Tracking the Time I Spend on Go Study

About a month ago I started using a program called Now Then Time Tracking Pro. It is an IOS app designed to track the amount of time one spends on various tasks. I thought this might have some value in focusing my attention on how I use my time for go studies.

This chart represents my first month of activities.

Last month I spent 62.38 hours on go activities, which is roughly two hours per day on average. That is a modest amount of time to spend studying go. I should be spending more time than that. 

I have created twelve different categories to track my study time.

Since it is difficult to see all of the details in the full screen capture of the app I will show each activity separately starting with the activity that got the most attention, and ending with the activity that got the least attention.

Correspondence Play accounted for 11.44 hours, or 18.35%, of my time. I play correspondence on OGS and the majority of that time is spent pondering variations. I spend way too much time doing so, and should probably play more live go than correspondence go.

Twitch and YouTube accounted for 10.49 hours, or 16.81%, of my time. I watch Clossius on Twitch, and also a few go related videos on YouTube. I also recently watched live commentary on the AGA channel on Twitch during the e-Go Congress. This is probably the category that is the least personally engaging. The games are not my own, so my attention wavers and the experience probably offers the least value for the time spent. It is more along the lines of entertainment than study.

Yunguseng Dojang activities accounted for 8.63 hours, or 13.83% of my time. These activities include live play. It was difficult to decide whether to separate out the time spent playing go, but I decided to include it because then the results for playing Live Go show the amount of time I spent playing games that I was not being forced to play as part of the Dojang. That is an important distinction. In addition to live play Yunguseng Dojang time includes game reviews and lectures which I can watch as they happen, but I can also review them later. These game reviews are engaging because they are for games of people I know I will be playing again. They are people who have become friends. I concentrate on the reviews of players in my own league, which is the C league, the lowest one in the Dojang.

Watching Go Games accounted for 5.25 hours, or 8.42% of my time. These are mostly games of my friends in the Yunguseng  Dojang, though some are games of friends I met through the AGA at either Go Congresses, Tournaments, Workshops, or local go clubs. I am not sure if this should even be counted as go study as it is much more like entertainment than study, but I believe it has some value.

Spaced Repetition Problems accounted for 5.13 hours, or 8.22% of my time. These problems are derived from lectures taught by Guo Juan as part of her Internet Go School. I’ve been a member of the school since near its inception, with a few breaks because I was taking sabbaticals from go study. I usually do 30 problems a day which takes me about ten minutes. I am thinking of doubling my problems per day because I have a backlog of over 500 problems which I would like to catch up on.

Yang Lesson Review accounts fro 5.08 hours, or 8.14% of my time. I studied with Yilun Yang off and on from 1998 until 2015 with a four year break in the middle during my last four years of teaching. I felt as if I was not getting the most from my lessons at that time because my job took up way too much of my time. In 2015 I decided to take a break from go and stopped playing altogether except at Go Congresses, which I continued to attend. I have recently started to go back and review my previous lessons with Yang using Smart Go Kifu. I am currently working on lessons from 2010.

Studying Go Books accounts for 4.82 hours, or 7.73% of my time. In spite of the fact that I have an extensive library of go books, my current go book study consists of reading books in GoBooks, the app from SmartGo created by Anders Kierulf. I recently downloaded the entire Learn to Play Go series by Janice Kim, and am working my way through it again. I have the books, but I much prefer to read go books digitally because I always felt the need to study go books with a board and stones which slows things down considerably.

Tsumego accounts for 4.67 hours, or 7.49% of my time. Up until recently my tsumgo study has consisted of doing problems on GoProblems.com. I just downloaded the BadukPop app at the suggestion of another student of the American Yunguseng Dojang. I also study the Graded Go Problems books, but I count that as reading go books.

Playing Live Go accounts for 3.15 hours, or 5.06% of my time. This is the category that most needs to be increased. Next month will show an increase due to the e-Go Congress and the Yunguseng Summer Stage. It will also increase because I am beginning to play more games with friends from the Yunguseng Dojang.

Guo Juan Lectures account for 2.15 hours, or 3.45% of my time. I decided that it made sense to separate the time I spend in The Internet Go School on go problems and lectures. Currently since I have a backlog of problems I am not watching new lectures unless they are beginner lectures which I really enjoy. Guo Juan does such a great job providing materials for lower level players.

