First of all let me say I'm back to blogging!
It's been about a year since I have consistently blogged. I stopped blogging when I stopped keeping track of the amount of time I spent on various go activities. I took a break from that at the 2024 U.S. Go Congress, as I always do. For some reason I didn't get back to keeping track of my go activities after the Congress. That disrupted the flow of my blogging, and brought it to a screeching halt.
Recently I have begun to think about the way I structure my go study, specifically how I learn from my go lessons and reviews. As a result, I have decided to begin blogging again and to share my my go journey.
I spent five years studying with In-seong Hwang in his American Yunguseng Dojang, which I will call AYD moving forward. A year ago I decided to take a break, but I am considering coming back. One of the things I want to do before returning is to rewatch the game review videos that were done over the course of those five years.
It looks like I have 212 games to review based on my game graph below from my profile on the AYD web site.
I decided to start my listening from the oldest to the newest reviews.
When I was in AYD there were three seasons per year with three cycles each, yielding 15 games per season and 45 games per year. That changed at the time that I left. There are now two seasons per year with four cycles each, yielding 40 games per year.
I actually think I would prefer the new format since it eliminates the weekend game from each cycle. Those games were often difficult to schedule.
Below you can see my first cycle of games.
The little black square ballon shows that I have recorded notes for the video.
Hovering over the little black square balloon at the end of each list shows the notes that I have included about the contents of the video. Those notes are visible only to me, and I generally use the comments to indicate the time stamp for the beginning of each review, and also the length of my own review. Sometimes I write a few notes below the time stamp, but I am actually considering creating Evernote files for my reviews. I am also planning to create problems in AI Sensei to reinforce In-seong's comments about my games.
This morning I listened to all five of my reviews from Season 25 Cycle 1.
It was certainly a walk down memory lane. During that cycle I was in the same group as Ragnarr, who has become a good go friend of mine. He is now AGA 2d compared to my AGA 9k. During the first cycle I played him and lost by only 9.5 points in an even game. He is now giving me nine stones. How things have changed.
One of the nice things about being a member of AYD is that even after you leave the league, you still have access to your own game reviews, and also to the reviews of the members of your group who happen to be reviewed at the same time as you. All of the games reviewed at the same time are in one video.
Below you can see what it looks like when I click on the 5th round of Cycle 1. The video itself is at the top, and the individual games are listed below that. You then see a box where you can type comments about the video which are visible only to yourself. Every time you add comments you click the update button to preserve your comments. They will be there the next time you open the review.
My plan is to first simply watch my 212 reviews and put in the time stamps for them. That way I can easily find them again. I ought to have 225 reviews, but I apparently had a number of wins by forfeit during the course of the five years. After I have watched my reviews I am planning to watch them again while creating problems within AI Sensei. The use of AI Sensei problems for lesson review is something that I am very interested in, and that is a future blog post of its own.
My estimated time of arrival back to AYD is probably September of 2026. That will have given me two years off and nearly a year to study the five years I spent learning from In-seong.
I do highly recommend AYD. In-seong allows students to begin at 12k. My suggestion, however, is probably 9k as the best minimal level to begin while getting the best value from the reviews. I feel that 5k might be the best minimal level to get the most value from the lectures. I always felt that the lectures were over my head, but I was okay with that. I was there for the reviews, and it will be for the reviews that I will eventually return.
By the way, In-seong had me pegged from the first game. He really knows his students. The best advice he gave me was to not only look to my stones and my weaknesses, but to also look to my opponent's stones and their weaknesses. I've been trying all along to do that, but I never quite managed to improve as I should have. Perhaps going over the material again will help. Reinforcing it with problems in AI Sensei surely ought to help. I'd really like to return to AYD, especially with the new improved schedule that puts review times earlier in the day, but I am hoping not to be a disappointment to In-seong when I do return. I believe that looking back on the five years is important before I return.
