My Week of Go Activities

 

I spent a good deal more time on go activities this week than usual at 26 hours, but that was because I spent a significant amount of time on Twitch and YouTube watching Clossius on his live stream. I was also checking out some of his videos for beginning players. I made mention of this in a midweek post earlier.

I was successful in meeting my goal of playing eight games this week. Seven were played on KGS, and one was played on OGS. I’ve uploaded them all to AI-Sensei and have also uploaded them to OGS. I binge played one night this week getting in four games. One of my accounts, fearless, was 4k? For a couple weeks. I managed to get that account down during my binge. Fearless settled in at 6k where I believe it belongs. Later in the week I demoted my buzzsaw account to 6k as well.

Because most of my games were auto match, and two of them were resignations, I did not spend a great deal of time per game on average. I spent only 27 minutes per game. My two games with YD opponents were longer than the auto match games.

On the plus side I spent more time reviewing my games than playing them, but that was largely due to a long review with a friend who spent an hour and half on one game that he played with me. He is also YD.

My task for today is to go back over those games to choose one to send to Shawn Ray (Clossius) so he can review it as one of the four games I will have reviewed this month. I have a free league game from YD that I might use. It is with a player who is stronger than myself whose style is more aggressive than my own, so it might be useful to see how I might have done better against this particular opponent. I gave Shawn a copy of my latest Personal Report from YD so he will know the areas on which I need to work.

Monday the 29th season of YD begins. I am looking forward to it. We have at least three new players in the D league. It is always exciting to welcome new players near my level.

Clossius is Changing the Color of My Activities Chart This Week

I’m only four and a half days into my week so far, and in the past few days the color of my activities chart has dramatically changed.

The category “Twitch and YouTube” has taken up 42% of my time this week so far, and my total hours is approaching 20 while I still have two and a half days yet in my go week.

Why the sudden interest in Twitch and YouTube? I had been watching Shawn Ray, also known as Clossius, on his Twitch stream periodically over the past few months. I was not a frequent viewer though I have been a Patron of Shawn’s at the lowest level for the past eight months, and have enjoyed his content on Patreon. I think it would be fair to say that his focus is on double digit kyu ranked players. I like that because I feel as if I am not really a single digit kyu even though my AGA rank is a solid 9k, and my rated accounts on KGS are both 6k. I guess I shouldn’t take my 12k OGS rank so seriously.

But I digress. 

A few days ago I decided to spend some of the time I might have spent streaming video for entertainment on Netflix or Hulu, and take that time to tune in again to Shawn’s Twitch stream. I had been playing a few moves in correspondence games on OGS when I saw a notice that Clossius was live on Twitch, so I thought, “What the heck. I’ll watch today.”

It turned out that Shawn was explaining the addition of a few new support tiers on Patreon. He had decided to add a new tier which includes two reviews per month. This appealed to me because I was already subscribed to the lowest tier for five dollars a month. An additional ten dollars a month would get me two reviews, so I decided to subscribe to the new tier to give it a try.

I’ve been playing eight games a week now for a few weeks, and intend to continue doing so moving forward. Two of my games will be reviewed in the Yunguseng Dojang starting next week. That leaves six games without review. As much as I enjoy reviewing my games with the OGS AI, and also with AI-Sensei, I much prefer human input, and I feel that I am missing out by not getting my games reviewed. That makes me less likely to play. I especially think it is important at my level to get the human touch in review because so much of what I see coming from AI leads me into paths that I don’t understand. For months I had been eyeing Shawn’s support tier on Patreon which included four game reviews a month for $25.00. It wasn’t the price that was holding me back, but the thought that picking a game each week for review would require a lot of effort to make the choice from among the games I had played. Signing up for two games a month seemed more manageable to me.

As it turned out, I signed up just before the end of the month. I had forgotten that Patreon charges at the beginning of the month. So if you ever decide to sign up you should do it in the first few days of a month. Because I will be charged again on the first, Shawn is giving me four reviews in January to get in the two reviews I paid for but didn’t have time to get in December.

I watched a good portion of Shawn’s stream two days this week, and am now working on reviewing the 25k Clossi Approach Videos. I am enjoying the explanation of cuts and reading to decide when to fix cuts. I look forward to my game reviews with Shawn and hope that they will help me build my fighting skills.

