I need help! teaching game for a very demoralized ddk

God only knows how many nights I fell asleep watching Back to Basics lol

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Never say never!

It seems you re bit unlucky. Truth is go in real life is really a must happen, so nice.

Maybe one day, who knows?

Myself I had some hard time to find a player. Clubs may have some chaotic time. I will always remember the deception of a player who was waiting alone in front of the place and who I could just tell him, sorry, not today for me.

Internet has been a revolution but I don’t forget how nice is to play on a wood board. I hope you’ll get to it.

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Here’s a thought: surely we all have a ceiling, which we approach asymptotically. Does that ring true?

What will we all do as we get to the point where the rate of improvement is “too slow”?

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I like to think it’s more logarithmic than asymtotic (though practically there’s not much of a difference :pensive:)

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I certainly couldn’t tell the difference :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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For example there are popular TV series, novels, (web-) comics about go.
Some enjoy reading about events or tournament results of professional players.
Some enjoy exploring variations of the rules (me for example).
Then the social interaction with other players - whether in real life or over the web.
The simplest (but not easiest) of all is to draw enjoyment from the activity of playing go itself, rather than requiring yourself to improve.

Of course one can’t exactly control what’s fun, that’s different for every person.

I’ve found that often people who have a passion for an activity will improve, just by doing what they enjoy.

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One of the main difficulties when trying to improve is to identify your main weaknesses. But since you did that:

why don’t you study josekis, tesujis and endgame?

This certainly rings true for me as well, or at least that I want to feel like I’m “good” at the thing I’m doing. I stopped playing for about a year, and it was really hard for me to start again, because I was just embarrassed about being worse than I was before.

From your comments I can’t get a good sense of your ‘real’ rank, but if it’s really DDK, I’ll give a shout out to the Clossi Approach youtube series. It gives very structured do’s/don’ts that should get you into SDK range. (@Clossius1 if you’re out there, the SDK videos are too long! But appreciate the effort). Back to Basics is fun to watch, but I find it very hard to get solid takeaways from it.

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Everyone is different, but in case it helps you, here’s what works well for me in a rut:

If you’re not doing it already, consider hiding rankings for a while (one of my favourite features on ogs!), then check in once in a while if you like to know these things and see progression that way.

For me, this stops me getting too obsessive over rankings and helps to shift the focus onto improvements that don’t necessarily manifest themselves as wins… Stuff like what you were trying to achieve with certain moves, developing how you approach the game, etc.

Especially when trying new ideas and tactics, it’s common to regress for some time before improving again, which can be pretty demoralising but is part of the process that makes the pay off all the more worthwhile.
IMO, in the short term, ogs rankings are just a way to achieve good match making on the server, and only if you play consistently over a long time against other humans are they a good indicator of meaningful improvement.

We’re a pretty similar level (I seem to be 9-10kyu-ish) so I can’t offer a teaching game, but I’d happily play a game or two and spend some time working through a review after if you’d like – correspondence is probably best at the moment, feel free to send me a challenge on ogs! :slight_smile:

Hope you rediscover your go-mojo! (Heh, that’s fun to say…)

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Sorry about them being long lol. I really wanted to teach everything I knew in the series! xD

In response to OP. You are about to reach the top 50% of Go players. I think a lot of issues probably come in from perspective. How slow is slow to you? How many games are you playing a day? How many Go problems a day? You might think you are doing a lot but you might not be.

Mentality wise, it sounds like you are over concerned about your rank. Like far too much imo. You need a more kiddish approach. You learn a new thing from a video or teacher, you can try that new thing 10 times in a row and each time try to do it 1 move better. Then go learn another thing. The rank comes naturally, you shouldn’t watch it too closely. Otherwise it can cause rank anxiety which can paralyze you from playing the game and enjoying it.

This is probably a controversial opinion, if Go is causing you stress, why are you playing it? I want more Go players, but I don’t want you to do things that are causing you stress for fun. This can lead to a very bad feedback loop. This is commonly seen in First Person Shooter games. If you are getting unreasonably upset when you do not play well, then this might not be good for you to keep playing. Sometimes taking a break is a good thing. It’s not like you are never allowed to pick it up again.

This is some feedback on the feelings I got from the post, but in regards to advice I’m going to recommend the Clossi Approach Series as mentioned above. I spent a year recording the series and tried to put everything I knew at the time into a series with game examples. (It’s really long lol) It should give you some starting direction.

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Hi, let me know if you want to play a teaching game. I’m roughly 5k but lost the login for my old account.

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