My Week of Go Activities: Reviewing Yang Lessons

 

It was a fairly normal week of Go Activities in terms of the number of hours spent at well over 25 hours. What was unusual about this week was that the top activity was Yang Lesson Review.

I spent over seven hours reviewing some of my lessons with Yilun Yang 7p.  When I say reviewing I also mean editing the lesson files. 

I take 90 minute lessons alternate weeks on KGS with Mr. Yang. I've been a student of Mr. Yang off and on since 1998 when I was 19 kyu AGA. The lessons are purely text lessons. There is no audio during the lessons nor is there a video file for review. Everything is in the sgf file. Mr. Yang continues to conduct his lessons in this manner and he is really good at it. He is a quick typist. All of the variations and comments are in the sgf file. The files can be reviewed exactly as they are, but I like to edit the files to move the occasional misplaced comment back into place, to mark the next move as A when it is convenient to refer to it one move ahead, and to add comments of my own later about my understanding. Editing my lessons makes it easier to review them again at a later date, and it also makes it easier for someone else to understand them if I choose to share them.

One of the things I decided to do with my Yang Lessons is to make them into books to read with SmartGo One. Here is a portion of the book I created with one of my lessons.

I had started lessons with Yang again after a seven year break about a year and a half ago. I have 35 lessons accumulated so far. I was very lazy about editing them and decided to get to work on them this week.

I have a numbering system for my lessons. The first number in the file name is the number in the current series of lessons. The second number is the number of the lesson in the total of all of the lessons I have taken since I first started with Mr. Yang in 1998.

I spent very little time on playing games this week and have only three games to show for it.

TWO Weeks of Go Activity - And a New Go Jacket

I skipped posting my Go Activity last week. I will catch up with data from the two most recent weeks, but first I would like to show off a jacket I recently ordered from Baduk Club.

When I am at the Go Congress I like to have a light jacket or sweater to wear in the playing area because it tends to get cold from the air conditioning. I had been admiring this jacket on the Baduk Club web site for a while and decided to get one to bring to Portland next year where the Go Congress is going to be held.

I'm hoping it will look as good on me as it does on the model.

Now on to my usual content.

Two weeks ago I put in nearly 25 hours on Go Activity with Live Play coming in as the top activity.

Last week I put in nearly 28 hours on Go Activity with BenKyo's Live Stream just barely topping out Live Play.

The big news for the week is that I am just about to double rank up with my sandbagging Fox account.

I have just one more game to win and I will be 11k. I'm actually nervous about playing that game.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I put in nearly 25 hours on Go Activities this week.

I played very few games with only four games being played. All of them were league games.

My Week of Go Activities

It was a week of moderate Go Activity with nearly 21 hours. Live Play took top place at over 24% of time spent.

I didn't play a lot of games but the games were close and all but one was a win. That loss was only by 0.5 and was very painful as it was an American Yunguseng Dojang game that prevented me from moving up to C1 from C2. The game was with a good friend of mine, Gurujeet, who is the President of The American Go Association.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I put in only about 22 hours on Go Activities for the week.

It was a light week for go activities with only five games played two of which were teaching games with Ben Mantle during my lesson.

My Week of Go Activities: Doing Well in Two of My Leagues

Recently two of my five leagues started up again and I am doing well in both of them. They are the American Yunguseng Dojang League and the Go Magic League. I have two wins and zero losses in both of those leagues so far.

I'm still waiting for NAOL games to begin again. They will start soon. It is the 5th season on NAOL and I have played in all of them so far.

It was a busy week with over 32 hours of Go Activity.

I always like it when Live Play comes in as the number one activity. It did so this week with over six hours devoted to Live Play.

Seven of my ten games played were League Games. Of the remaining three games two were Fox games and one was a teaching game with Ben Mantle.

Clossius has suggested to me that I play 5 3x30 games on Fox to get more game experience. I had been playing 20 3x60. I played both of my Fox games at the faster speed, but did not enjoy it as much and played fewer Fox games as a result. I still haven't decided if I will stick with the faster time limits or not. I am close to ranking up on my sandbagging account and don't want to risk missing that chance, though I should not care about the rank on the sandbagging account and I probably ought to start playing a few games with my legitimately rated 6k Fox account.

I had an interesting 0.5 win in my most recent Go Magic league game.

Go Magic R2 Season 2

My opponent and I had a nice long conversation after the game. I pitched Benkyo League to him. I also gave him the link to the Clossius Twitch Stream and invited him to come and watch my lesson the next day. I fully intended to review our game with Clossius during that lesson. Unfortunately my lesson needed to be cancelled so the game was never reviewed. I let my opponent know so he would not show up for the review that would not happen. 

My next lesson with Clossius will be two weeks from now, so I might have Yilun Yang review this game in my next lesson on Monday. I'd be able to share the text file with my opponent and it might be really cool to be able to share my pro review with him. Of course it will be reviewed from my side, but I am sure it would still be interesting.  I'll get it reviewed somehow. I am just not sure how yet.

