My Week of Go Activities

 

It was a week low on Go Activity with just shy of 20 hours. I increased my Tsumego Activity, but only played five games and lost all of them. 

I'm taking a bit of a break until the new year begins.

My Weekly Go Activities - 1500 Day Streak for the Internet Go School

 

I've achieved a new benchmark at the Internet Go School run by Guo Juan, 5p.

I have completed a 1500 day streak. This is only possible due to the fact that I earn a vacation day for every seven days completed. In recent months I have missed doing my problems often enough to lower my number of vacation days to what I consider to be a dangerous level of only 22 days. I've set reminders on my calendar that will hopefully allow me to raise my number of vacation days back up to a much higher level. I had 70 vacation days at one point, but got careless.

I highly recommend the Internet Go School for its lectures and Spaced Repetition Problems. More recently they have added additional Decks of problems that you can study.

This week my activity was way up with over 30 hours of Go Activity.

I am still a little light on games.

I'll try to do better next week.

My Week of Go Activities - BenKyo League Membership Explodes

 

I played only five games this week, and didn't have any lessons with any of my teachers. There are only five different types of activities recorded for this week, and I spent most of my time doing something that I don't even record... building community.

Why so few activities?

I was actually quite busy with my admin responsibilities for the BenKyo league because membership recently EXPLODED with the addition of 12 new members coming in at nearly the same time. We needed to schedule Placement Games for new members to fit them into our own Elo system, and we needed to Onboard those new member so they became familiar with our procedures and the proper use of channels on our friendly Discord server.

Granted, some of the increase in league size was due to a recent giveaway. However, nearly all BKL Giveaway Members become paid Patreon Members after their free month is over. So we are on our way to getting really big really soon.

You can read about the BenKyo League to see all of the perks that you get when you join. If you join on the basis of this blog post please tell Ben that Buzzsaw sent you.

If you are not interested in League Play you can join Ben at Tier 2 of his Patreon, which comes with three interactive Study Group Classes per month as well as access to the entire library of past classes.

The library includes:

• Class 1 - Study Group vs. Study Group (Opening)
• Class 2 - Study Group vs. Study Group (Invasion, Sabaki)
• Class 3 - Study Group vs. Study Group (+ More Invasion, Sabaki)
• Class 4 - Like & Death + BenKyo's "Outside-Inside Looping Strategy" (renamed)
• Class 5 - Opening & Early Mid-game + "The 3 Pillars of Early-Game Moves"
• Class 6 - Invasions
• Class 7 - Joseki Punishments
• Class 8 - Simul Teaching Games + Reviews
• Class 9 - Reading Training Session
• Class 10 - Pressure (Attitude & Power on the Board)
• Class 11 - Students vs. Teacher Live-Commented RenGo!
• Class 12 - Trick Joseki & Their Value!
• Class 13 - Class vs. Class RenGo (Team Go!) No video due to significant audio issues, apologies)
• Class 14 - In-seong Hwang's 'Points Lover' Opening + Counter
• Class 15 - High-Handicap Strategies as White
• Class 16 - Endgame: Move Value Concepts & Counting

Ben is planning another giveaway soon which will be targeted specifically at the DDK level. That is likely to happen on his Discord Server rather than during a Twitch Stream. So if you are DDK, and want a chance to get a free one month membership to the BenKyo League, make sure you join his Discord if you have not already done so.

Our D League in November was our largest League, and one of our most active Leagues as well. It is growing, but is still a bit short of being able to split into two groups. We're going to get that done soon. If you are not DDK yourself please tell your DDK friends to join the BenKyo Discord Server.

My Week of Go Activities - My First Jubango

The news for this week is that I have started to play my very first Jubango with a player in the Clossi League. 

My opponent, fudogami, and I have agreed to play ten games alternating color with both of us playing the Points Lover Fuseki when we play black. We have already made plans to follow this Jubango with another Jubango during which we both play Sanrensei as black.

We've played two games in the Jubango, and so far black has won both games. Active links to the OGS games are under the screen captures of the final positions below.

Jubango Game 1

Jubango Game 2

A good friend of mine, Gn

Gnarly Rags on OGS, has agreed to do text reviews of all of the Jubango games. You can find those reviews as links at the bottom of the chat in the game records.

Fudogami and I will be trying to play one game in our Jubango each week moving forward.

I guess I now officially have a rival. We are both not only in the Clossi League, but we are also both in the BenKyo League where we are the only two 8 kyu players. If either one of us manages to advance to a higher rank, or drops to a lower rank, during this Jubango we'll have to decide how to deal with that complication. Clossi league games are handicapped so it is a complication. We may need to ask him to allow us to play non rated so we can continue our Jubango as originally intended.

Now for my usual Go Activities report:

First of all I would like to mention that the color mix of my Activities Pie Chart may look a little different this week. Those interested in why this is so can check out my mid week blog about Tweaking My Categories for Time Tracking. I refrained from posting my mid week blog post to Go (Baduk, Weiqi) Players on Facebook as a curtesy to those who might have been annoyed at seeing two posts from me in one week.

I've exceeded 30 hours of Go Activity this week which is up from recent weeks.

A good deal of the Miscellaneous Study time was spent discussing the WAGC games of Ben Mantle over voice on Discord with other BenKyo League players. We met a few times to do this after his games were over. Ben is representing Canada in the World Amateur Go Championship.

In spite of only playing four games this week I managed to bring Live Play in at second place with over three hours of time spent. My games are still fast. They are fewer than ten seconds per move with the exception of my most recent Jubango game with fudogami which still came in below the green zone of 18 seconds per move.

I need to play more games and do some slow play practice again.