My Weekly Go Activities

 

This week was light on Go Activity. I had only a little more than 23 hours. I consider myself to have lost a week of go study by attending an online conference for five days, so I am going to add up games from last week and this week and consider them one week with one week lost.  

I have ten games to show since my last lesson.

Unfortunately it has been a really bad week, and I was unable to win a single game this week. However, every game played in the past two weeks fell within the "feel good" loss margin of 25 points, so they are all colored green on the game link column.

All but one of the games this week were played as black with the Points Lover Fuseki.  I am either doing poorly playing this opening or I am getting into trouble in the middle game, but I am losing. 

The game played on Fox is unavailable for review because I was unable to download it.

Intensive work on go problems has continued as shown below. 

Once the week is over I repurpose the spreadsheet above for the next week and move the total figures to a chart I am using to keep track of problems and games for the remainder of the year.

I'll admit to being a down about my game results this week. However, I am just going to continue to use the Points Lover Fuseki, at least in the games I play on OGS. I've dropped to 7 kyu. I'm not going to let myself care if I drop to 8 kyu. I'm sticking with this for a while. My plan is to put together an sgf file with Points Lover opening games in it and learn from it.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I spent over 37 hours on Go Activities this week. It was a very light week for Live Play because I was participating in a five day online video conference. That conference will spill into the next week, so my Live Play will be less than I would like for that week as well. I'm just going to consider the total for the two weeks as one week and accept the fact that a week has been lost.

There was no go lesson last week.

The big theme for the week has been an emphasis on Go Problems I spent over five hours on Spaced Repetition Problems and more than six and a half hours on 101 Weichi.

As always, Watching Others Play came in as the top activity.

I created a spreadsheet to keep track of my go problems for the week. After the week is over I transfer the weekly totals to a tab on my games spreadsheet. Then I reuse the sheet below to keep track of the next week.

The formulas on the right of the sheet are for gathering data for timed trials of problem sets. I performed my first timed trial on row 9 "Double Atari" of the 101 Weichi Spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was provided to me by my teacher Shawn Ray.

I copied the 101 Weichi spreadsheet to a sheet one of my own, and added columns for my own use. Below is a small part of my adaptation of the spreadsheet showing the results of my timed trial in the two columns on the far right. Blue cells represent Safari tabs that I keep open on my computer. When I close a tab I eliminate the blue color in the cell.

Upon editing, I deleted the column with Chinese language url links. I added a column for Safari translations.

My goal for the upcoming week is to continue working hard on go problems and to try to get in enough games to bring my two week total to a minimum of ten. If I can do better than that I will be happier.

My Week of Go Activities

 

This was a particularly active week with over 43 hours of Go Activity. Watching Others Play dominated the week. I played only eight games this week which is two short of my minimum. However, I spent over six hours playing those games largely because some of them were serious games. Three of the games were league games, and I won two of them. The one league game I lost was by only 1.5 points. I am currently undefeated in the MGA League.

I got a review from Clossius for the league game that I lost. He made it clear that this game came down to cutting points. I am not seeing the weaknesses of my opponent. Interestingly enough my opponent was not seeing her weaknesses either. 

My goal for this week was to do more problems on the 101weichi web site. I completed an average of 100 problems a day for a total of 700 problems this week. Because I keep track of how much time I spend doing problems I was able to calculate that I spent 26 seconds on average per problem.

In addition to the problems on the 101 site I am also keeping up with my Spaced Repetion problems on the Guo Juan Internet Go School. I do at least 150 problems a day there, so I did about 1050 additional go problems this week. I'm not lumping the Spaced Repetition problems in with the 101 problems though because they are different.

My goal for next week is to increase the number of games played to at least ten if not more. I will continue with the work on 101 Weichi.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I spent over 36 hours on Go Activities this week. There is a really big chunk of Clossius Time composed of four different Clossius activities. That is the large swath of pink on the left of the pie chart. I spent a significant amount of time this week watching the lesson videos of other Clossius students. 

I was a bit light on the number of games I played. There were only seven of them. That is three short of my self imposed minimum of ten. Only two of the games were rated.

If you click on the link below you can view the entire spreadsheet.

My Spreadsheet

In spite of playing so few games,  Live Play came in at over five hours. This is because the majority of the games were serious league games.

I am really enjoying playing in the leagues because it means more serious games that will be reviewed.

All but one of my games for the week fell within the 25 point "feel good" loss margin set by Clossius. The one that fell outside the margin did so by only half a point. Notice all of the light green in the OGS Game Link column on my spreadsheet.

