Cleaning Up My Study Habits at The Internet Go School

 

I hit a nice round number of days in a row for the Internet Go School last week, and I am building up my Vacation Days as well, yet I need to do more work on my study habits in regard to this web site.

Recently I have been trying to make sure that I do the minimal number of problems to avoid losing vacation days, but I have ended up accruing large numbers of due problems, which I periodically clear by clicking "hard" on all problem to gain a clean slate. It has become obvious to me that this is a waste of my subscription, so I am working on trying to do more problems each day, and set up some better study habits.

I started by doing more than the minimal ten problems.  You'll see that I was averaging about 45 problems a day from 5th through the 12th of the month, but that wasn't enough to avoid the accumulation of a backlog of problems that was continuing to get larger.  I finally bit the bullet on the 13th, and actually completed my entire backlog rather than clicking the problems away.

The last three days on the chart above represent completing all due problems each day, which results in a 50 point bonus. The dark segment on the 9th shows that I spent some time watching a new video. The image below shows the details.

I ended up adding 8 problems to the training system from that lesson.  The yellow segment that day represents the use of the Quick Look feature of the site. That allows one to solve all of the problems from a lesson outside of the Training System.  This is a great way to preview problems before watching a lesson, but it is also a good way to revisit problems from a lesson as a unit, after they have become separated from each other within the Training System.

Not long ago I came upon a problem which, if I had marked easy, I would not see it again for 29 years. I don't expect to live that long, so I marked it as hard, so I will see it again in 14 years if I am lucky enough to still be alive. I'd like to see this bulky five again some day.  Maybe I will revisit it through Quick Look.

I had to laugh about the problem I encountered a while back that wouldn't be seen again for another 81 years.

On the 16th I decided to do some Quick Look review of problems from the Easy Life and Death category of lessons, which can be found under the Basic Course main category.

I started to review some of the earlier problems using Quick Look.  I then discovered that additional shapes had been added since I first worked through this category.  I am going to have to watch those lessons. I worked my way through shapes 1, 2, and 3, and started with shape 4 on the 16th. I see that I had not yet watched the C-1 lecture.

I'm definitely going to have to start marking more of the problems as easy to push them farther ahead in time. This will make room for new problems, and keep the number of due problems at a reasonable level. I would consider that between 40 and 60 problems daily.

Reflections on attending the Princeton Go Club:

I've attended The Princeton Go Club for two weeks in a row now.  It is the first time in many years I have attended a club.  I am really enjoying it.  I have been very socially isolated in recent years. My social life is pretty much entirely online, and my husband and I very seldom have visitors in the house.  We rarely leave the house except for appointments with doctors.  We don't go places anymore. I think going to club is going to be good for my go, but more than that, I think it will be good for my brain, and for my mental health.  They say that social isolation is very bad for your brain.  My general practitioner was very happy when I told her about going to the club.  I play go not only because I love it, but also because I am hoping that it will help prevent dementia, but I never thought about the fact that the social interaction that comes with go might be just as important as the game itself.  During and after club it feels like parts of my brain are lighting up that don't light up from playing online. It is hard to describe, but it feels real.

I wore this shirt to go club this week.

Now for my weekly Go Activities Report:

It was a moderately active week for go activities. I played five important games this week. 

My Return to the Princeton Go Club

 

I returned to the Princeton Go Club on June 10th, playing there for the first time in I don't know how many years.

Probably my greatest regret concerning the game of go is that I did not go down to to play at the Princeton Go Club when I first moved to Somerville, New Jersey in 1980 to start my career as an art teacher. I had already spent ten years trying to teach friends and relatives how to play go with little to no success. I loved the game, but I had no one to play with. I knew that there was a club at Princeton because it was listed in the back of one of my go books, but I was afraid to go there because I wasn't sure if they would welcome an inexperienced player. I should have known better. Because I didn't go to the Princeton Go Club in 1980, I wasted another sixteen years of my life that I could have been playing go.

