Friday Go Forward: Week 61

Overview

This week has been focused on one thing: playing more games. As you’ll notice in my games section, I played a whopping 18 live games this week! And though I have been on an epic losing streak (with an occasional win to here and there), I can definitely feel the inexperience of being on the battlefield affect my play. Hopefully in time I will be losing due to actual mistakes instead of just playing moves on the board “just because.”

Another milestone for this week is the official start of the Yunguseng Dojang! The first official lecture was on Monday (May 5th) and it was on local techniques. Though I had heard of the techniques before (i.e., across attachment, break the dog’s face, and indirect defense), it was really great to have Inseong break down the different techniques while also showing where they appear within real games.

I also played my first round as well last night. I ended up losing by time (because I was playing the game on a real board and lost track of time), but I felt that it was a game I wasn’t ashamed of. I tried a number of new things and tried to avoid any egregious errors. Of course, in the review, I got torn apart so it didn’t feel so great; but I think those are the kinds of lessons that tend to burn in your memory. Ah well. Next game I’ll do better!

Training Regimen

• Spend about 50% of your time playing games - Though I haven’t measured this out with accuracy, I am simply trying to make sure that I play as much as I can. Believe it or not, I’ve started playing 10 minute games in order to ease up time pressure on myself. I used to hate this time setting, but I’m starting to gain a new appreciation for it. More on this when I’ve solidified my position on it.
• Spend 10 minutes/day perusing a new book of go - I happen to have a lot of books that I own but haven’t read, so I created this new task in order to allow me to actually go through all the books that I own. I know it’s not quite the same as studying, but it’s fun for me and plus it’ll allow me to put more book reviews up in the future.
• Spend 20 minutes/day focusing on one topic of go - I’ve noticed that my attention span for a particular subject is super volatile these days. One day I’m interested in positional judgment, and the next day I’m curious about joseki. So instead of binding myself down to the same book (which gets boring for me), I devised this task in order to allow for topic changes while still giving myself adequate time to really study and absorb one topic per day. Lectures also can be used in place of books as well.

Games*

• KGS - 6 games
• Tygem - 20+ games
• IGS - 5+ game
• DGS - 5 ongoing games
• OGS - 3 ongoing games
  *I’m probably going to need a new structure for doing this. I’m starting to play a lot more now and it’s getting hard to track the exact number of games I’ve been playing. Do you think it’s useful that I keep specific metrics? Or is there something better I can do. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Books

• Dictionary of Basic Joseki, Volume 1
• The Theory and Practice of Tsumego
• Positional Judgment

Videos

• YSD - AYD S9 1st lecture Knight move across attachment / Break the dog’s face / Indirect defense
• YSD - Season 1 Fri 1st July 20:00 Opening Theory, ABC Examples (In Progress)
• YSD - Season 6 1st lecture Theme lecture ‘1-2-3 reading’ (In Progress)