My league game for the MGA was a narrow 1.5 victory. I felt good about the game, but I also felt very lucky. I always feel lucky when there is such a narrow victory because those games could easily have gone the other way. I felt even luckier, however, when I looked up my opponent in the AGA database. I found that she is 5 kyu AGA. I am 9 kyu AGA, and we had played an even game. My opponent played very well, and the game got complicated. There was a trade in the middle game. I am not sure who benefited from that trade, but I will probably find out next Monday when the game gets reviewed during a Zoom meeting. 

The bad news for this week is that I ranked down to 7 kyu on OGS. That is to be expected while I ride the line between ranks. I'll have to play a few more games on OGS this week to see if I can rank back up again and maintain the promotion.

There is other bad news. I've done fewer go problems on 101 Weichi lately than on the Internet Go School. I was particularly bad this week about that. I need to continue finishing my due problems on the Internet Go School, but I need to make more time for 101 Weichi too because that is how I can improve my reading skills.

My Week of Go Activities

 

This week I spent just shy of 30 hours on Go Activities. My life is feeling more balanced as a result.

I managed to play my minimum of 10 games this week. I did it by playing two games per day on five days, so I actually got two days off from playing. My games this week included an MGA League game and a Clossi League game, both of which I won.

It was hard getting in the last two games for the week, and I did force myself to play on a few days. It was quite late last night when I started to play my last game of the week, but I wanted to get it in. I was winning, but fatigue set in, and I missed an atari that forced me to resign. Aside from that it was a good game.

Look at all of that Clossius time clumped together in four categories on the left side of the chart! The narrow strip of Clossius time at the top of the chart is accounted for by the review of my Clossi League game this week.

As always my games spreadsheet is open to everyone to view. It includes links to my lesson videos with Clossius, links to all of my games, and AI-Sensei links to my losses.

My Week of Go Activities

 

My Weekly Go Activities blog post is coming much later in the week because I have rearranged my week to accommodate my new lesson day of Friday. I want to give Clossius a full week of the most recent games on my games spreadsheet.

I spent 36 hours on Go Activities this week and about half of that time was on Essential Go Activities in the form of Live Play, Go Problems, and Game Reviews. I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer worth the trouble of documenting the difference between Essential and Non Essential go activities. I don't think it is productive since I am pretty consistently logging between a third and a half of my time on Essential Activities. As a result, I am going to be dropping those statistics from my blog posts moving forward.

I am dropping a few things from my games spreadsheet as well.  I will no longer document the date that games are played. It is an extra step that does not give me any value in my spreadsheet, so I have eliminated the date column. 

I am keeping the Day of the Week column because I use it to plan my games through out the week, and I do see value in seeing if I am taking too many days off or if I am trying to get in too many games in one day.

Another column I am getting rid of is the Time of Day column that I had used to code the three hour periods in which I was beginning games. It served a purpose when I first stared using it to focus my attention on attempting to play earlier in the day. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that my domestic situation forces me to play in the evening against my better judgment. I don’t need to see the codes to remind me that I am playing too late in the day.

You can see the results of the above mentioned changes here:

Anyone who is interested in watching any of my previous lessons with Clossius can view them by hovering over the Lesson Number on my spreadsheet and clicking on the url for the YouTube upload of the lesson. You can also replay any of my games, and view AI-Sensei reviews for my losses.

My Games Spreadsheet

My Week of Go Activities

 

I spent a little over 35 hours on Go Activities this week. A good portion of that time was spent being social at the end of the e-Go Congress Zooming. Another large portion of time was spent Watching Others Play.

I took a four day vacation from Go following the end of the Congress which accounts for my light week of only six games. The reason for the vacation is that I am starting to be afraid to play again. I’m a little late with my post this week because my lesson day has been moved from Tuesday to Friday so there was no real need to post at the beginning of the week.

I’ve started the new week fairly strong with three games on Sunday and three on Monday. I’m hoping to hit 15 games this week which is a step in the right direction. I've had a problem with Fox not updating, so that is an issue to deal with. I took a day off on Tuesday and I have been playing fast and furious with my fearless account on KGS. I lost two games in a row with fearless, and ranked down two ranks going from 5k? to 7k today.

On the bright side I am close to ranking up to 6k on OGS, but that is only making me more afraid to play and steering me toward using an account on KGS that I don't give a crap about.

 

Now for the important stuff: 

My rated win loss ratio is 4:2    (66% Wins)

 9:18    Essential Go Activities  

 2:24        26%    Live Play 

 5:06        55%    Go Problems

 1:48        19%    Game Review