In my most recent AYD Game I won by 42.5 which I thought was really great. I was a little disappointed that the big takeaway from the review was that I played too fast. It is true, of course. So in my AYD Game today I am going to make it a point to use my time so I won't get that comment again. I play quickly anyway and I got a bit caught up in the pace of my opponent which was bad.

Since I won't be taking a lesson with Clossius for another two weeks I am likely to focus on League Games for the next two weeks and use the remainder of my time to review some of my most recent lessons with Ben and do some editing of my lesson files with Yilun Yang. I will have plenty of games for Clossius for our next lesson without playing more on Fox.

My Week of Go Activities: Taking it Easy

 

I put in 29 hours on Go Activities last week, but I took a break from playing.

Here is my one game for the week. It is a Yunguseng Dojang game that I won.

I didn't have a lesson with Clossius on Friday so I decided to take it easy.

Two of my Leagues are starting up again. The one game I played this week was from one of those leagues.

Things will be busier next week.

My Week of Go Activities: Antique Go Stone Purchase

 

I took delivery yesterday of a fantastic set of antique go stones from Baduk Club. They are delightful wafer shaped disks of slate and shell.

The set came with petite wooden bowls large enough to hold the stones.

I actually prefer thinner stones over thicker ones, and these will be real conversation starters if I ever make it to the Princeton Go Club again, which I definitely hope to do.

I feel like I now own a piece of go history.

Now for my usual weekly report on my Go Activity:

I engaged in nearly 23 hours of go activity last week the largest portion of which was spent watching others play.

I played eight games last week, five of which were played on Fox. Of those five games, I only played one as black. Fox players love to play black.

I'm taking a break from playing in the current week, but I will be back strong to get more games for Clossius to review in my lesson next week. This week I don't have my usual lesson on Friday. I'm moving to a schedule of alternate week lessons now that I have chipped away fairly well at my backlog of lessons.

My Week of Go Activities: I Like to Watch

 

Recently I have started to spend a great deal of time watching a couple of my friends play on Fox. I have a good friend who recently started to play on Fox and since he created his account on August 1st he has played 222 games. That is a lot of games in 30 days. I really admire how much he plays and he has ranked up a few times since he started and is now 10k. I can't remember where he started. I think it may have been 15k.

I, on the other hand, started at 18k where I met up with some sandbaggers. I have only gotten up to 13k in a longer period of time, but I have played many fewer games. I double ranked up once and have only single ranked up since 16k. I missed my chance to double rank up from 14k to 12k. It was so close.

I have some serious catching up to do with my friend.

Now for my usual weekly content.

I spent over 24 hours on Go Activity last week. Five and a half of those hours were spent watching others play. I don't even log all of the time I spend watching others play so that is probably an under estimation.

I took a bit of a break from my own play last week. I was able to do this because I had not had a lesson with Clossius for two weeks, and knew that I had a great many games for him to review during our two hour lesson.

I basically took a week off with the three games I played being played on the last day of my week which runs from Friday through Thursday because my lessons with Clossius are on Fridays.

The games in the "Reviewed" Column with blue cells were reviewed during my lesson on Friday. Clossius has gotten very efficient at reviewing games because of the 20 minute time restriction on reviews for NAOL. My lessons are two hours long and he managed to review six games during my most recent lesson. I find that impressive.

I have another lesson with Clossius on the 1st of September so I am going to have to make an effort to get in at least six games worthy of review. I've got three already, so this should not be a problem.

My Week of Go Activities: Back to AGA 9k

 

First of all I managed to win enough games to rank up from 14k to 13k with my sandbagging account on Fox. I only have to win three more games and I will be able to double rank up to 12k which would be great. I only double ranked up once and that was from 18k to 16k so this might be my last chance to double rank up before I reach the level of my legit Fox account which is 6k.

In other news, the U.S. Open games from the U.S. Go Congress have been rated and I managed to rank up to 9k again this year. I've been riding the rail between DDK and SDK for four congresses now. Previous to that I was very solid 9k and was even 8k for a while in 2012.

My goal for next year is to get to 8k based on my Congress results.

I also have a goal of getting my NAOL rank back in sync with the AGA rating. Currently my NAOL rank is 13k which is actually kind of laughable.

Now on to my usual Go Activities report.

I spent nearly 32 hours on Go Activities this week. Tsumego Dragon came in first with over six hours of activity.

I've been working hard to try to catch up to Clossius on the Leaderboard of Tsumego Dragon and I have earned four baby dragon for completing daily tsumego. It is still in alpha and the early alpha subscription price is still available. The little gold dragon next to my name designates me as a subscriber.

I spent a good deal of time this week watching others play. In particular I was watching a couple of friends of mine play with their Fox sandbagging accounts.

I played seven games this week and aside from one loss and a draw I won the majority of the games. All but one of them was played on Fox. I have started to use 20 minutes of basic time with 3 periods of 60 seconds.

That's it for this week.