My Week of Go Activities

I followed the advice given to me last week from members of the Facebook Go group to spend more time reviewing my games. I spent approximately a quarter, about 5 hours, of my time with Live Play. I spent half as much time reviewing those games.

Games took an average of 36 minutes to complete. Auto Match games were considerably shorter than games played with friends from the American Yunguseng Dojang, which were closer to an hour in length. There were two such games. The remaining six games were Auto Match. All games were played on KGS this week.

I am particularly proud of the fact that I did not procrastinate playing, as I did last week. I played one game per day with two games played on Saturday to finish out the required eight games for the week. My last game of the week was an Auto Match with a friend from AYD. It was a surprise to get matched with a friend in Auto Match, especially since my rank restriction is +/- one rank, and I play so few games. All Auto Match games were rated. AYD Friend Matches were NR.

I uploaded my games to ai-Sensei.

In addition, I uploaded my games to OGS so I could use the AI over there.

One of the suggestions from last week was to determine why I either won or lost each game. I have not gotten to that point yet. Some games are obvious. The results that are not obvious are because there is no death on either side. These results probably came about because of one player being able to push the other around in the opening or early middle game. Finding the moves that achieve that result would be helpful.

Something different I tried this week was to take one of my games and play out AI variations from OGS on a physical board. Even without playing every single variation it took me 30 minutes to get to move 33 in this game. I’m not sure how valuable that activity was. I stopped at move 33. I decided to try it because, although I prefer the move by move analysis of OGS to the Big Mistake approach of AI-Sensei, I dislike the shadowy appearance of every stone in the variations. I like seeing where the variation is heading, but it messes with my brain as I try to visualize the development of the variation. 

An alternative to using a physical board would be to use cgoban next to OGS to add in the variations so I can see them develop one move at a time, but not need to place and remove stones. That is what is taking so much time even with inverted Yunzi stones, which does help. The shadowy stones do assist in sweeping variations from the board. I’ll admit that.

My goal for next week is to continue with eight games per week and to try my best to find the reasons for my losses. 

My Week of Go Activities

 

Last week was very light on go activity at less than 13 hours. I was pleased though that I spent most of my time on Live Play, and that I completed all eight of the games I promised myself I would play each week.

I attribute part of the reason for the reduced time spent on go activities to be that we are on a month long break from the YD. Ordinarily I would have a few hours of game reviews from YD and I might watch a lecture or two. Rather than watching lectures I am spending my time gaining Game Experience.

The first seven games this week were played on OGS. Up to this point I had mostly played Correspondence Games on OGS except for a few tournaments such as the Canadian Open and the National Go Center Fall Tournament, as well as the Virginia Open. In all of those events I felt as though the quality of play from my opponents was good. All of the games were reasonable. Nobody went “off the rails”.

Unfortunately, I did not feel good my OGS games this week. There were so incredibly few games available to me. I put a couple offers up, but I would have expected to see more offers available. 

I think I am going to stick with KGS for serious play as much as possible. I might even try playing on PandaNet.

Here are my games this week on OGS.

My last game of the week was played on KGS with another member of the American  Yunguseng Dojang. In fact, we submitted the game as a Free League game for the Dojang.

One of the things I definitely need to do more of is reviewing my games. I intend to do more of that this week. Another thing I hope to improve is getting in one game per day. Last week I started out well with a game early in the week. Then I procrastinated and needed to get in the remaining seven games during the last three days of the week. So far this week I have gotten in a game the first two days of the week. So far so good.

My Week of Go Activities

 

Last week was a little light on go activity, coming in at only 17.2 hours of activity. I was pleased that I was able to keep Live Play as the category on which I spent the most time. 

I managed to get in the eight games I promised myself that I would play. I really had to scramble though to get those games in at the end of the week because I was putting it off. I finally realized that I was nervous to play rated because I had gotten my fearless account all the way up to 4K?. I wanted to bask in the glory of that rank for just a little while. 

I decided to give buzzsaw a chance to play rated and got her up to 5k? After that I decided to play NR games to round out the week. In one of those games I obtained a 1.5 victory against a solid 4k player.

