities or the quality of the posts on my blog.

And though I hate to admit it, I’ve hit a roadblock with go. In reality, it probably is a multi-faceted problem that has to do with the rest of my life; but I’m not too worried about it since I think the changes I’m making will help me overcome that roadblock in time.

Being that today being the first day of July, it’s only appropriate that this mark of a fresh and new beginning. After all, weaknesses are simply opportunities to get stronger. So with that said, time to get to work.

Overview

This has been a rather rough week for me. I have lost pretty much every game I’ve played and even lost my crucial match in Yunguseng Dojang (YSD). And to be honest, I was so frustrated with how I played that game I couldn’t even stay for the review afterwards. Sigh. And though I’ve resolved not to take a break at this time, I think I will be meeting everyone halfway by simply taking a break from playing games (except for my regularly schedule YSD match).

I also have a lot going through my mind in regards to how I’ve been spending my time and how to get out of my turmoil. So my training regimen has been cut down again because I’m not sure what I’m doing anymore. I apologize for this week’s progress report being a little short on the content, but I have a new vision for what it’ll be soon. So I’ll be working on that in conjunction with taking a second look at my approach to everything. Hope you all are having a better week than I am.

Training Regimen

• Play 1 game a day.
• Work on Get Strong at Tesuji.

Games

• KGS - 6 games
• DGS - 6 ongoing games
• OGS - 6 ongoing games

Books

• Get Strong at Tesuji by Richard Bozulich

The first thing I want to write is that I really appreciate the numerous words of support that have been flooding in. It’s been great to hear from everyone and to hear everyone’s perspectives on things. In addition, the feedback has helped reassure me that my return to the more journalistic-type blogging was the correct choice.

I’m not feeling much better today. In fact, in a number of ways I’m feeling worse due to other things happening in life. However, the one thing I wanted to write about were my thoughts on how I’ve been dealing with this time of turmoil and downfall.

As most of you suggested, taking a break is certainly one of the most viable options out there. However, there are three reasons why I am taking the high road on this one:

1. Yunguseng Dojang is still a going on (weekly) and the matches will not be stopping just because I’m in a slump.
2. Most players I know approach this by taking a break, but I haven’t heard of anyone try to muscle through it instead and be successful.
3. I feel a strong determination to try and see this through to the end so I can find out whether or not I’m delusional or not.
   Of course, I recognize that my method has a risk of extreme/permanent burnout since I’m already at a low point; but in case you don’t know this about me, I’m quite the risk taker when it comes to these kinds of challenges. So I’m going to take this slump head on, regardless of what obstacles await me.

And paraphrasing from the new wallpaper on my phone:

When things get tough, remember you are tougher.

Today I added another notch to my losses. It was a 2 stone handicap game against a 1k and I completely goofed at the end. No reason I shouldn’t have won, but I just couldn’t see it through.

And the funny thing is that this trend seems to be consistent with other things I tried to switch my attention to momentarily (like League of Legends). Part of me wonders whether I’ve acquired some sort of “losing” mindset; but on second though, it’s rather unlikely since I know that starting off any game being like “I’m going to lose anyways” is a recipe for disaster.

As this is the first day in my quest to return back to my origins, I shouldn’t be surprised that things are not much different than yesterday. There’s a big mix of frustration, loss, and clarity all at the time. And to be honest, it feels as if stumbling through the dark blindly reaching for anything I can hold on to to feel like I’m making progress. I have no idea if it’s going to get me where I want to go, but it certainly seems to beat standing still.

On the bright side, I’m glad I’m not gambling any time soon.

Today I played a game against a 2k as Black (with 45 min main time settings). It’s been a long time since I’ve played a game with such long time settings where the opponent actually used up most of his/her time. In fact, it was a little nerve wracking because the quality of the moves were quite different. Far less impulsive ones and much more proper moves that were given a lot of thought. I felt I had decent control of the game for the most part, but started losing control of it towards the later half of the middle game. Around this time, my opponent misclicks.

At first I was thrilled to see the mistake, but then the undo request instantly popped up and I was confronted with the conflicting decision as to wheter I should give him the undo or not. Long story short, he was supposed to gain about 8 points in sente, but misclicked and put his own stones in atari so that I could capture them instead, save my stones, and gain a few points myself.

For 95% of spectators out there, the answer is crystal clear: it was an obvious misclick. In that moment however, though I’m ashamed to say it, I wanted to win so badly that I tried to brush off his undo and play on. I tried to resolve my cognitive dissonance by telling myself that it was his fault that he misclicked. Not my problem. Within a few moves however, I woke to my senses and realized how pitiful I was being. So I resigned in order to try and pick up what little self-respect I had left.

The reason I’m writing about this is because I realized I have become too caught up in winning. Even though my name was created with the idea that I had found zen in go, I think that it has become so far from the truth (especially as of late). With each game recently, any sense of calmness or zen has been consistently disturbed by the notion of winning or losing. And with each game, I am concerned that I am losing sight of my go.

This ends now. I don’t care if I have to drop ten stones to get back to it, but I’m going to put the pieces that started this blog back together: Ben + Go + Zen.

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.

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.