2-3 kyu pushing for 1 dan

Hello! It’s always been a dream of mine to reach the 1 Dan mark. I read several Go books, daily tsumego, lectures, but I feel like the improvement is too slow for the effort I put into it.
I would love to have someone stronger (preferably a Dan) to have a teaching game with me to see what I need to improve on.

Please let me know if you’re interested, thank you!!!

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I can play a game now. Feel free to send me a challenge or message me to schedule a game.

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Thank you!! I’ll send you the game ^^

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You can challenge me too, if you like

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How many live games do you get to play per day?

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Thanks!
If you prefer a certain time setting please let me know, otherwise I will send a correspondence game.

It can be anywhere from one to a few games. I used to be much more consistent in the past with games, maybe averaging 5 or 6 a day.

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Playing is always going to be the best way to improve. You have to be able to put a lot of the things you study into practice to actually see results. And, results are always long term. Meaning for example you might have the rank 5kyu but the strength of a 2kyu and not even know it because you might still lose to 5kyu and say “oh I am still 5k I guess” but in reality you have to be able to play consistently to see the results. So I encourage playing as often as you can along side studying. Don’t expect that everything you learn from tsumego and books to start showing up in your game after only 100 games expect to see results as the games go into the 100s and 200s and so on.

Most high ranking players and professionals seem to practice the most by playing fast games (i.e 1:00 main time with 3 periods 15 seconds byo-yomi) This way they get in as many games as possible and they even review there games.

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This is really encouraging. Thanks for the insight, because that so true when I sometimes lose. I tend to doubt my strengths as a Go player and it only discourages me further from reaching 1 dan. Reaching 1 dan slowly through time is itself a beautiful process. I won’t give up yet!!

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When I was a kyu I played 100s of games a day and always had motivation issues. There was even a point where I tried to select specific opponents to boost my chance of winning. i.e avoiding people I thought were stronger then me. It can be a really unhealthy mindset and when you break through it you will feel more free and feel like you can play more.

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I got some rather quick improvement recently (no not because of OGS rank update) so I want to share things that I feel helped:

  1. On games:
  • Playing itself is not important. Reviewing your own game is a lot more important. Deeply review all of your games (with AI or stronger player). Don’t just “this is the losing move <insert bitter laugh>” and move on to next game. When you run out of game to review, play new game.
  • Play varied game length, but don’t play blitz. High dan player like to play blitz to train their intuition or something. We don’t even have good basic yet, what intuition is there to train?
  • Practice counting regularly, and count at least after every fight. At the beginning counting will be slow, but after just a month practicing I can count pretty fast now, like it take only 20 secs to count. You can only choose strategy after you know the balance of territory and power between the 2.
  1. On tsumego:
  • Solve tsumego with a challenging goal in mind: “Today I will solve ~1kyu tsumego until I get 5 correct first try in a row”. Put punishment when you fail that “I will not even eat until I reach 5 correct first try in a row”. It put seriousness in the tsumego, not just daily cafe routine.
  • Recently I found tsumego hero and think solving by collection is another good way to train. It has several collection of increasingly difficult problem using the same tesuji. It gives me the feeling of “practicing 1 kick 10000 times”, so maybe good for realizing the potential of certain tesuji. This is only my recent discovery though so can’t vouch for its effectiveness.
  1. Try teaching people
  • Maybe surprising, but teaching is a very good way to learn. To teach someone you will need to prepare materials, and while preparing materials for teaching you will realize your own lacking in fundamentals and can fill that gap in your knowledge. Recently I joined a discord server with a lot of new players, and by helping them I learned a lot.

  • Remember though that teaching will only be beneficial to both parties if the teacher understand they themselves is still just a student of the art. E.g. don’t teach with the idea of showing off how strong you are. Student questions are many times the best “hint” for teachers to study.

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I actually think playing is more important then reviewing the games. In fact I would argue playing 1 game is equal to reviewing many games.

I can’t comment on the varied length thing. I like slow games and I always recommend playing longer games so I will pick it above all. But, it seems pro players also disagree with this and recommend fast paced games to increase game count since it is the best way for improving. (i.e faster games, more games played.) Which I can understand I guess that was how I improved in the past.

Actually I heard from someone that when Ilya Shikshin was asked what he did to get so much stronger over the months. I heard he responded with something like “I learned from my students”.

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Let me just state this as well for the time control thing. At the end of the day you play go because its fun and you intend to have fun. Improving is also fun. I enjoy slow games these days while in the past when I was a kid and learning I played blitz which I also enjoyed. I do not enjoy fast paced games as much as I use to.

But, in the defence of the slow paced games. I knew plenty of players who made 1dan in less then a year who played nothing but 30:00 to 45:00 games. So I think that you should do what makes you enjoy the game more.

Because I think in the long run no matter what methods you incorporate into your learning if you are not enjoying the game you won’t learn anything. If you are enjoying yourself then any method you implement to make it faster as long as you are enjoying yourself will be ultimately maximized.

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Agreed. Most important part.

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You may be interested in Shin Jinseo’s daily routine (as published in 2017):

  1. Wake up at 9am
  2. Go over 2 kifu
  3. Eat brunch
  4. Wash up - it’ll be around 11am by that time
  5. Internet baduk
  6. Kifu
  7. Life & Death
  8. Kifu
  9. Internet baduk
  10. Life & death
  11. Have snack around 3pm
  12. Internet baduk (play until getting a win)
  13. Kifu ~ kifu ~ take a break
  14. Internet baduk
  15. Around 6:00pm now - have dinner, and after a break, kifu at 7:00
  16. More internet baduk
  17. Sometimes go outside
  18. Kifu
  19. Take a break
  20. Internet go (play again if I lose)
  21. Last internet go game; bed at 1am in case it’s a loss; 12am if I win
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Good reply to add to the topic “I am a go addict when…”

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Thank you to everyone who replied! Again, it’s very encouraging to see the support and I look forward to implementing these methods :slight_smile:

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It’s a bit scary how there are so many ppl on the internet strong enough to keep Shin Jinseo’s awake at night o_0

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My guess is that Shin Jinseo often goes to bed at 12am, unless he has changed his routine since 2017.

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He is a machine himself!

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