The VA Open

I played last weekend in the Virginia Open. Players below the Open level, such as myself, participated in a one day handicap event. I was lucky to have enough opponents near my own level that I was able to play all four games without needing to either take or receive handicap in any of my games. I guess that is the advantage of finally making it to SDK.

I will be posting index cards which I used to record results of the rounds. I will post screen captures of the final board positions as well as links to the games on OGS where AI reviews of the games are available. I will also provide a link to the AI Sensei reviews, which have a different type of game review. I’ll follow that up with any reflections on the game.

Round 1

Round 1 OGS Game Record 

Round 1 AI Sensei Review

I was surprised that I was playing someone outside of my division for this round. I was in the Intermediate Division composed of 9k to 5k players. My opponent was in the Novice Division composed of 10k to 30k players. Though my opponent started off with a tough game outside of his division, he went on to take second place in the Novice division. My prediction to him of a good tournament turned out to be accurate.

Round 2

Round 2 OGS Game Record

Round 2 AI Sensei Record

I went into Round 2 expecting to lose. I know that is not the right attitude to take, but this guy beat me up fairly well in the the Canadian Open, and I was expecting more of the same. He may have been expecting an easy game. I actually got a resignation, so I was especially pleased. 

I hope Robert was not offended by my comment about counting. It is just so refreshing to have someone resign a tournament game and save the trouble of filling the dame.

I went into Round 3 with high hopes, but those hopes were soon to be dashed.

Round3

Round 3 OGS Game Record

Round 3 AI Sensei Record

Based on the screen capture I missed the opportunity to pull off what Hwang In-Seong, my teacher in the Yunguseng Dojang, calls a “Trouble Master” problem. The AI Sensei Record link will show details. It would not have been enough to win the game, but I wish I would have seen it. I need to develop a sharper eye.

Round 4

Round 4 OGS Game Record

Round 4 AI Sensei Record

My last round was with the same opponent I played in the last round of both the Canadian Open and also the NGC Fall Tournament. I won against her both of those times. Our match in this tournament was no surprise since we were both 2-1 going into the last round. Looking at standings before our game, I thought that our game might have been a match to determine 3rd place in the Intermediate Division, but that was not to be the case. It turned out that it WAS a match to determine the 2nd placing Woman in the tournament.

I did not go into this game with confidence because my opponent appears to be about nine years old give or take a couple of years. She comes from a go playing family and her siblings were playing as well. I have experience with young players who get two stones stronger in a month.

She beat me soundly in this game and deserves her win. After the game was over I ended up chatting with one of the observers who, it turns out, knows me from my KGS account “goddess”. Goddess plays in the European Yunguseng Dojang and this observer is a participant in EYD as well.

Thoughts On The Tournament

I really enjoyed this tournament a lot. I felt good about winning my first two games. In spite of some disappointment over not winning at least three games, I am happy with a 2-2 record that starts with two wins.

It was nice to play a couple of players I had played in previous tournaments. It feels like a community rather than the randomness of online auto match play.

The first game started at 11:30 am, and my last game ended at 9:00 pm. It was a long day, but I really liked that the games were spread out allowing faster players to get a little down time between rounds. 

Main time was 40 minutes. Overtime was seven periods of 30 seconds each of byo yomi. I thought the byo yomi was excessive, but I guess it worked to my advantage because  I ended up with the time between rounds. I was able to eat lunch and dinner and also relax. I think some players who used all their time did not get much time to recoup their energy between rounds.

The games were played on OGS using the Baduk Club interface. This is the same setup as was used for the Canadian Open. There were fewer glitches with Baduk Club than there were with the Canadian Open, but there were a few. 

One of my friends ended up playing a match on KGS due to technical difficulties, but that worked out okay. My first three games opened properly, and game results were recorded automatically. However, my last game was another story. It did not display the “Open in OGS” button to click. The exact same thing had happened to me in the Canadian Open. The first time it happened I had no idea the game had started. By the time I knew it had started, and found the game, I had lost 15 minutes of time because I was white and my opponent had already moved. We restarted that game again. This time I went looking for the game right away and found it within a couple minutes because I knew what had happened before. 

