I think it is fairly commonly said that you should play 1,000 games to achieve dan level status.
I realize that playing 1,000 games is a suggestion rather than a guarantee. It may have rung true in a time when there was no internet, and every game was across the board and precious. Those games were probably recorded on kifu and poured over afterward. I doubt that the proverb holds true today except perhaps for those devoting a great deal of time to study and review.
On occasion people have asked me how many games I have played and I have usually estimated 3,000.
I thought it was about time that I made an effort to come up with something more accurate. I started with looking at the games I have played on KGS over the years using my two most active accounts, goddess and buzzsaw.
After renaming myself from goddess to buzzsaw I pretty much stopped playing with the goddess account which only has 656 games.
Let's take a closer look at the buzzsaw account on KGS where the bulk of my games have been played.
The buzzsaw account was created in 2005 during the height of the Wings Go Club popularity on KGS.
The blue cells represent the period of time when I studying with Yilun Yang for the second time. I started lessons with Yang again in May of 2022, and am still taking lessons with him.
In 2015, when I stopped lessons with Yang, I virtually stopped playing go. These were my quilting years. There was a period of about three years when the only games I played were at the U.S. Go Congress, and I didn't attend every year.
The orange cells represent the time when I was involved in the American Yunguseng Dojang. I am currently on a Spectator Membership for AYD, but intend to return to league play at some time in the future.
So from where have I documented the remaining games that make up the 5,000 plus games I have played?
When I counted up my games on KGS small board games were deliberately not counted because I only wanted to count 19x19 games. The rough estimate of games on OGS comes from deleting 100 games to account for the occasional small board game I have played which is why I say it is an estimate that I have 1300 games on OGS. The tournaments game count is directly from the AGA Ratings Database. The Fox games are all 19x19.
What isn't included are all across the board games other than tournament games. These are club games, and workshop games, of which there are many. It also does not include games played on IGS, NNGS, the ancient Yahoo Go Server, and my less active KGS accounts. These games probably account for an additional 1,000 games.
Though I played my first game of go in 1970 the games I am counting start from 1997. There was not much to count in the first 27 years when I unsuccessfully tried to force family and friends to learn how to play the game.
Having counted over 5,000 games I am satisfied that I have played quite a few games, and will probably stop counting now. Why did I count them up? I was simply curious.
I've pretty much given up on the idea of ever achieving dan status, so I'm not complaining, but observing.
Now for my usual Go Content:
It was a very active week for Go Activities with nearly 27 hours spent.
Eleven games were played. Four of them were Guided Go games played with the help of Clossius during my two hour go lesson. Most of the remaining games were BenKyo League games. There was one NAOL game played.