In 1996 I discovered go on the internet, met a few people from the AGA, started to play at the Highland Park Go Club, and eventually found my way down to the Princeton Go Club.  I would go down periodically, I even played some games with Feng Yun's daughter during a narrow window when she was my strength, and I enjoyed playing in the New Jersey Open for a good many years.

I'd been wanting to attend at the Princeton club again, but the difficulty of parking in Princeton made it difficult for me to go to the Sunday afternoon meetings.  Recently the club started to meet on Wednesday evenings at the Panera Bread outside of Princeton in the same shopping center where the Wegmans is.

So this past Wednesday I headed out with my go bag filled with a slotted go board and a set of antique wafer thin slate and shell stones that I purchased from Baduk Club.

Here is the bag resting on a table board on my bookcase.  If you look down you can see quite a few go books including my all time favorite, Fundamental Principles of Go by Yilun Yang. You will also see two boxes of Ing stones in cheap plastic food containers. Down, and to the left, are the first bowls and stones I ever owned.  A friend secured them for me in China town in Philadelphia.  I paid twenty dollars for a set of wooden bowls, some very nice glass stones, and a folding wooden board.  The year was 1970.

Here are the stones I brought to club. I could not resist them when I saw them online. They are shaped like Necco candies.

I am told that the meeting was a smaller gathering than usual.  When I arrived Parker was already there.  He and I played a five stone game.  He is 2k and I am 9k.  Seven stones seemed like a lot though, so we decided to try five. We used Parker's board and double convex stones for the game. We didn't get a good photo of the finished game, but here is the ending position from the upload of the game record to AI Sensei. About 30 moves or so into the game we realized that it would make sense to record it, I pulled out my iPad, and we replayed it on the screen. I'm glad we did because I am happy to have the record.  I created a folder in SmartGo One for the Princeton Go Club.

I lost that game by 3.5 according to our count, and I was quite pleased with the result.  I would have been pleased with anything short of a 20 point loss. We might have unintentionally shifted a few stones while counting though. When I uploaded the game record to my OGS library I was quite surprised to see that it turned out to be B+ 0.5.  The difference certainly isn't important.  The five stones seemed like a good handicap, and we will probably use it again. If we had played even, my butt would have been well whooped, so it is important to keep that in mind with handicap games. If you win a handicap game it just means that maybe the handicap should be lowered. It isn't a competition. It is more of a dance made more interesting for both by the presence of the handicap stones. As end game approached, I pointed to the lonely handicap stone at the center of the board and said, "You've effectively made this a four stone handicap game."

While Parker and I were playing Brian and Andy had a game.  Before leaving Brian took a selfie with the rest of us. 

From left to right: Brian, Terri, Parker and Andy. 

Photo by Brian.

You may notice that I am wearing a shirt from the 2024 Portland Go Congress.  I have resolved to show up in a different Congress shirt each time I come to the club until I have to start repeating them, or wearing other go shirts such as my Yilun Yang 9x9 board shirt, which turned out to be a big hit at a Yang Workshop.

After my game with Parker I played a game with Andy.  We also used a five stone handicap. This time we used Parker's board with my stones, which were actually being used by me for the very first time. I managed to find a throw in that did more damage than it should have, which ended the game.

Here is the board position at the end of the game from my point of view. It was B+R

Having played two games myself, I encouraged Parker and Andy to play using my stones. They did, and it was a pleasure to watch.  An observer stopped by and asked about the game. I explained what it was about, gesturing at the board and showing the final position of the game with Parker on my iPad.  This showed how the board would fill.  That brought up the question of scoring, which I said we would see in the ongoing game after the board filled up. I explained that after there are no more profitable moves to be made, both player would pass. That was not to be the case with this game, however.

The game finished with a resignation just as I was telling our potential new go player about how the stones would be moved around creating easy to count chunks of territory, making scoring easier.

Parker and Andy then set about filling in the gaps on the borders for the benefit of our observer. They made a dead group alive in order to replicate a typical game that goes to counting. They then moved the stones around to get easy to count rectangular blocks of territory.

I gave our observer the url for OGS.  Let's hope he enjoys what he sees there and comes back to the club.

