My Week of Go Activities

 

This week I spent nearly 36 hours on Go Activities. A big chunk of that time was spent watching Clossius Live Stream. I was there for nearly ten hours of his stream this week, and I didn't catch all of it. He was really active, and I am very happy about it.

For those who have missed seeing Clossius stream, you can start celebrating, because Clossius is back live streaming the go lessons of his students which they are willing to share, and it is looking as if that is nearly all of them. This is a bonanza of DDK and SDK go instruction which is tailored to the individual needs of his students, yet instructive for all. Tune in not only to watch the lessons, but also to participate in the on-topic, as well as off-topic, chat from the peanut gallery. My lessons are at 3:15 PM EST on Fridays most weeks. You are welcome to observe.

If you work a day job, and watching the Clossius stream in the middle of the day is inconvenient for you, no worries. If you subscribe to his twitch stream at the $5.00 level you can watch the VODs. 

I've been instructed to slow down my game play with some good results. I played eight games this week and spent over seven hours doing so. Games are averaging close to an hour each. This includes my opponent's time as well as my own.

I played five games on Fox this week, and won all but one of them. If I win four more games I will rank up to 6 kyu. If I lose nine more games I will rank down to 8 kyu. I'm liking my "odds". Of course, there are no odds. It is all skill. 

I've added a new go teacher to those that I currently support. In addition to Guo Juan, In-seong Hwang, and Shawn Ray, I am now supporting Ben Mantle (BenKyo) at the $5.00 level on his Patreon. I joined mid month with the intention of leveling up to either the $15.00 or $30.00 tier in December. I haven't decided yet which one I will choose. 

I did get my name "buzzsaw" into the credits of his latest video, so that is cool.

In my most recent lesson with Clossius it became very clear that I am not reading very well in spite of working to improve that skill. I will continue to do more capture race problems, and read those problems all the way through before answering them. I will work on applying that skill in my games. That is the priority for the week going forward.

One last thing... I have stopped recording an activity that I spend a great deal of time on. That is Watching Others Play. I am still doing it quite a bit, but I am not giving myself credit for it by recording the time I spend doing it. Watching Others Play usually shows up as the number one activity for the week, and you may have been wondering why it is gone. It is because I feel that I am fooling myself by including it. I do learn things by watching others play, and observing their reviews, but recording that as Go Activity now feels a bit like cheating. There are more active ways to study go. I took a look at my Go Activities for the year, and found this.

The lime green wedge is Live Play.

I Was Wrong: I'm Back to Weekly Activity Blogging

I discussed with Clossius my decision to stop posting my Weekly Go Activities. 

He said that he believes that people enjoy following my progress, and that I ought to continue, so I am back. He said that it is good to document my journey. I agree. 

Sometimes I feel like my journey is a few steps forward and a few steps backward over and over again, but be that as it may, I'm here to tell you about it.

I owe you two weeks, so I will just post them here without a lot of detail. I will pick things back up again next week.

For the week ending November 11th:

For the week ending November 18th:

Taking a Break from Weekly Activity Posts

This will be my last weekly blog post for a while.

When I realized that I had not posted my usual weekly blog post about my go activities I also realized that I was not highly motivated to put in an hour of my time on that task. I'd rather play a couple of games or watch a video.

Over the last couple months I have come to realize that I always put in between 25 and 45 hours on go activities, usually in the neighborhood of 35 hours. That has become quite consistent and is unlikely to change.

At this point I don't see a lot of value in continuing to post this information publicly. It takes a lot of time and effort.

I'm going to continue logging my time for my own interest, but I don't expect that gathering the information is going to change what I do in any way.

I'm playing a good number of Live Games now, and I am doing a lot of Go Problems. I'm continuing with weekly lessons with Clossius, and I hope to improve my performance slowly over time with his help.

I look forward to playing more on Fox and engaging in a variety of leagues, and I will probably find a reason to post from time to time. 

