Friday, November 21, 2008

Got Discouraged Yesterday

Yesterday I had a very discouraging go day.  I know I should play more, so I decided to play some games yesterday in the morning before my lesson with Yilun Yang to warm up.    I played three games in a row early in the morning.  They were auto match games set at the slowest possible setting, which is 25 minutes of basic time.  I played them rather quickly though, not using the time I had available to myself.  It wasn't a blitz pace by any means, just a fairly normal online playing pace.   I lost all three games, which really didn't bother me  all that much.  I was fine with the results, and glad that I had gotten some games in.

What bothered me was the effect that these games had on my lesson with Yang a half hour later.   After the first lesson game was over Yang commented immediately that I had played too quickly.  He hadn't told me that in a long time.  I knew it was true.  I had been sucked into a quick pace with those games earlier, and even though I had taken a half hour to distance myself from them, I continued to play at way too quickly a pace to think through my moves properly for my lesson.  This was very disturbing to me.

My lessons are at 11:00 am.  I know one thing for sure.  I won't be playing any games the morning of my lesson again.  I'll do tsumego instead, and play game after.


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