Wednesday, March 22, 2023
My Week of Go Activities
Monday, March 13, 2023
My Week of Go Activities: Half Way Done With the Western Server Challenge
At the time of the writing of this post I have completed 50 games in the Western Server Challenge with a win rate of 48%. I've managed to get halfway done with the challenge before the month was half over. This means that I will be able to increase my time settings toward the end of the month and still complete the challenge.
You can see the results of the ongoing Western Server Challenge here.
My week looked like this:
I spent nearly 27 hours on Go Activities with Live Play coming in at the top activity again this week.
I have continued with Bugkitten's Tsumego Club and spent over three hours doing problems on the Tsumego Hero web site.
Saturday, March 04, 2023
My Week of Go Activities: Getting a Slow Start on WSC
There are three people who have already met the challenge of playing 100 live rated games in the Western Server Challenge. I am not among them. I wanted to start out strong and managed to get in six games in the first two days, which is not bad, but I didn't get in a single game yesterday, so I have ground to make up.
It is not too late to join the Western Server Challenge.
Here are my games this week. I played 17 games. Seven of them turned out to be practice for the WSC because I jumped the gun the day before play was to begin.
I put in nearly 29 hours in on Go Activity last week. Nearly 29 hours being spent seems to be the new normal. I've put in as many as 45 hours and I have dipped below 15 hours as well.
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
My Week of Go Activities: Finished NAOL Strong
The big news last week is that I managed to finish the NAOL with a 3:2 record. Up until last week I had only been able to win against 10k players. I am entered as 10k myself because that is my AGA rating. I managed to defeat an 8k opponent in my final game, and rather decisively at that, with a win of 14.5
I look forward to the next season of the North America Online League. I'm not sure yet when that will begin, but I definitely will be participating again. If you are interested in getting notified about the beginning of the next season send an email to naol@usgo.org They had a waiting list for the beta season, and proceeded with 96 players only. They wanted to learn how to make NAOL better, and they got a lot of good feedback. I'm sure the next season will be even better than the beta, which was great.
I had a Teaching Game with Clossius rather than a lesson this past Friday, which is actually a part of my next week, but I will mention in this blog post. The teaching game was really fun. It was a prize for having come in at first place in a previous month of the Clossi League. Shawn told me that I played really well in the game. This is what the board looked like at the end.
I lost by 25.5 which I thought was pretty good against an AGA 3 dan in an even game. He told me that he was not being particularly easy on me. Of course he wasn't playing all out either.
Here is what my week looked like.
Live Play came in as the top activity this week which doesn't happen all that often. I played eleven games, two of which happened to be Teaching Games with Clossius. We practiced my new opening which involves a large knight's enclosure to a 3-4 facing a 3-4. I'm not sure if that opening has a name, but it is the one that Ben Mantle has been playing recently, and the one which he suggested I try to get myself out of my comfort zone.
Saturday, February 18, 2023
My Week of Go Activities
Sunday, February 12, 2023
My Week of Go Activities: Lots of Tsumego
I took a break from playing games this week and devoted myself to Tsumego putting in over seven hours divided nearly evenly between Tsumego Hero and 101 Weiqi.
These two categories came in at the top of time spent this week.
The week was light on Go Activity with only a bit over 23 hours being spent. I was taking a break from playing because I did not have a Lesson with Clossius on Friday and I think a break is good from time to time.
I played only two games. They were my required AYD and NAOL games.
Sunday, February 05, 2023
My Week of Go Activities: Bugkitten's Tsumego Club
All you'll need to do to be fully caught up is the whole of Easy Life on Tsumego Hero and the first half (first 100) of Easy Kill.
You can get to BugKitten's Tsumego Club here.
The BenKyo Baduk HQ Discord Server is free to join. If you like the Tsumego Club and want to consider the BenKyo League you can join that for $25.00 a month. Check out Ben's promotional web site to see what membership includes.
Now for the usual weekly info:
I spent only a little over 15 hours on Go Activities this week.
Over four of those hours were spent on Live Play.