hey y’all. I’m feeling the go right now. Are any of my old friends still here?
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Welcome back! Been a while ^___^
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2023 Games, One Point Lessons, maybe two
learning Didn’t realize the F19 chain was in trouble (until too late)
learning revived a dead group by connecting on first line, missed sealing in opponent’s dead group
saxmaam vs. Bouvardia Don’t forget to think! watch cuts, big things first. (maybe the lesson is don’t expect much when tired)
saxmaam vs. doge_bot_4 Priorities, sister. Do I have a weak group? Does my opponent?
blitz Missed a big kill in blitz game
u3577479 vs. saxmaam lost a cutting race. get some more liberties!
saxmaam vs. BigboyXia was losing, then Ko Fights! opponent quit. *** need to review ***
The AI pointed out many reading mistakes in this one.
saxmaam vs. 老鼠爱围棋 watch your liberties! open skirts are big opportunities
Ladder Challenge: saxmaam(#7) vs SylTi(#6) don’t get complacent. life and death problems
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More Quotes
Note: We have been calling the vital point—the point that determines life and death of a group if it is not already alive or dead as it stands—the “center” or sometimes the “center of symmetry”. There’s also an interesting way of looking at it in terms of pivots. The pivot, you may recall, is an opposing stone on the unoccupied “jaw” of a just-about-to-be-formed tiger’s mouth. The vital point of an eye shape is always on a pivot. [Janice, Kim book four]
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https://online-go.com/game/56441692. Missed opportunity to kill, got a seki instead. oof!
13x13. both of us missed some big moves
nearly lost due to major blunder. opponent missed opportunity
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November-December 2023
failed to see a cut coming. oh, the pain of it!
confusing. look at this later
lost for lack of aggression? or just failure to know what was bigger? 9x9 game
bad judgement 9x9 game
if you don’t got 2 eyes, you don’t be alive. disaster
could’ve avoided seki before it was too late
failure to address opponent’s weak group
mistiming of line 2, possible corner invasion
with guess the best move variations
something to think about (ai suggested move)
a good game for me, some blunders
arkuiat review of rengo game. topic: ko
Read: Tesuji by James Davies. chapters 2-4 for book club experiment
Watched: dsaun shape lecture (youtube),
Watched: clossi approach to 15 kyu videos
reviewed: game posted in this thread, in Oct 2015
puzzles: attempted all of the 24kyu or weaker problems on goproblems.com, solved many
Live focus games: Unrated 9x9, +/-1 rank. theme: stay connected. Observations: my blunder rate went up. I stopped blundering so much. I started playing rated games. AI kept pointing out that i wasn’t choosing to play in the right area. Also I’ve started to think that “always have two ways to go” is of equal or more importance than “stay connected”.
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so i can’t edit the previous post any more. I’ll make this post about the end of december 2023. Mainly I want to finish this goal:
book: Level Up 3 - a review, but worthwhile
puzzles: attempted all of the 24kyu or weaker problems on goproblems.com, solved many
interesting life and death situations. i lost bigly
helpful review for above game
live game 12/27
and here’s some other possibilities
judgement (this is bigger than that, also a L&D)
ai suggestions (follow link and backup 1 before looking)
squeaked out a win through blunders and endgame
9x9 oversights
[[Study Group] Essential Life and Death Patterns](Life and death study group (yebellz))
live focus games (experimental, 13x13, komojo): (1) cut cut cut! (2) ?
looked at my reviews from august 2018 post
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Jan 2024
read Tsumego chapter 5
finished book: Level Up 3 - a review, but worthwhile
puzzles: (didn’t finish) attempted all of the 24kyu or weaker problems on goproblems.com, solved many
live focus games (experimental, 13x13, komojo): (1) cut cut cut! (2) keep territory equal (didn’t play enough)
reviews:
a live game. lost a L&D exchange
squeaked out a loss
lost lost
[territory a big deal in 13x13 games](more 9x9komojo vs. Real Estate)
ai highlights (puzzles)
gradually lost the opening, failed to thrash
mistakes both sides
big 9x9 mistates, seki, l&d
13x13, opening hints from ai, ai demonstrated a tesuji
fail to kill
Phee Yong Xiang Review … i lost badly
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I highly recommend “Graded Go Problems for Beginners Vols 1-4”
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Okay, don’t take this the wrong way, I mean it to be friendly and constructive…
This thread caught my attention because it’s more than seven years old – and you’re still playing at a DDK level. Has something gone wrong here?
