I've been using the 101 Weiqi site for quite a while now. It is possible to use the site without creating an account, but I did create an account when I first started to use the site. You know you are on an Asian site when you manage to get your very common Western first name as a user name.
I chose 10k as my starting rank, but never understood how to increase my rank on the site, so there I sat at 10k for a long time. Yesterday I attended the Massachusetts Go Association DDK Class. The topic was capturing races and a number of problems from the 101 Weiqi site were used to illustrate the principles of capturing.
During class one of the other students explained that she does homework from the site at her level. She pointed me to a Discord server with a thread that explained how to create the homework. That was yesterday. This morning I got my first pat on the back from 101 Weiqi in the form of a certificate of achievement for 9k performance. I think I will increase the number of problems I have in that homework set and make it a part of my regular daily tsumego practice.
It was a fairly normal week of Go Activity with a bit over 30 hours of activity.
With the Western Server Challenge over many fewer games were played this week. There were only 13 games played. I won just shy of 50% of my games, yet it felt as if I had a terrible week. I had a streak of angry play on Tuesday when I played seven games. I didn't actually want to play, but I realized I was avoiding it, and that I needed games for my lesson with Clossius occurring one day early this week.
I started by throwing a won game. Then I threw another won game. Then I just went on to play very angrily. I'm not proud of it. I was playing fast and furious... literally FAST and furious.
I finished off the day with a win in the Massachusetts Go League which was assigned to Clossius for review the next day.
The next day, Wednesday, happened to be Clossi Class. It was a small class and Clossius asked if anyone was having any challenges. I mentioned my difficulty in slowing down my play. Clossius decided to play a game with me for class where he took his time and talked about what he was thinking to model the behavior of taking one's time and utilizing that time. The time settings were 5 minutes of basic time with 3 periods of 30 seconds of overtime. Below you can see that the game took over 49 minutes to play and that Clossius used twice as much time per move more than I did, but that was by design. I could have used more time, but I didn't want to waste class time twiddling my thumbs when we could be listening to Clossius explain his thinking. I suppose I could have explained my own. That might have actually been funny.
Having had my attention drawn to the proper way to think, and to slow down, I decided to play a slow game on Thursday morning. I wanted to have something worth talking about with Clossius during my lesson that day. In the lesson we covered that slow game. Then I asked Clossius to review the game we played in Clossi Class the day before telling me what I should have been thinking while I was playing, so the lesson ended up being an extension of the class from the day before. It was a good lesson.
Thursday was a big day for lessons. Later in the day I had a private 90 minute lesson with BenKyo Baduk. Ben and I have decided that our focus is now going to be on developing my ability to read. Ben glanced at a few of my games from April. He chose an AYD game with a Life and Death problem to solve. We spent a lot of time talking through that problem. I found it useful and encouraging.
I kicked off my new week with a Canadian League game on KGS which I won by 24.5 points. BenKyo Baduk was in attendance throughout the game, which was an honor. Afterwards he told me that it was the best game I had ever played. Three of my BenKyo Baduk friends were in attendance for the game. Here is some of the chat.
They believe in me. Now I just need to believe in myself.
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