My Week of Go Activities - Yilun Yang Returns

 

I spent 32 hours on Go Activities this week. 

Tsumego at 101 Weiqi came in at the number one spot.

The big news this week is that I am starting lessons again with Yilun Yang. I first started lessons with Yang in 1998.  I had taken a workshop with him in 1997 after which I attended my first U.S. Go Congress. It was a half a year after that when I began lessons with Yang.

My first round of lessons with Yang lasted for 5.5 years. The reason I stopped in 2003 was that I was still teaching and I felt as if I was not devoting enough time to go to justify continuing with lessons.

This is from our final lesson in 2003.

In 2007 I retired from education and started up lessons with Yang again and began blogging. My second round of lessons with Yang lasted for 8.5 years. I got to the point where the only games I played were with Yang and at the yearly Go Congress. I should have gotten more active with go and continued with lessons, but I stopped once again believing that I would never start lessons again.

Things changed though in 2019 when I joined the American Yunguseng Dojang. I made many friends online, and got a lot more active with playing and studying. I took on two teachers for private lessons, Shawn Ray and Ben Mantle. 

As the Go Congress got closer I started thinking that I should start up with Yang again to complete my excellent team of teachers. I had my first lesson back yesterday afternoon. I numbered it 337a using the same numbering system I had used in my previous lessons. Those lessons were two hours each and almost always resulted in two files so I would append the number of the lesson with a letter. Sometimes I would have Yang review games and end up with four files for a lesson. My new lessons with Yang are an hour and a half so if we do a teaching game it will only be one game rather than the two games we used to play, but there will still be occasions when I have him review games rather than play a teaching game, so I'll continue to use the letters.

So I just had my 337th lesson with Yilun Yang. I hope there will be many more.

I'm a little late with posting this week. I am already four days into the next week and it is looking decidedly unbalanced so far.

Ben streamed for 12 hours straight three days in a row and I managed to be in attendance for about two thirds of the time. He was doing a speed run up the ranks from 8k to 8d. He didn't get all the way because the weaker players especially don't seem to know how to resign.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I am really late posting about Go Activities, so I am going to post two weeks and not comment on it very much. Then I will move on from there. Hopefully next week I will have more to say. Above you see the chart and stats from the most recent week.

Below you will see the chart and stats from two weeks ago.

That's it for this week's post.

My Week of Go Activities - 5k Certificate on 101 Weiqi

 

When will it end?

I earned another certificate on the 101 Weiqi web site. This time for 5k. 

I do think I have reached a level that I will maintain now for a couple of months. I don't think I will be seeing a 4k certificate any time in the new future. 

I'm now doing five problem sets of 10 problems each every day at my own level. Those 5k problems are challenging.

It was a very active week with over 42 hours of Go Activity. Tsumego came in at the number one activity again this week. That is likely to continue.

I'll make this a short post since I am posting late in the week.

My Week of Go Activities - 6k Now on 101 Weiqi

 

I was getting a little discouraged about my progress on 101 Weiqi, but I managed to get another certificate this morning. I then checked when I got my 7kk certificate and realized that it was only eight days before, so I am actually making good progress. It is going to slow down now for sure.

Today I decided to edit my homework assignments so that I am getting five sets of 20 problems every day.

I believe that my intuition is improving on these go problems because I could see where this problem was going within seconds. That feels good.

Here are the stats for this week on Go Activities:

It was a very active week for Go Activities with over 37 hours spent. Most of that time was spent studying.

Tsumego 101 Weiqi came in at the number one spot again consuming at close to 10 hours and 25% of time spent.

A new category was created to time the 9x9 games that I have been playing to practice playing slowly.

I played a small number of games this week aside from the 9x9 games which are not being placed on my spreadsheet, so you do not see them here. I tried isolating under handicapped games at the bottom of the sheet, but will not be doing it again since that turned out to be a pain in the butt.

Clossius seemed pleased with my ability to slow down in the 9x9 games. I admitted that this skill has not transferred yet to my 19x19 games but I think I am doing a bit better. We decided to find a way to slow me down in my regular games. Before I can make a move in a game I need to find a cut and read it whether it is meaningful or not just to have something to do to slow myself down. 

I will be doing slow 9x9 games again every day this week before moving on to slow 13x13 games next week.