My Week of Go Activities: Finished NAOL Strong

The big news last week is that I managed to finish the NAOL with a 3:2 record. Up until last week I had only been able to win against 10k players. I am entered as 10k myself because that is my AGA rating. I managed to defeat an 8k opponent in my final game, and rather decisively at that, with a win of 14.5

I look forward to the next season of the North America Online League. I'm not sure yet when that will begin, but I definitely will be participating again. If you are interested in getting notified about the beginning of the next season send an email to naol@usgo.org They had a waiting list for the beta season,  and proceeded with 96 players only.  They wanted to learn how to make NAOL better, and they got a lot of good feedback. I'm sure the next season will be even better than the beta, which was great.

My rating went up. I am #75.

I had a Teaching Game with Clossius rather than a lesson this past Friday, which is actually a part of my next week, but I will mention in this blog post. The teaching game was really fun. It was a prize for having come in at first place in a previous month of the Clossi League. Shawn told me that I played really well in the game. This is what the board looked like at the end. 

I lost by 25.5 which I thought was pretty good against an AGA 3 dan in an even game. He told me that he was not being particularly easy on me. Of course he wasn't playing all out either.

Here is what my week looked like.

It was a good week for Go Activity with over 30 hours put in spread among the following activities.

Here is my time spent on Tsumego.

Live Play came in as the top activity this week which doesn't happen all that often. I played eleven games, two of which happened to be Teaching Games with Clossius. We practiced my new opening which involves a large knight's enclosure to a 3-4 facing a 3-4. I'm not sure if that opening has a name, but it is the one that Ben Mantle has been playing recently, and the one which he suggested I try to get myself out of my comfort zone.

Many of my games this week were practice using my new opening.

I managed to get my average seconds per move in the green zone in two of my games this week and I got my time in the yellow zone for two games as well. I achieved an amazing 23.9 seconds on average per move in my NAOL game by using a 15 second timer on my Apple Watch. I only really needed to use it through the opening. By the time the middle game started I was already used to playing more slowly and I could stop using the timer. I felt really proud of myself and I used the timer again during my AYD Game. I will be using that timer at the Go Congress this year. I wonder what my opponents will think when I set a timer for each move.

I had a great lesson with Ben. We were going to play a game with my new opening, but instead we ended up spending the lesson going over what can happen with the Large Knight's Enclosure to the 3-4 which is going to help me with my new opening. Ben really got into showing me the variations. By the time we were done it was too late to play but we needed to play at least 10 moves so Ben could resign the game so I would have access to the variations later. He played some silly moves so the game would look funny when opened.

Ben has a fantastic Study Group Class on the topic of the Large Knight's Enclosure, which I intend to review, but it is great to have my own personal lecture on the topic. Private Lessons with Ben are great. Ben went to the trouble of marking variations for me in the sgf file using the variation function available on OGS so it will be easier for me to review the lesson later by combining the sgf file with the video of the lesson. 

If you join Ben's Patreon at the $10.00 level you get access to all of Ben's past Study Group Classes including the one I mentioned, and you get to participate in three Study Group Classes live via Discord and OGS. Check out Ben's Promotional Site for details.

Let me make a pitch for the Western Server Challenge which is starting tomorrow. I am participating again this year, and I am looking forward to not caring about my rank. I expect it to drop like a stone, but after the challenge is over it will rise like a Phoenix so I am cool with it.  Last year it felt like a bit of a burden to try to play 100 rated games in one month. This year I look forward to it. It is not too late for you to sign up for the Western Sever Challenge. Please join me and over 100 other people who have already signed up. You can join the challenge later in the month so give it some thought and start playing rated games on OGS.

I'll keep you posted on how I do next week with the WSC. I intend to start out strong with six or seven games per day so I can ease up later in the month if I want to.