My Week of Go Activities

 

I spent over 22 hours on Go Activities last week.

Nearly five hours of time was spent on Live Play

I played six games last week. One of them was a teaching game with Clossius during one of his streams. The remainder of the games were league games.

Considering that I only logged the league games as Live Play I spent about one hour on each of my league games on average which is a lot longer than I spend on Fox games. Granted my opponents used more clock time than I did, but it was time spent on Live Play and I was often using their clock time to count or otherwise analyze the board.

Clossius reviewed my NAOL Game for me. If you are interested in watching that review you can find it here. My game is the first of three games that Clossius reviewed for the NAOL last Wednesday night. He reviews weekly for NAOL when the league is in season.

My defeat at the hands of NickBee in my NAOL Game was decisive. I never felt as if I was in control of that game. It pleases me though that I was able to let that loss roll off my back. I was simply outplayed every step of the way, and that happens sometimes.

My Week of Go Activities: Attended Princeton Go Club "Alpha Go" Screening and Teaching Event

 

On Sunday, November 11th I attended the Princeton Go Club for the first time in over five years. The club has been meeting post pandemic with a rather fluid schedule based on when members want to get together.  They have a Discord server. The purpose of the server is primarily to arrange meetings. I've been on the server for awhile, and I have wanted to attend a meeting for quite some time now. I found a member willing to give me a ride to a meeting and decided that I should get there this week.

Sunday Princeton Go Club had a special event at the Princeton Public Library which included a viewing of the film "Alpha Go" after the screening there was a brief presentation on the rules of the game, followed by opportunities for the public to play with club members.

The photo at the top was take from the back of the room during the presentation about the rules.

More photos to follow:

Tables were ready for people to play.

I noticed from the initial setup of the boards that they had some rather small sized 19x19 boards available for use. I was glad that I brought a number of wooden 9x9 board with me and some boxes of Ing stones to use with them. I went about putting those small board on the tables incase people wanted to start with 9x9.

The small boards got a lot of use with the 19x19 boards mostly getting pushed to the side,  at least for the beginners.

Since I am not a member of the club, and most of the club members have never even met me, I largely stood back and observed after making my boards available. I probably interjected more comments than were appreciated during teaching, however. Sometimes I just can't help myself.

It was a nice event, and I actually have a correspondence game going on OGS already with one of the attendees.

I am hoping to attend some regular club meetings in the near future.

Now for my usual weekly Go Activities Content:

I put in a little over 17 hours on Go Activities last week. That is a bit on the low level for me. Live Play came in as the top activity.

There was a lot of BenKyo Blue on my Go Beach Ball this week from four different activities.

I played seven games this week. Four of those games were league games. The remaining games were played on the Fox Go Server.

I was playing on Fox with my newly earned rank of 11k on my sandbagging account which is five ranks lower than my legit account.

The three Fox games were Shadow Go Games played with the help of an OGS 3k friend. It is nice to have some instant feedback on my ideas in a game.

I'm feeling a little better about my go today. I'm not as much in crisis as I was last week, but I am still vehemently denying that I want to get stronger. That is the way I am protecting myself.

Go Magic Games are already in progress and NAOL games are starting soon. The current AYD season will be ending soon and there will be a month off before the next season.

My Week of Go Activities: Going Through a Go Crisis

 

This game sparked my Go Crisis. I'll have more to say about that later.

I've been kind of taking a break from go this week. I dedicated only a little more than eleven hours to Go Activity this week, which is really low for me. 

I'm going through a bit of a crisis wondering whether I really want to care about getting stronger.  Trying to improve doesn't seem to be good for me psychologically. 

The go community is my life so there is no question that I want to continue to be active in the community.  The BenKyo League is the center of my social life. I enjoy taking lessons because I like spending time with my teachers. I live for the week I am able to attend the U.S. Go Congress every year, but caring about improving is starting to feel dangerous.

I notice that I have become increasingly afraid to play and that I am bothered by specific kinds of losses. Not all losses bother me. Close losses don't bother me. Even large losses where I have simply been outplayed at every step of the game don't bother me. Those opponents are just better than I am. There is nothing about those losses that threaten my sense of well being.

Losses as a result of fights are another matter altogether and they are what bother me. This is probably because I don't fight by choice, and I know that fighting is the weakest area of my game. Any loss where something really terrible happens bothers me. It has always been that way, but I used to be able to shrug it off after a little reflection. That doesn't seem to be the case any more. It is taking me longer to shrug those losses off.

Recently I had a loss in the American Yunguseng Dojang that particularly bothered me. It involved a big fight that made it necessary for me to kill a large group of stones to have any chance in the game. I was doing it, but then I made a mistake.

The mistake below lost me the game. I came away from that game wondering why I even bother to play. I don't want to feel that way again, and it seems as if the temporary solution has to be to convince myself that I don't care about winning or getting stronger, and that I play simply to be social.

So until further notice I am just having fun. That is my story and I am sticking to it.

Here once again is my shame:

I am Black. Move 99 was a 42 point blunder.

I did go on to win my next AYD game by 1.5 which helps me feel a little bit better, but I am still not ready to care again yet.

Something else on the bright side is that I finally double ranked up again on Fox with my sandbagging account. I went from 13k to 11k.

Things I am going to do to make myself feel better this week include:

Spending more time on Tsumego

Reviewing some of my previous lessons

Watching go videos on the Go Magic web site.

Playing some Guided Go on Fox with one of my go buddies.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I was lazy and didn't play much. 

I'm just not into it right now. 

I'm not sure what to do to change that.

I hope next week is better.