If you’re having fun then there’s no problem. It’s good not to fixate on rank too much 
Reading books, solving problems, playing and reviewing games: these are all great way to spend your time. But I can’t help wondering if there’s potential to have even more fun if you can change some patterns. (I noticed your comment earlier: “Like a lot of people, I am capable of turning a fun leisure time activity into a stress inducing list of chores”. I can really empathise with that!)
What I see in the list of resources here is a total focus on finding the best local move: tsumego, joseki, shape… No whole-board thinking. And flicking through some of your recent games, it looks as though you know more joseki than average for your rank, you’re not making DDK-type reading errors, lots of good things happening. But it’s no good being able to handle yourself in a fight if you’re playing on the wrong side of the board, fighting over things that don’t matter. You need more sense of where the big or urgent points should be, when to attack your opponent’s weak group, when to defend your own weak points, when to invade or reduce a moyo, whether you should reply to your opponent’s last move or play elsewhere…
For me, the book that unlocked these ideas was Attack and Defense. I also got a lot out of Breakthrough to Shodan (which contains some details that are above your level, and indeed above my level at the time I read it, but describes an attitude towards the game that I think will help you). Other people have praised Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go and Invincible along similar lines. Really, I think you’ve spent enough time drilling basic techniques, and anything that represents a change of perspective will make a big difference to how you play.
I’m not sure if that helps. If you didn’t want a random stranger invading your thread, then just tell me to go away, and I won’t bother you again Either way, it’s great that you’ve kept up your go playing over all these years, and I hope you’re getting much joy out of it.
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Well, I figure I’ve been stuck for some reason, possibly a fundamental reason related to my intelligence. 
that’s an intriguing piece of advice. Thanks for weighing in. I’ll check out the books
i’ve also taken some long breaks, but I don’t really think that’s the issue.
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No. Consider it like a step. Strong between the weak, weak between the strong.
Great advices by @xela to break it.
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I definitely did not mean it that way!
Let us know how you get on
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I know.
January 2024
It was a pretty good month in Go for me. I’m flailing around a bit, trying to find my program for improving that isn’t unrealistically time consuming.
I went through the Level Up 3 book. Most of it was super easy, but I ran up against my very poor visualization skills, as usual.
Didn’t quite attempt all of the goproblems 24Kyu puzzles yet. I think I need to focus on puzzles with a specific theme now. Maybe just continuing the Level Up series will be plenty for puzzles.
Game reviews with AI. I still haven’t converged on a good way to actually learn from these. Multiple problems. First, it’s a waste of time for me to focus on stuff that’s over my head. Second, I need to revisit things that aren’t over my head multiple times. I’ve got an idea about this. More on it later if it works out.
I didn’t play enough live games. I made adjustments so that I’m not playing so many correspondence games.
And finally that Tsumego book, chapter 5. It’s so over my head, yet I’ve committed to finishing the book club experiment with it. But I finished the chapter, picked out a couple of heuristics that I can use, and I’m gonna make the book club post.
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Hi, thanks for the update! I was wondering how you were getting on.
By “reviews with AI”, do you mean the auto-generated ones on this site, or are you downloading software such as Lizzie or Katrain and reviewing interactively?
Have you tried doing self-reviews where you add comments to say what you were thinking and where you have questions, and then get a stronger player to review?
i meant autogenerated. i’m thinking that the key is to identify the points that are at my level and I’m ready to understand, and then I need away to revisit them enough to make them stick
Two thoughts on the AI reviews:
- I think working interactively makes it a lot easier to retain info, rather than scrolling through a pre-made list of suggestions. Partly because you’re learning actively rather than passively. Partly because you can ask the machine “Why?” (not in words, but by considering “I thought if I played this way then such and such would happen” … put the stones on the board, let the AI evaluate the variation and show you an alternative).
- Regardless of how you review, don’t get too hung up on understanding every point. Just being exposed to the shapes and flow of a stronger player (whether it’s an AI review or looking through a pro game) will have a subconscious influence on how you play.
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Feb 2024
Reviews
opportunity missed
two judgement calls
Got a super helpful review from xela!
failed life and death problem
Experimental game focus: 2 point jumps
Reading: next chapter in Tesuji
Problems: Level Up 4