Reviewing Games accounts for 0.92 hours, or 1.48% of my time. This is a big weakness. These are the games I play outside of the Yunguseng Dojang. They mostly don’t get reviewed, and that is going to change. I am a supporter of OGS, so I have access to AI reviews of all of my games there, as well as anything I see fit to upload, but I do not take full advantage of that. I recently subscribed to a basic membership at AI Sensei which I like a lot more. I intend to discipline myself to review my games using AI Sensei.

Replaying Pro Games accounts for 0.63%, or 1.02% of my time. I reviewed one Shusaku game using SmartGo Kifu last month. I am not sure that there is much value in reviewing pro games for me, but I will keep it as a category.

Initially I thought I would include a category for blogging, but I rejected that idea after I realized that it would dwarf the other categories, and not provide much real value for go study.

Ratings Drift In Action

 

I fear playing rated games, and I have written about this before. One of the bad things about not usually playing rated games is that when you finally play only a few games you will become the victim of ratings drift. This is when your rating goes up without you playing any games. The image above is an example of classic ratings drift.

I am not entirely sure why this happens, but your rating can go up pretty high before eventually falling off altogether.

I played two rated games in March in an attempt to get a rating for my buzzsaw account. I lost both of those games to a 9k player to get a rating of 10k?

Over the last five months I have noticed my rating rise all the while keeping the question mark because the server is unsure of my rating. 

Today I was observing Guo Juan reviewing games for the e-Go Congress. She complimented me on my rank. I heard her in Discord as I was exiting the room. I came back to the room to disillusion her, but she had already left. So now I need to write an email to tell her that I am a victim of ratings drift.

Last night I played a game with my other KGS account, goddess. It was a rated game with a 9k player I know to be my strength. Sometimes he beats me and sometimes I beat him. I had decided to make buzzsaw NR, and start playing rated with goddess. I used to have a rated account reserved for reckless play named fearless. That account would have long been inactive, and I do know if it is available.

I won the game against the 9k last night, and now I am 8k? I need to play rated with goddess before she drifts to 5k? :-)

Go Congress Trouble Master Problem

This is the third round of the Open in the e-Go Congress.

This game was clearly lost, but I found something at the end of the game that could win it for me.

I am white. Here we have a clearly lost game. I played poorly and there is nothing left but dame. Is that true? Is there some trouble for white to find. Hwang In-Seong has a lecture series he calls “Trouble Master” in which he asks students to find situations near the end of the game that can result in an upset of some sort.

At this point in the game I realized that I could capture a great many stones with an atari at s11, but only after the liberties at o16 and p16 are filled. AGA rules provide a great opportunity to pull off this type of sneaky play because they require the filling of dame. If I filled those dame under Japanese rules my opponent would get suspicious. Even in an AGA game one would not want to fill them in succession.

I read out the whole sequence. I knew that I would be able to gain enough liberties by driving black to his stones at t6. I knew that I could then atari the q13 stones. If black connected I would then play at m19 to capture a shitload of stones, and win the game. Of course, black could choose to not connect and protect the larger portion of stones, but I hoped that would not happen.

Black cooperated with my plan up to this point though later in reviewing the game we determined that he could have sacrificed a couple stones if he had seen the larger danger.

I followed through with the atari at r11.

Black connected as expected.

M19 should have come next, and the game would have been over. But it didn’t.

A happy story became a tragedy because I saw something. I saw the throw in at r7. I got greedy and foolishly thought I could have them both. I got distracted from my plan. 

I played the throw in. 

Black forced the capture with r9 and then protected against future loss with j18. I suppose he could have just played j18. Once j18 was played I realized I had missed my chance.

Here is the final board position. I lost this game by 1.5 points. 

It was painful. What should have been an epic win became an epic loss. I do take great pride, however, in having found the weakness and having read it correctly. That is a step in the right direction.

My opponent told me in chat after the game that his AGA rating is outdated and that he is 3 or 4 kyu on KGS. So I don’t feel too bad about having been pushed around in this game.

The game can be found here.