I had a great time at club tonight, and will definitely be back. Playing across the board made my go world feel larger again, much as it did in the first decade of this century. That was the heyday of Wings Across Calm Water Go Club. It was also a time when I attended multiple tournaments and workshops each year, not just the Go Congress.

If you are within driving distance of Princeton please come to the club some Wednesday night. I expect to try to attend most Wednesdays between now and the Go Congress.  I need practice playing across the board, and I also need practice recording games.

Now for my usual Go Activities Report

It was a moderately active week for go activity with over twenty hours spent on go.

I played four games this week.  All of them were important.  There was a Go Magic league game, a NAOL League game, and two Princeton Go Club games. The time spent playing at the go club is not included under Live Play.

I am planning to return to the Princeton Go Club next week again.

My Free Week on PlayGo.gg

The paywall went up on PlayGo.gg at the beginning of May, and I have been getting the most I can out the site without subscribing since that time. However, last week they made everything free for just one week, which accounts for the 8.63 hours you see on my Go Activities Beach Ball above. Most of that time was spent binging on lessons. Without a subscription you can usually only watch one lesson per day. If you click to watch a second lesson, you will get a notification telling you about two options for membership.

One day last week I didn't get the notification to subscribe when I clicked on a second lesson. At first I thought there was a glitch on the website. Thinking that the glitch might get fixed soon, I decided to watch as many lessons as time would allow. Eventually, I learned that the week was being offered for free, and there was no glitch after all. This knowledge came to me near the end of the week, so it was too late to put up a blog post inviting you all to the party.

If I had been paying attention I would have seen the notice in the upper right corner of the site each time I logged in. Actually, it wasn't that obvious.

Last night was my last chance to binge on lessons. My week was going to end at 8:00 pm ET. At 7:45 pm ET it became clear to me that there was no way I was going to finish the 12 kyu lessons before my free week ended.  There were five more lessons to complete and I was pretty tired after devoting the better portion of the day to working through lessons.

I managed to complete the lessons for a full ten ranks in one week, 23 kyu through 13 kyu.  That is not too shabby. Without the free week, that would have taken me the better part of a year because each rank level has multiple lessons. If I get a heads up about it the next time they offer you a free week, I will let you all know. If you have not tried PlayGo.gg, though, it is worth it to create an account to take advantage of what is available to you without a subscription. Keep your eye on the upper right of the site and you'll know if another free week is offered.

Playing games and watching games is always free. Plus you can do 20 Practice Puzzles, two Puzzle Runs, one Lesson, one AI Game Review, and one game with a 10d Bot. If you log on every day you can get a lot of value from the site even with the restrictions in place. If I were to subscribe it would probably be to get the unlimited Practice Puzzles that come with the Pro membership.

Now for my usual weekly go activities report:

It was a fairly active week with over twenty hours of go activity, most of which was spent on PlayGo.gg doing lessons.

I played five games, all of which were played on Thursday night. I won my NAOL game and went on to play four games in a row afterwards on PlayGo.gg.

Given that I played four games in a row Thursday night with only two people, I tend to think I might have been playing with bots. I'll have Clossius review these games from PlayGo.gg in our next lesson using the review tools on the site.

I didn't do a blog post last week so I have one more week of activities on which to report:

The previous week also had over 20 hours of go activity. My top activity was Live Play, which is always a good thing to report.

I delighted Clossius with nine games in one week, five of which were played on PlayGo.gg

Important Streak Almost Lost

 

I was particularly busy for over a week during the transition from April to May. On the 6th of May I realized that I had not done my Internet Go School spaced repetition problems for a shocking eleven days.  I was alarmed to realize that I only had three vacation days left and I was dangerously close to losing my streak of well over 2500 days on the site.

