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.

I 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 even 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 level without playing 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.

My Week of Go Activities

 

 

I had over 29 hours of Go Activity this week, and played 12 games which took about six and a half hours to play making my average game time a little over 30 minutes which is still quite fast.

A great many of my games were BenKyo League Title Tournament even games.

I have no special plans for this week other than trying to rank up on Fox.

I spent a lot of time this week watching a friend of mine play on Fox. That was fun.

My Week of Go Activity: Alpha Testing Tsumego Dragon

 

One of my teachers, Shawn Ray, perhaps better known as Clossius, is developing a Tsumego App. It is called Tsumego Dragon. It is currently in the Alpha stage. He has nearly 100 people helping to test the app as he builds it. 

In the image above you can see that I am number six on the leaderboard for the month. The app works on both the desktop and also on mobile. It looks really nice on the iPhone.

You can currently use the app for free, but if you care to become a paid member and help to defray the costs of development, you can join for the price of $4.00 a month now during the Alpha stage. If you do you will be grandfathered at that low price even after prices increase during Beta and beyond.

Shawn may have plans to allow some free use of the app after it is fully developed. Perhaps a certain number of problems a day, or a free trial period, or some such restriction. 

Problems are largely geared to approximately the 9k level as many of Shawn's students are near that level. That is great for me because I am 9k OGS.

I have Tsumego Dragon front and center in my collection of Go Apps on my iPhone.

Now for my usual Go Activities information:

I spent nearly 21 hours on Go Activities last week.

Haha. I created a new Activity for Tsumego Dragon. But I named it Tsumego Dragoon. I have since changed it, but I am going to leave the mistake here for a laugh.

I only played five games last week. I did win all but one of them, and that one game was a 0.5 loss, so it was a good week for wins.

I've been asked to play more games and I have already played nine games this week and I have two more days left in my week. I think I will shoot for 15 games.

I was disappointed that my NAOL Game which was the 0.5 loss did not get reviewed for NAOL. The one from the first week wasn't a great one to review, the one from last week would have been so much better. I got Clossius to review it during my lesson on Friday. 

My goal for this week is to play a great many even Title Tournament games for the BenKyo League. Seven of the nine games I have already played fit that description. I was asked by Ben to play stronger players even. But in order to not be selfish I post an offer for an even game with any rank. That way weaker players who want to play stronger players even can take that offer if they want. 

Clossius told me in our last lesson that he can tell that I am feeling more confident, and I believe that I am.