Whenever you find something interesting and want to try it in a real game, play a quick game here. Get comfortable with the rules, time control and scoring.
Get accustomed to playing live 19x19 games: Play at least 10 ranked, live 19x19 games. It does not matter if you win or lose, just try to apply concepts you have read up on in the above texts.
My nickmane is judarogu1.
I started to play go a week ago then my rank is 17k.
I can spend <1 hour per day in go (but since I’m aware of it, and I’m looking to improve by trying to play at least 1 game every day of the week, including the weekends, and in my spare time I’m trying to do life and dead problems, review the mistakes of my last game and read a bit about go)
I only have played a couple of 9x9 games and I have just played one 19x19 game so far.
I am 24 years old (I seriously don’t care if anyone wanna know my age).
This is a very interesting project, even if I might not be able to participate, I’ll be sure to follow it because I’m always very interested in different study methods and rate of improvement.
I’ve only been playing since January, so I’m a low DDK. On OGS I’m currently 16k, but it should be more around 20k or even lower, since for some reason I jumped to 8k on OGS shortly after starting to play and I’m slowly working my way down.
My issue is, that I discovered myself suffering from pretty severe online go anxiety, which makes live 19x19 online games -really- stressful and I haven’t found a way to deal with that yet. I can play 9x9 (human) just fine and also 19x19 vs any AI. Correspondence works as well. Haven’t tried playing vs someone else due to a lack of players in my area.
I’m not sure if I’d be a good candidate, but here’s my info:
OGS: MysteryFTG
Rating: 1369 ± 142
Rank: 15.1k ± 3.1 (very likely on the lower end or worse, see above)
Study time: about 1hr, hopefully more
Age: sure
I already follow my own study plan and keep detailed records, but it’ll be interesting to switch it up.
Yeppers. I’ll write down a set of instructions for you and record via twitch how I study (when I do, * cough *) pro games, tsumego etc. so everyone knows what I mean.
Your feedback (diary style) would ideally make its way to me in form of personal messages. If that isn’t possible (I think brand-new forum accounts can’t send pm yet), I will figure out something else.
Ah, that’s a great point. From a cognitive-behavioral therapy standpoint, there’s only one solution: To play. Playing on OGS gives you the opportunity to do more than that, though: Malkovich mode (click on “chat”, bottom right). I would suggest you record important decisions or points where you don’t know what to do, so when you review your own game, you won’t have to go “why did i do this?” but “oh, i wanted to do x and thought y would happen, but z happened”. That way you vocalize and thereby shift the focus from emotional (i want / don’t want…, i am afraid that…, i feel…) to rational (my goal was, my method was, the result was,…), which I expect to allow you to relax more when playing live.
Play with a time setting you’re comfortable with, but keep it somewhat fast (<=20min main time, 30sec byo yomi). That way you can fit more games in your schedule, get more comfortable (and sooner) and you already have a good starting point for a review with a stronger player.
Just know that during the game, everyone except for your opponent can read it and after the game, everyone can read your malkovich notes, so… keep it “clean”.
If you’d like to get an idea of how to comment on your own moves, you can check out… pretty much everyone else’s Go-streams… or (shameless plug) my latest video: Twitch . From around 01:31:32 on I play some viewers and explain my train of thought.
Thanks for your suggestions. I’m definitely going to start taking notes.
I’ll refrain from writing a more detailed reply, because I don’t want to derail your topic more than I already did and because I know I have a hard time stopping myself from talking about a topic once I get going
OGS Nickname: zazathedrummer
Rating: 1111±182
Rank: 21.6k ± 4.7 (But I only really have 5 games)
Study Time: Hopefully 1hr a day but probably closer to every other day
Age: Yes
Just to clarify, as I’m not sure it came across as I intended. I absolutely would like to join this experiment, even if it means to play a bunch of really uncomfortable live 19x19 games. So if I have to play live 19x19 games online against other humans, so be it. I did it before for a week and while it wasn’t enjoyable, it was somewhat doable.
If you’re right smurph, there’s at least a change I’ll get over my anxiety. I’ve tried before, unsuccessfully, but on the other hand I’ve not been playing for that long, so I’m still hopeful.
This is crucial. I was trying to find a game this afternoon using my own settings and the ‘find a game’ feature but wasn’t having any luck when I noticed a game pop up in the suggested games area. I accepted it with only a nominal glance at the clock setting and realized very quickly I was in a blitz game! The clock was something that started at nine minutes and when that was gone it had byo-yomi of 15 seconds but then it built the time back up based on what you didn’t use. Needless to say, it was pretty nerve-wracking and I made quite a few moves out of desperation that I wouldn’t have normally played.
tl;dr - Keep a close eye on the clock settings when accepting a game, especially if you have any anxiety when playing.
I’ve started to play live game against bots to get used to deal with time pressure (my main problem), then I’ll move to live entities (my second problem)
This looks awesome! Good luck to the participants! Unfortunately I am sdk, but I might still use this as an excuse to follow along unofficially and improve my game.
I’m also interested in what the results will be. I expect tsumego to give the biggest result for the test group (ddks), though I think grinding a high quantity of blitz games might give it a run for it’s money, or maybe even be better, I don’t know. I’d be surprised if studying pro games performed that well; I’d expect studying sdk or low dan games would be almost as effective if not more so since they will be closer to their level and easier to understand and even catch the occasional mistake in.
I’m in, if it help me. You may call me MOC0390. I’m 16 kyu at the moment but growing fast. I can do about 1-2 hours per day. Yes, I will give you my age privately.