I had resolved in 2025 to build up my store of vacation days, but I still have trouble remembering to do my problems in spite of having multiple daily reminder alarms set to do them.  I am trying to do my minimal ten problems first thing in the morning now. This way regardless of what happens, I won't lose another vacation day, though I do run the risk of building up a huge backlog of problems. I want to build back a few more vacation days because I will be particularly vulnerable to losing my streak during the U.S. Go Congress in July since I will be so busy at the Congress, and not thinking about logging in to the Internet Go School website each morning. Given that I had so few vacation days in my pocket I can't afford the risk involved.

Today while I was doing problems I came upon one that I particularly enjoy.

When I see this problem I know immediately that the tombstone is coming, and I know exactly how to make it happen.  It feels great to have that little bit of knowledge securely tucked away.

Back to the story about my streak...

I went for a full week without losing another vacation day, and I earned another vacation day as a result.

More time has passed, and I have not missed a day since May the 6th, and I am up to six vacation days now.

I won't consider myself out of danger until I have built up to 20 vacation days again, and that will take me another 14 weeks.

You may be wondering about the day with over 400 problems and the one with over 250 problems.  When I build up a huge backlog I don't actually solve all of the problems. I find it demoralizing to have a huge backlog of problems, so I just click "hard" on them to quickly wipe the slate clean.  Clicking them away is the easiest way to get rid of them when I have had multiple missed days, or have failed to finish all due problems for a few days in a row.

Now for my usual Go Activities Report...

I was working overtime last week with over 30 hours devoted to go activities.

It has been a while since I posted so I will include the games from the previous two weeks. You will see that my winning streak started at that time. The one game I have lost in the past three weeks was only a 1.5 point loss, so it is has been quite a good three weeks.

The reference to "Week Off" in the image above means that I did not have a lesson with Clossius that week. My lessons with him have been alternate weeks recently.

My Week of Go Activities

 I don't have anything special to write about this week, but I am planning a post about my lessons with Yilun Yang. So look forward to that coming soon.

Here is my usual weekly Go Activities Report

The week was low on go activity. I spent fewer than ten hours, and played no games. It was a bit of a lazy week.

I put some of the blame for that on the fact that I was taking an online course about my favorite note taking app called Evernote.

I'll try to get in a few go games for my next report. 

My Complicated Relationship with Rank Anxiety

I have much less rank anxiety than I used to. I care little about my online go ranks, especially the ranks of my NAOL and Go Magic leagues.  I care little about my OGS, Fox, and PlayGo sever ranks. My rank anxiety has recently focused mostly on my AGA rank and my BenKyo League rank.

I've ridden the fence between DDK and SDK in the AGA for a number of years now. I was actually 8k in 2012, but I think ranks have gotten tougher since then. It shouldn't be important, but I like being SDK, so I have been a bit protective of my rank.  I actually missed out on the opportunity to play in the DDK tournament at the Congress the one year they had it because I was 9k at the time. It was bad timing indeed.

In the past decade my opportunities to play in tournaments have been limited to the U.S. Go Congress. This is very different from the years of 1997 through about 2010. In those days I would attend multiple tournaments in a year, so I had many games to my credit. I went from 19k to 9k during that time, a bit less than a rank per year. Since then I have mostly stagnated in spite of being very active in the online go world, especially since 2021.

At the Congress I mostly limit my rated games to the U.S. Open.  One serious game a day is plenty for me. I even missed the Congress last year, so it has been nearly two years since I have played a rated game. I'm not sure if I will play in the Die Hard this year or not.  The Senior Tournament and the Women's Tournament are open to me, but I like to socialize in the time available to me outside of the Open Tournament.

Now, concerning my BenKyo League rank anxiety... 

There are two leagues in BKL.  The Main league games are rated, and the Title Tournament games are not. A little over a year ago I dropped two ranks very quickly in BKL. Due to a long losing streak I went from 7k to 9k in the course of a couple months.  I wasn't psychologically prepared to drop another rank, so I set myself as inactive for Main League play, and I focused my attention on the Title Tournament where you can play anyone in the league from 5d all the way to 20k up to three times per month. We have a rank floor of 20k in BKL.  All that means is that if you are weaker than that you will be ranked as 20k.  We invite anyone who feels ready to play 19x19 games. It isn't too early to join us.

