My Three Legged Study Stool

Financial advisors talk about the three legs of your retirement plan. They are Pension, Social Security, and Savings. 

Well, I date myself. They used to talk that way when people actually earned pensions. Being a retired teacher I’m lucky enough to have a pension, so my retirement plan does have three legs. 

The point is that three legs provide stability to a stool, so these three legs provide stability to your retirement plan. 

Since I have added private lessons to my Go Study Plan I have started to think of my plan as a stool with three legs.

What are these three legs? I’ll start with the order in which they were added.

1. Lectures and Spaced Repetition Problems at the Guo Juan Internet Go School.

I’ve been a member of the Internet Go School since its inception. During some years when I was not playing go I took time off from the Internet Go School, but that never lasted for long. I currently have over 1,000 consecutive days of study on the site. I have no plans to stop studying there as the site just gets better and better as more lectures and problem sets are added. The site was recently rebuilt from the ground up and looks fantastic. If you have not taken advantage of the free trial you should. Tell them buzzsaw sent you.

 

2. League Play at the American Yunguseng Dojang.

I've been studying with In-Seong Hwang now at the American Yunguseng Dojang since September of 2019. I joined following the U.S. Go Congress in Madison. Having gone for a year without playing a game between my last two congresses, I decided to join AYD purely to insure myself 45 serious games with reviews before my next Congress. 

That was the plan, but I found so much more in AYD. I found lectures that are mostly above my head, but are interesting nonetheless. They will be there for me to dive into seriously when I am stronger. I also found a sense of community, especially with players near my strength who have banded together to study and provide moral support to each other. We are the little fish in the very big pond of AYD. 

The European and American Yunguseng Dojang leagues are designed for students 12k and above. I was 9k when I signed up. Studying in AYD was a great start in getting serious about go again, but something was missing.

 

3. Private Lessons with Shawn Ray AKA Clossius. 

Having renewed my interest in playing go through AYD, I decided to get some personal attention to improve my love of the game. I'm no stranger to private lessons having taken more than 300 of them with Yilun Yang quite a few years ago. I came across Shawn Ray's Twitch Stream through a link on OGS near the end of 2020. 

A few of his students allow their lessons to be live streamed. It wasn't long after starting to watch those lessons that I decided I had to get some of that good lesson action for myself. I've taken weekly one hour lessons now with Clossius since the beginning of the year. He has reinforced my attention to the basics through his Clossi Approach. Check out his web site, and his Twitch stream to learn more. 

What I like about lessons with Clossius is that he applies just enough pressure to get me to go outside of my comfort zone. For instance, I'm playing 20 games a week now. I never would have chosen to do that on my own. I'm doing more go problems than I ever did before, and I am enjoying it, but I needed the push. 

Shawn has more faith in my ability than I have in myself, and as a result I am cautiously optimistic about improving. He isn't just my teacher. He is my coach. Even if I add in occasional lesson sets with professionals, which I hope to do, it is likely that I will continue to study with Clossius. I need a coach. I've thought about doing a ten lesson series again with Yilun Yang or perhaps Guo Juan. I've heard good things about other teachers as well, and I might try a few of them.

The pandemic has eliminated across the board play for me. The 2020 Congress was cancelled, and the 2021 Congress has been cancelled as well. I participated in the eCongress last year, and am doing so again this year. I am promoting to 8 kyu as a result of having gone 5:0 at my most recent online tournament.

I am hoping that we are going to finally get a Go Congress in 2022, and so far it looks as if that is going to happen. As regional tournaments start up I will consider attending them even though for the past ten years my only tournament experiences have been at the U.S. Go Congress.  I hope to change that moving forward.

I think I have come up with a good study plan with my three legged stool, and when we finally get to play again in real life I will get to see if my plan has paid off. I think my team will get me as far as I am capable of going.

My Team

Guo Juan - Professional

In-Seong Hwang - Amateur High Dan

Shawn Ray - AGA Mid Dan