5,000 Plus Games and STILL Not a Dan Player

I think it is fairly commonly said that you should play 1,000 games to achieve dan level status. 

I realize that playing 1,000 games is a suggestion rather than a guarantee. It may have rung true in a time when there was no internet, and every game was across the board and precious. Those games were probably recorded on kifu and poured over afterward.  I doubt that the proverb holds true today except perhaps for those devoting a great deal of time to study and review.

On occasion people have asked me how many games I have played and I have usually estimated 3,000.  

I thought it was about time that I made an effort to come up with something more accurate. I started with looking at the games I have played on KGS over the years using my two most active accounts, goddess and buzzsaw.

After renaming myself from goddess to buzzsaw I pretty much stopped playing with the goddess account which only has 656 games.  

Let's take a closer look at the buzzsaw account on KGS where the bulk of my games have been played.

The buzzsaw account was created in 2005 during the height of the Wings Go Club popularity on KGS.

The blue cells represent the period of time when I studying with Yilun Yang for the second time. I started lessons with Yang again in May of 2022, and am still taking lessons with him.

In 2015, when I stopped lessons with Yang,  I virtually stopped playing go.  These were my quilting years. There was a period of about three years when the only games I played were at the U.S. Go Congress, and I didn't attend every year.

The orange cells represent the time when I was involved in the American Yunguseng Dojang. I am currently on a Spectator Membership for AYD, but intend to return to league play at some time in the future.

So from where have I documented the remaining games that make up the 5,000 plus games I have played?

When I counted up my games on KGS small board games were deliberately not counted because I only wanted to count 19x19 games.  The rough estimate of games on OGS comes from deleting 100 games to account for the occasional small board game I have played which is why I say it is an estimate that I have 1300 games on OGS. The tournaments game count is directly from the AGA Ratings Database. The Fox games are all 19x19.

What isn't included are all across the board games other than tournament games.  These are club games, and workshop games, of which there are many. It also does not include games played on IGS, NNGS, the ancient Yahoo Go Server, and my less active KGS accounts.  These games probably account for an additional 1,000 games.

Though I played my first game of go in 1970 the games I am counting start from 1997.  There was not much to count in the first 27 years when I unsuccessfully tried to force family and friends to learn how to play the game.

Having counted over 5,000 games I am satisfied that I have played quite a few games, and will probably stop counting now. Why did I count them up?  I was simply curious.

I've pretty much given up on the idea of ever achieving dan status, so I'm not complaining, but observing.

Now for my usual Go Content:

It was a very active week for Go Activities with nearly 27 hours spent.

Eleven games were played.  Four of them were Guided Go games played with the help of Clossius during my two hour go lesson.  Most of the remaining games were BenKyo League games.  There was one NAOL game played.

Renewing Membership in The Internet Go School

A couple of days ago I needed to resubscribe to Guo Juan's Internet Go School.  I did so without hesitation. It was 149 Euros to renew my membership for another year.  I try to start every day with Spaced Repetition Problems from the Internet Go School.

Some days I get distracted and end up using a vacation day because I forget to do my problems before midnight.  I am trying very hard to remember to do my problems every day.

I currently have 14 days in a row without missing a single day.

For the past four days I have been adding more problems by reactivating some of the problem sets I had deactivated previously.  When I do that I rewatch the lectures related to the material.  

Today I added the three problem sets related to lesson 9 of the Basics: Step-by-step from the Basic course.

I'd like to work up to 100 problems on most days.

I am currently number 14 on the weekly leader board.

Now for my usual Go Activities Content:

It was a fairly average week for Go Activity with more than 18 hours spent.

I played six games, all of them being BenKyo League games.

My Week of Go Activities

Nearly 22 hours were spent on Go Activity last week.

Ten games were played.  Four of them were Guided Go with Clossius on Fox.

Guided Go on Fox

 

Last week I devoted my lessons with BenKyo Baduk and with Clossius to a process called Guided Go.  The student plays games and talks about their thinking which is guided by the teacher.  Very seldom is an actual move suggested.  In the image above you can see the six games that I played in those two lessons.

The first two games were played on Fox with the guidance of BenKyo Baduk on Thursday during our 90 minute lesson.

