My Games Spreadsheet

My games spreadsheet is now public. 

Initially I made it as a launchpad for my lessons with Shawn Ray, AKA Clossius. I shared it only with him, and with two friends from the American Yunguseng Dojang who are also Clossius students.

Rather than continuing to keep my spreadsheet to myself, I have recently decided to make it so that anyone with access to the link can view it. 

I'm writing this blog post because I've found the process of documenting my games to be valuable, and I would continue to do so even if I were not taking lessons (which I have no intention of discontinuing). I thought others might benefit from having a spreadsheet as well, so I wanted to share it with my readers.

I've enjoyed keeping the spreadsheet, and adding features to it. The most recent feature added has been links to the YouTube videos of my lessons.  I've also added links to my Go Activities blog post for the associated week. After adding those links I realized that this sheet is going to be a great record of my year of games, activities, and lessons. I would encourage others who are studying seriously to consider a spreadsheet, especially if you play on more than one server, as I do.

Those who have been following my blog may recall that when I started lessons with Clossius I used my blog as a launch pad for game reviews with him. Here is what that looked like:

This worked pretty well for providing game links, but it was lacking in visual detail. After a few weeks Clossius was asking if I could color wins as green and losses as red. At that point I decided to figure out how to set up a spreadsheet because simple information as text with links on a blog post just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

I started out by emulating the games record pages of OGS as much as possible. I came up with a system of coloring my wins and losses. Over time I added things like a column to indicate whether games were free or rated. I added links to reviews conducted during lessons as well as links to AI-Sensei reviews for losses. Here is a screen capture of part of the May tab in my spreadsheet:

Weeks run from Sunday through Saturday. Games are color coded so that wins and losses of 3.5 or fewer points are colored a light gray to indicate a fairly neutral result. Wins between 3.5 and 14.5 are light green. Wins between 15.5 and 29.5 are medium green. Wins of 30.5 and over, including resignations, are dark green. Losses have similar point values with the addition of a shameful, even darker, color of red for any loss in excess of 29.5 because it should have been a resignation. Since creating that new color, and using it for past games to which it should apply, I have not had to use it with any new games because I resigned when appropriate.

Links open games on OGS. Games were either played on OGS or the sgf files were uploaded there from KGS. There is a notes column. If you hover over a note cell with a black triangle in the upper right corner of the cell you will see a note about the game.

Opponents from the Yunguseng Dojang are colored orange. Light orange represents a casual game or a Free League game with a YD friend. Dark orange games are league games. Those rows are shaded gray to indicate that the game is not available for review because it has been reviewed by a YD teacher.

Cells under the Server column that are colored violet indicate games that were reviewed during the lesson. Clicking on the active link in those cells will take you to the game review with the variations. There are no text comments in the reviews because they were conducted by voice over Discord.

You can watch the full lesson by clicking on the active link for the Lesson. That will take you directly to the YouTube link for the lesson video. These links are not publicly available, but the videos can be accessed by anyone who has the link. You can also read the blog post for the week by clicking on that link.

The violet cells next to "Lesson 17" hold links for reviews of teaching games conducted during that lesson.

There is a column to indicate which games are rated, and there are links for AI-Sensei reviews of losses. I may be adding in links for wins later after a lesson has been completed for the week. Leaving off the links for wins makes it easier to click on the losses during the lesson incase Clossius wants to access the AI review.

The spreadsheet is a work in process. I do not have links for all of the lessons yet, but I should be obtaining them within the next few weeks. I also do not have games for weeks previous to the creation of the spreadsheet though I may reconstruct those weeks at some point from the relevant blog posts.

So now that you know how things are set up you can have access to my go life by viewing my spreadsheet and taking a look around.  

Please enjoy. And let me know if you decide to create a spreadsheet of your own.

A funny aside: If you want to see me fumble with technology you can click on the January link and view my first lesson. The first few minutes of the video I have to figure out how to mute Twitch and concentrate on Discord and OGS. Most of my lessons have been live streamed with the exception of a few that were recorded on days when a live stream was not taking place. You'll see comments on the left side of screen from observers in on Twitch.