This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the NOVA Pumpkin Classic Tournament and seeing many friends there. And though I originally planned on playing in the tournament that day, I ended up being on call for work and thus planned on only attending to see friends and show my support.

Upon arrival though, I got convinced to play in the first round since we had even numbers. And while I would have liked to have played for more rounds, it was simply not possible for me to do so with a possible work call coming at any moment.

On the upside, I did get to play a round against an opponent I had played against in the Baduk Open Championship. I had decided to self-promote to 1k this time and was giving her a 2 stone handicap. The following is the game record (which I will be sure to review in a future Monday Go Meditation).

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Overview

As I continue into the second stretch of non-stop hammering of work and attempts to sustain consistency, I’m happy to report that while I feel pretty winded, I don’t feel anything close to burnout yet. On top of that, I’ve actually come to realize that executing my routines first thing in the morning seem to work out pretty well for me. On days that I didn’t manage to do so usually resulted in a last minute scramble to get it done at the end of the night, but I’m hanging on as best I can.

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The only way I can describe the past few days is that it has been a flurry of work and attempts to straighten out other aspects of my life (like working out more consistently and waking up early). On the upside though, I’ve been rather successful at those things and have actually found that doing my training regimen early in the morning is actually quite effective. There’s definitely something about knocking out four pages of problems and playing a game of 9x9 first thing in the morning that really makes for a good start during my day. I’ll be sure to report more later on this week on how it goes.

The Basic Principles of the Opening and the Middle Game

Description: “In this book, 20 basic principles are presented. Each principle is accompanied by numerous examples and each section is followed by problems in which the application of these principles is required to solve them. The intuition of the novice player who studies the principles, examples, and problems presented in this book will quickly rise to the level of an expert go player.”

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Overview

As predicted, I really am in the thick of things this week. In the midst of all this work though, I’ve managed to barely cling on to my training regimen (though it was rather difficult to do as each day went on). I’m currently testing different things to make the training more consistent (i.e., getting it done first thing in the morning). I’ll let you know when I discover my own magical formula for it.

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I have to say that my training is really starting to be tested this week. I nearly messed up my streak a couple days ago after getting caught up in work and the rest of life. Thankfully I’m good for now, but it’s certainly becoming difficult as I’m adjusting to a higher pressure situation.

For anyone who used to play turn based go with me, I’ve added Online Go Server (OGS) back into circulation. Hopefully I’ll get around to adding Dragon Go Server in the future, but for now I’m just keeping track of KGS and OGS.

Other than that, I’ll just keep on working to keep my head above water as the tides rushes in. Hope that everyone else is doing well with their own training. Hope to see you on dry land soon!

Overview

Whew. I’m hitting the one month milestone in my training and I’m proud to say that things are still going well. Granted, there are times where I almost skipped out on my regimen, but my past self was smart enough to keep it at a manageable level where the task was easy enough that it wasn’t onerous to complete.

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