The remaining four games were played on Fox with the guidance of Clossius the next day, on Friday, during my two hour lesson.  

I was using my sandbagging account, but it isn't really all that much of a sandbagging account anymore.  I started the account at 16 kyu and managed to double rank it up three times on the way to 9 kyu where the account currently sits.

Since creating the account I have had 54 wins and 13 losses.  All but a handful of the games were played on my own.  I actually have a legit Fox account which is rated at 6k and which is three wins away from ranking up to 5k.

Now for my usual Go Activities content:

It was an average week for Go Activity with nearly 22 hours spent.

I played 14 game, most of which were BenKyo League games.

A Look Back at the Last Four Years of Go Activities

 

The image above represents the proportion of time I spent on various activities in the more than four years that I have been recording the time I spend studying go.  I use an IOS app called Now Then.

Yesterday I decided to take a look at my top ten activities starting from the lime green section at noon and going clockwise around the beach ball.

I was pleased to see that Live Play was my number one activity.

Since I have joined BenKyo League I really enjoy watching other league members play so it is no surprise at all that Watching Others Play came in second.

In third place we have Spaced Repetition Problems which are the problems I do for the Internet Go School.

In fourth place we have BenKyo Live Stream.  I'm not surprised because Ben has had some pretty long special event streams in the past couple years.

In Fifth place we have Clossius Live Stream. 

A big surprise was YD Game Review at 6th place.  When I think about it though I was devoting about an hour and a half weekly to attending YD Game Reviews nine months out of the year, so it should not have been such a surprise to find it in 6th place.

In seventh place is Tsumego 101 Weiqi.  I've slacked off a bit with the tsumego practice and I need to pick it up again.

Clossius My Lessons comes in at eighth place.

Reviewing My Games comes in at ninth place. This was another big surprise.  I don't feel as if I spend enough time reviewing my games, so I was surprised that it even made the top ten.

Last, in tenth place among the top ten comes BenKyo Private Lessons.  There is a reason for that.  I started lessons with Clossius a full year before I started lessons with Ben.

Perhaps a year from now I will take a look at the top ten for just a year and see if they have changed.

Now for my usual Go Activities Content, a look at the last week:

It was a very busy week for Go Activity with over 26 hours spent.

I played a total of 16 games, two of which were simul games with In-seong Hwang.

Editing My Yang Lessons

I've been spending a considerable amount of time editing my Yang lessons to make them easier to review later.  I do my editing in CGoban.  When I edit my games I add the letter A whenever a comment is made about the next move.  I also add comments of my own which I set off from the lesson comments using double lines. Part of editing involves shifting comments to their proper location.  Sometimes a comment needs to be moved to make sense.

Once I have edited my lessons, I like to view them in Smart Go Kifu or SmartGo One.  The big advantage of viewing my lessons in SmartGo is that any coordinates typed into the game file are translated into letters for me.  Compare the image below from Smart Go Kifu  to the CGoban image above. Notice the addition of letters in place of coordinates. It makes reviewing so much easier.

See also the image below from SmartGo One on the iPad. I like to use the iPad in portrait mode because it allows me to show more depth for the game tree.

It is even possible to make a book out of my go lessons with Yang.

Ignore the error message. It has something to do with the date being read by the program.  It is nothing to worry about.

Later in the lesson...

The diagrams can be clicked through just like any other book created for GoBooks.

I'll be continuing to edit my lessons with Yilun Yang to get the most out of them.

Now for my usual Go Activities Content:

It was an average week for Go Activity with over 19 hours spent.  I played very few games this week.  All of them were league games.

BKL Members Get to Try Their Luck in the LUC Tournament in Apr

April brings back the Level-Up Challenge (LUC) to BenKyo League.

LUC is an occasion extra tournament in BenKyo League that allows members to play additional rated games with the members of their Main League group.  It is an opportunity for quicker promotion through the BKL ranks.

Join us in the BenKyo league to participate in our Main League Tournament, Title Tournament, and this month also the Level-Up Challenge Tournament.

If you join through reading this blog post, please tell Ben that buzzsaw sent you.

Now for my usual Go Activities content:

It was a fairly active week with over 22 hours spent on Go Activity.

Sixteen games were played.  All of them were league games.  Most of them were BenKyo League Title Tournament games.