My Week of Go Activities - More 101 Certificates

 

Last week I bragged about getting a 9k certificate from the 101 Weiqi web site. This week I went on to be granted 8k and 7k certificates. I do not expect this to continue. In fact, I foolishly did a rank challenge last night, the same day I got the 7k certificate, and ranked back down to 8k as a result. 

It's a process.

I am really enjoying doing the homework I created on 101 Weiqi.

I was greeted this morning with three homework assignments.

Nearly 26 hours were spent on Go Activities this week. Approximately a quarter of that time was spend doing problems on the 101 Weiqi web site.

I played twelve games this week, but spent a bit fewer than six hours doing so. I'm obviously still playing too fast.

This topic came up in my lesson with Clossius and he gave me an exercise to help with that. I'm supposed to start my day with a 9x9 game in which I strive to spend 18 seconds or more per move. I've managed to follow that advice so far. I'm working on building the habit, and I hope that it will transfer to my 19x19 games.

I lost most of my games this week, but that is because I created a 1k account on Tygem. I also created a 3d account on Fox. This was done at BenKyo Baduk's suggestion. 

Ben and I are working on improving my reading. We are devoting all of our Private Lesson Time and all of our Twitch Time to reading practice. Last night we spent about 20 minutes talking about this problem.

5k problem - White to kill

Ben and I went over two problems in depth. We actually started with this one.  After we exhausted the possibilities for those problems we spent some time with a couple of ladder problems that Ben constructed for me on a demo board. We will be continuing our work on reading tonight in a Twitch Time Session we have scheduled. I'm outside of my comfort zone with all of this reading practice, but that is apparently what I need.

Ladders are supposed to be easy to read because they are a one way street. This is true, but I find ladders difficult because there are so many stones to "visualize". I use the word visualize loosely here because I don't visualize stones at all. I simply try to remember that they are there, what color they are, and how many liberties they have.

I do like go problems, so even though I am outside of my comfort zone I am doing something that I enjoy in principle.

I must admit to being disappointed to have been kicked back down to 8k last night, but the struggle continues.

I had to laugh when I got this problem on the Internet Go School this morning. I got it right, but that didn't mean I could actually read it.

Baby steps.