Requesting a teaching game, or even an even game with a joint review... Also rambling

Right of the bat know that this is an odd rant.

I like go, I feel passionately about go, I am not any good at go.

I am often discouraged and overwhelmed by the sum total of what I do not know about it. This started as a request for a teaching game but became a rant about dedicating myself to learning go. Read at your own peril.


I have played go for years…maybe ten years off and on. Never dedicated, Never focused. And of course I never really improve.

I made one push in the last year to get stronger and played in a correspondence group with @Levvo but correspondence games or more specifically the idea of playing moves at random moments of the day and not sitting for live games really wore me down. I couldn’t focus. I dropped out and stopped playing for a while. Looking backI approached correspondence games wrong, it was my first experience with them. So it goes.

So its a solid 6 months later and I am rededicating myself to improving.

I play occasionally with a friend and have been teaching my daughter but no one plays here in North Georgia (Augusta) so OGS is the best choice. I’d like to find a couple teaching games to mix into my play so I can break myself from bad habits and identify the holes in my play. Even learning how to review my own games would be amazingly helpful.

I’m just looking for some direction. Ways to study ect…
Drop me a line or reply no matter how old the post gets and I’ll find a time to play. Probobly late in the evening after the kids are asleep. (GA, USA is -5 GMT)

At this point I’m rambling and anyone willing to give me a teaching game would have long since stopped reading but I guess this is a good exercise for me.

What am I trying to accomplish…

Goal #1 - First and foremost to improve. Understand the game better. Know why something is correct not just that it is the right move. I want to pass this down to my daughter and a real understanding of the game is paramount.

Goal #2 - Single digit Kyu. I’ve been double digit for 10 years, I am ready to improve. OGS lists me around 11k-13k now.

Goal #3 - Play in a tournament at live game speed on OGS.

Goal #4 - Travel to a tournament (reasonably close to North GA. maybe Atlanta 3 hours away or Columbia 1 Hour) Meet some go players out in the world.

Goal #5 - Reconcile with some members of Levvo’s Corner. (@saxmaam, @archpaladin1, @Lorok) Play a few games. Maybe try and get into correspondence games again but do them with discipline.

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Mentioning my name in the forum is a good way to get my attention apparently. Reconcile away!

I am also still DDK and annoyed by it. I find that whenever I believe I’m doing better, I always seem to find similarly ranked opponents that are stronger than me. I don’t know if that means I’m not actually improving, or if there is rank deflation going on here at OGS. I’m not sure either would surprise me, though I think I do have a better grasp of the game now than I did before.

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I read your post a couple times. I feel similarly, having hovered around the same rank for several years now. I just recently got a teacher, for the first time, in order to help me improve my game. I’d be up for giving you a live teaching game anytime this week, since winter break is still ongoing for me. I’m about 2d-3d on OGS. Let me know what time would work best for you. Keep moving forward! :+1:

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So variables in rank is an issue, I do get concerned about it. I am not sure what the conversion between OGS and KGS or AGA but in general rank is just a comparison between you and the other players. The skill level it represents is dependent on the skill of the people in the system. I honestly dont know too much about the how they do it here but its some variation of the ELO system used in sports or chess right?

Regardless the goal has to be to improve…

Lets play a game some time.
Or even run through some Tsumego or review games.

Does the Levvo group organize anymore?

Yes this is true, and in principle it shouldn’t bother anyone so long as you can find a similarly strong opponent. There’s that part of human nature that needs to see some visible aspect of progress though. When the rank stays in the same range that doesn’t always cut it.

I’m happy to play a game. I’ll send a challenge.

The Levvo group does continue to organize. We run an informal ladder in our group. You should probably reach out to @Levvo to catch up.

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You have to decide. Do you want to get better or do you insist on only playing moves that you fully “understand” (and what does this even mean)?

What exactly do you mean by “playing moves that you fully understand?” There is a difference between experimenting with moves and intentionally overplaying. Also, players may misjudge whether they “fully” understand something. I don’t believe players should intentionally overplay because it completely disregards the balance of the game. If you are learning the game, you should try to play moves that are honest to the situation and try to improve your positional judgment. But if a player overplays but doesn’t believe it’s an overplay, then there is something to learn.

Willing to help. You can hit me up should u ever see me online. Live games only though. They’re the way to go to improve imo. BTW, I think you made a mistake, there’s no way GA,USA is GMT+5. It’s -5.

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@Wulfenia - You made roughly the same comment so I’ll answer you both here.

When I say play moves that I understand I am not trying to limit myself or prevent creative play, I can see your point and recognize that leaving your comfort zone is a prerequisite to improvement.

I guess there are two things that I am trying to express with that phrase:

  1. Avoid literal mindless play. Not just intentional overplaying but avoiding the aimless play that I sometime run into during the middle of the game

  2. A dislike for memorization studying. From what I see there is a lot of discussion online regarding the merits of different study techniques and this comes up a lot. I have experimented a little recently with studying Joseki but I feel like I am memorizing rather than learning. Just looking at the stones I tend to misunderstand the reason for the moves.

I hope that clarifies my point a little. I am just trying to say that I need to play stones intentionally and strive to have an understanding (even if my understanding is wrong) of what each stone is meant to do.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my rant. I am always impressed with the kindness of the Go community.

.

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Thanks for the offer. Lets try and set up a time to play. I’ll message you.

Also yea I wrote the time the wrong way. In my head I just add 5 hours to figure out what GMT but clearly that’s not how you write it. That’s what I get for not just googling the conversion.

Thanks again.

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Everyone starts from zero, for children, its normal to approach something knowing nothing, for adults less so. But its fine doing something for the first time, and learning something new, you just need to approach it with the correct mindset. Accepting that you do not know everything is fine, it is required, and essential.

Most things in the world are done by hard work, gradually, over time. you just need to put in the work.

My goal in go was to made 1 dan after one year, I didn’t make it, but when I looked back the amount I learned in the year was impressive, over the last few months I’ve learned a lot quicker, but i’m probably still not one a 1 dan.

I’ve been learning the Japanese language for 3 years now, I am at a level I couldn’t have even imagined 3 years ago in both reading and listening, just because I kept working at it.

So even if after 1 year in go, I have not reached 1 dan, If I keep playing and studying after 3 years I will have reached somewhere I could not imagine when I started.

It can be discouraging seeing how much there is, but its also a challenge and keeping working at it, you and I will get there.

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Hey there mtm6556!

I did notice that alot of people can’t learn that well with correspondence games, mostly because time limit doesn’t apply as it should. Most people just click through their list of 10+ games in a blitzy fashion and tend to forget what they had in mind the last time they played etc. (Malko log is good here). So that’s why we started a ladder with only live games instead, to force people out of the bad habits you might get from playing a cor. game. And to get a feel for how real tournament games feel.

You are more then welcome to send me a pm if you wanna tag back in. It’s always good to have a place with people you know to lean back to and play with. Especially if you want to climb rankings (The whole competition kind of thing). Helped me a lot to get to know people around my own strength and then aim to climb the rankings faster atleast. Hehe. But yea, there is so much free materials on go study that in the end one has only to spend time to improve.

Cheers!

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