So I have decided to start a Go study journal. I want to do this for a number of reasons:
• To provide some structure to my study. In the last few months, I have put a fair bit of time into go and I think it would be cool to track my improvement over time. I am currently somewhere between 12Kyu and 14Kyu and seem to have been stuck here for ages. My short term goal is to break through to SDK before mid-January.
• To force myself to review ALL of my (online) games. I feel like having somewhere specific to write about this will help me to do this.
• To note new things that I learned when playing games or watching videos or reading books etc.
I won’t hold myself to any strict posting schedule but I aim to post maybe once or twice a week.
Seen as this is my first post I will post some other relevant info:
I have been playing Go for about 5 months and I am currently 13Kyu. In that time, I have played 266 games and won 105 of them.
What I have read to Date:
In the beginning, Lessons in the fundamentals of go (I will have to re-read this at some stage) and the first book in the graded Go problems for beginners. I am currently working my way through 38 basic Joseki and volume 2 of the graded Go problems for beginner’s series.
Reading List:
I currently have (but not read) Opening Theory Made Easy, Attack and Defence and Tesuji from the Elementary Go Series. I am to read (study) these in this order (after 38 basic Joseki). In parallel, I will be working through the graded Go problems for beginner’s series.
I really don’t expect anyone to read this but maybe someone will get something out of it… Even if it is just a laugh at all my silly DDK mistakes…
I guess that is about it for now. I will post an entry tomorrow.
Hey, great idea! I’m hovering between 11k and 13k too. And I observe myself when I play and spot out some of the unintentional mistakes I make along the way- and by mistakes, I don’t mean like certain gameplay mistakes but mistakes in general-
I don’t think you have to review ALL of your online games though, but that’s entirely your choice. Why I think so is because I’m sure you have already gotten out of the 16k rank which means you wouldn’t be making mistakes below 16k anymore, hence the unneccessity to review all those really really old games when you just started playing Go only.
I disagree that reaching rank X means you won’t make under-X-rank mistakes anymore. Take for instance this 7p who missed an atari: https://youtu.be/noCZ5gwRBCY?t=59m25s
That said, at 12-14k, probably any game under 20k is worth reviewing. (Within reason. My order of importance: 1) Studying; 2) Reviewing; 3) Playing. If you have so many games that you spend all your time reviewing, just pick a few dozen at random.) More specifically, get a stronger player to review one (or even better, a few) of your recent games, then go back through your old games and see if you can spot the same weak aspects of your play they pointed out. That way you have a better idea of what you need to practice next. Repeat until 7d.
Also…
This is a reasonable pace, and I think getting to 10k by January is a reasonable goal, with consistent effort. Don’t get discouraged if you feel stuck right now. Plateauing for a while is normal.
This was a correspondence game that finished up a few days ago. I was playing white against a 13Kyu opponent. I won by resignation after black was left with a very large eyeless group. It was also one of the first games that I played a 3-3 point opening.
After the first 30 odd move’s I was well behind. I felt that I needed to try something big. So I made 2 possibly unreasonable moves that resulted in black running. This fight lasted the rest of the game. I managed to play a couple of moves denying black group eye space which won me the game.
So what did I learn from this game:
I shouldn’t have let myself get so far behind in the opening. The fact I did meant I had to kill something big to win. While I did find this all or nothing fight fun, I got lucky this time and it was unreasonable to expect to win from behind like this.
Also considering this was one of the first time I played 3-3 point opening I was happy enough with how that went
A clarification: When I said I would review ALL of my games, I meant all games from now on. I really don’t want to sift through a backlog of games to review them. I think it should be ok to just review from now on.
I totally agree with your order of importance being 1) Studying; 2) Reviewing; 3) Playing.
Also, I definitely do miss silly mistakes during games. But seens as that 7p missed an atari, I don’t feel so bad!!
I have played 2 games over the last few days. Normally I would play more over the weekend but found myself spending much longer doing the reviews rather than playing game.
In the first game, I played black against an 12Kyu opponent.
It was an even enough game in which we both built moyos and then struggled to invade. In the review afterwards I found that a lot of my moves were unreasonable but went unpunished in the game. I also should have been quicker at reducing white’s framework.
Also a big thank you to Tarqeq for helping me with this review. Both his comments and a 2nd pair of eyes were invaluable. I don’t think I have ever put as much effort into a review.
The main thing that I got from this game is that I should be quicker to attack eyeless groups.
Also a weird seki came about at the end of the game. At least I think it was a seki but maybe there is another name for this type of situation. It is around move 233 if anyone is interested. Black would capture two white stones and then white would capture 1 stone back. Black would pass and then white would add one more stone leaving the situation where it started. This repeated a couple of times.
Thanks to Issho for helping with the review
I have also spent some time looking at the basic 4-4 point knight approach joseki. It is something I always play but without really thinking about it. I won’t say I know it by any means now but some of its intercies are a little clearer now.
Edit:
One more game tonight: Review 4: https://online-go.com/review/204281
I played white against a 14Kyu player and won. This was a blitz game which I rarely play and found the time pressure to be tough. At around move 140ish I felt I was ahead so I started playing safe moves to stay ahead.