Thanks to all who bothered to read my posts.

2021 Canadian Open: The Second Weekend

I came into the second weekend of the Canadian Open with a record of 2:2. Last year 4:2 was enough for me to win first place in the 9k-8k division. This year the division is 9k-6k because there are not as many people playing near my rank. Things are sparse at my level this year, and I am near the bottom of my division at 8 kyu.

I still had hopes of winning my last two games of the Open and getting 2nd or 3rd place as a result. My dream came true, but it was not easy.

Saturday:

My first opponent of the day on Saturday was a 10 kyu who had gone undefeated the previous weekend. He was 4:0, which was daunting. I came to discover after our game was over that he had played the first round with my Pair Go partner and beaten him rather decisively. I went on to defeat him and give him his only loss in the tournament. He went on to achieve a record of 5:1 and came in first place in his own division which was one division below mine.

Here is that game:

Round 5

My 5th Round opponent turned out to be the only opponent I had who was not a Canadian League player. I won this game by managing to live after my opponent tried to contain a shoulder hit. It was really scary, but I survived and went on to take over a huge lower right corner by killing seven black stones in the p3 area.

My 6th Round opponent turned out to be a Canadian League player in the league above my own. It was unlikely that I would be able to win that game, but I did so handily by a 25.5 margin.

Here is that game:

Round 6

I am guilty of making a few overly cautious moves at the end of this game. I did count and knew I was winning big time. I know that s4 was unnecessary. I even read it properly and trusted it. I played it anyway. My bad? Maybe so. I think I won this game by destroying the center.

I had a good day on Saturday and went to bed with visions of prizes dancing in my head.

Sunday:

The final day of the Canadian Open was devoted to Pair Go and Blitz. I signed up for Pair Go with another Clossius go student. He is one stone weaker than I in the Canadian system, so we made an excellent Pair Go team because neither one of us had to worry about whether our partner would understand our moves based on strength alone. We also have a similar knowledge base because we are both familiar with the Clossi Approach taught by our teacher Shawn Ray. To learn more about our teacher search for Clossius or Shawn Ray on Patreon or on YouTube. He has many instructional videos and operates a Discord server called The Online Go Club with active discussions.

There were actually very few Pair Go teams, probably because of the lack of available female players. There were a number of male players who signed up alone who were unable to be paired. The combined strengths of the teams were quite wide, so handicaps were common in the games.

My partner and I managed to play two out of three of the scheduled games. Our opponents never showed up for the 2nd game, so even though my partner had a misunderstanding about timing and had arrived late, we could not have played anyway. We ended up taking large handicaps in both of our games and we won them both. When we were confronted with something we did not understand we simply tried to Clossi it. I believe we were successful in that.

Here are our Pair Go games with active links:

Pair Go Round 1

We won Round 1 by resignation. The last move in the game was a net I played to protect the black stones to the right which were cut from the other black stones.

We did not play Round 2. If we had, we would have had to give four stones, and would likely have lost.

Pair Go Round 3

We had to play Round 3 all the way to the end. Our opponents confused us with their opening where they repeatedly did tenuki. We did not understand it, but we Clossi Approached it. At least I hope we did. In any case we won by 21.5.

Late in the evening on Sunday we got email announcing the winners of the Divisions. I came in at 3rd place as I expected.

I managed to win a two month Basic Membership to Awesome Baduk. I proactively signed up for a free month wile waiting for my code. I also signed up for their Discord server. I have already watched one of their videos which is about Cross Cuts.

Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to bring us this terrific online event this year. I had a great time. If it is held in real life in Canada next year I will be unable to attend. I do hope that they decide to hold some online events in the future. I am signed up for the next Canadian League.

Although there were a few technical glitches early in the event that required some players to issue challenges, things ran very smoothly later in the tournament. It was a real pleasure to have games begin automatically for the tournament on OGS and to have results automatically recorded by Baduk Club.