I'd been thinking about my rank anxiety, and a few days ago I decided to set myself active for Main League again. I invited the members of my group to schedule games with me via my Calendly link. I got one taker and we played.  I was nervous, but willing to accept that I might be on my way to 10k by the end of the month. I just resolved to do my best. It turned out to be an exciting game in which I managed to kill a corner. It should not have died actually. It should have resulted in seki at worst.  I was pleased to have killed it, but even more pleased to discover later that I could have won the game even if my opponent had made the seki. I think I would have been fine with losing the game. I had prepared myself for that, but I have to admit that getting a win on my first game back felt good. It also helped to get a bit of a hedge against falling to 10k.  I would need to lose four games now before the end of the month to fall to 10k for the May Season of BenKyo Leauge. I know I made a lot of mistakes in that game, and missed a lot of things too, but I feel as if I played flexibly in the center of the board.

Here is the final board position:

If you are interested in clicking through the game you can find it here.

With all of this mention of BenKyo League, I would like to make a special offer to players with OGS ranks of 20k through 25k.  (Just for that range of ranks). We have a generous referral program at BKL.  If you join and tell Ben that buzzsaw sent you, I will get a 30 minute Semi-Private Lesson with Ben.  Message me on Discord to tell me that you are responding to this offer, and when you join and say that I recruited you, I will let Ben know that I am passing my reward directly to you. My name on Discord is buzzsaw. I am willing to do this for players from 25k to 20k because I have an interest in increasing our roster of DDK players. They are the future of BKL.

BenKyo league comes with three interactive group classes per month. You get two leagues, and homework. You also get a community, the value of which is impossible to measure. The fact that people do not play their games at the same time means that you will likely get observers dropping comments and variations into your live games, which you can study later. Many of the stronger players in BKL are happy to play Title Tournament games with you. I am one of them.

Learn the details about BenKyo League here.

Are you ready for BenKyo League? You are if you are playing 19x19 games.

You can join the Discord for free and get a taste of the community in the free channels.

Now for an expanded Go Activities report. I have not posted for a few weeks. Rather than catch up with each missed week, I will post details of the entire previous month. My activities app allows me to do that.

It wasn't a terribly active month.  I spent a little over 13 hours on go activity per week, but I had fun. Now that I am caught up I will try to post weekly again with something new to say if possible.

The top activity was watching my BKL buddy Patrick play his games on Twitch. He streams his NAOL games and also his BenKyo League games, and he is only one rank away from me in BKL, so I find his streams interesting.

Twelve games were played during the month.

I was brave enough to open my Calendly for Main League games, but not brave enough to schedule them myself.  I jokingly told BenKyo Baduk during our most recent lesson, where we discussed my rank anxiety, that if my group members schedule with me, that I will play, but that I'm not brave enough to seek out games on my own yet. I guess that is the next thing I need to work on.  I will take one step at a time in overcoming this BKL rank anxiety.

Get a Great Deal on Lessons

You can get a great deal on Go Lessons and help send Clossius to the Go Congress at the same time. Clossius is offering a terrific price on packages of lessons to finance his trip to the Congress this year.  You'll get twelve one hour lessons for the price of $300.00, which comes to just $25.00 per lesson.

If you would like to see a sample lesson you can watch a recent two hour lesson I had with Clossius where he reviewed seven of my games.  We've been together for five years, and you can see that we have fun together during our lessons. In the last ten or so minutes I show him some problems that I had developed from the material in a previous lesson using AI Sensei. If you just want to see the AI Sensei Problems go to 1:48:00 on the video.

You can purchase a lesson package here.

Now for my weekly Go Activities Report.

It was an average week for go activity with over 20 hours devoted to play and study. 

AI-Sensei Problems came is as the top activity again.  I'm enjoying doing problems often and finishing them all for the day, sometimes more than once. I spent over two and a half hours doing that last week.

I made more problems again this week which is why BenKyo Private Lesson REPLAY as well as Clossius My Lesson REPLAY got significant slices of the pie.

I didn't play many games, but it was a good week for winning.