The Baduk Club game pairing interface has come a long way and I like it. I would recommend though that anyone who signs up for a tournament using it familiarizes themselves with how to find one of their games in progress on OGS incase they need to do it. They should also familiarize themselves with how to set up a challenge on OGS, and where to look for a challenge incase they need to bypass Baduk Club to start a game. 

One other thing... I really enjoyed the fact that I was playing in this tournament along with two friends from the American Yunguseng Dojang. We chatted throughout down time on a Discord server that we use to study together. I am hoping that I can get a few more of our AYD friends to take part in the next tournament in which I play.

My Week of Go Activities

 

It has been over four months since I posted about using the IOS app Now Then to log my go activities. I have been using this app ever since and have decided to post my progress weekly. 

The categories I am using have changed a bit over time. Some categories were added, some were eliminated, and some were broken down into two actives. I won’t go into the the reasons for the changes. Below are the current categories. If you want to see the original categories, and their descriptions, you can find them here.

The total amount of time I spend on go activities has remained about the same at 20 hours a week give or take a few hours. I have recently made an effort to increase the amount of time I spend playing go rather than studying go. I was successful this week largely due to an online tournament in which I played yesterday. There will be a post about that coming soon.

I’ve played in three online tournaments now in about a month and a half, and I just signed up to play in another in February. That will be a two day tournament with a total of six games.

My increase in playing time this week was also fueled by the suggestion to play eight games a week. This suggestion came from a friend in a Discord study group to which I belong. I played three games Friday night to insure that I would meet my eight game goal.

While the amount of time I spent on Live Play this week is the most time spent on any one category, it is still only slightly more than a third of the time I spent on go activities.  I think I am happy with that proportion. However, it will not be easy to maintain with only eight games per week.  My tournament games were a bit longer than my usual KGS games created via auto match with 25 minutes of basic time, so I might need to play more than eight games to maintain a 33% proportion.

I am a big fan of Guo Juan’s Internet Go School, and I continue to spend a good deal of time on the Spaced Repetition Problems. However, it has been a goal of mine in recent weeks to spend more time on playing than I do on these problems. I got caught up in the competition to get to one of the top ten positions on the Leader Board at the Internet Go School site every day. Some of those people do 800 problems a day! I can get to #10 though easily every day if I really work on it. However, I got to the point where I thought it was not productive for me. I was doing about 150 problems a day and adding lectures and problems to stay on the Leader Board. The Leader Board became more important than the knowledge.  So now I am currently doing all of my due problems only. That number is going down each day as I mark more problems as Good or Easy. When I drop to 60 a day I will add new lectures and problems to maintain that level.

I’ll report back next week and we shall see how the activity mix changes.

Yunguseng Dojang - Playing in the American and the European Leagues

A while ago I posted about being a part of the American Yunguseng Dojang. I have enjoyed participating in the leagues run by Hwang In-Seong so much that I decided to join the European Yunguseng Dojang as well. That means I play two serious games with reviews every week. I also get a bonus game on the weekend once per month for each league.

I was required to use two separate KGS user names to participate in the leagues, so I decided to use my oldest KGS name for the European league. 

Goddess plays on the European team, EYD, and buzzsaw plays on the American team, AYD. I have another KGS name, fearless, that I use to play rated games.

I was on a waiting list for EYD in September, and was finally able to begin the league in October when a position became available. At that time my EYD rating started at the level of my AYD rating, which was 871 at the time.

Over the course of a month and a half the difference in the points values of my ratings for the two leagues has widened by 37 points. My AYD rating is going up while my EYD rating is going down. This makes a great deal of sense to me. There is currently only one member of EYD that I am able to win against, and I consider myself very lucky in that, as these Europeans are tough.  On the other hand, there are a few members of AYD that I have a fighting chance against, on a good day, and some of them have ratings higher than my own.

My AYD rating has risen over time.

My initial AYD placement of 800 was based on my AGA rating of 10k, which actually should have been 9k except the ratings were very slow in coming out after the Madison congress, so in spite of my 4:2 record there, I felt compelled to say I was 10k rather than 9k. I just did not have the proof to say otherwise. I should have said that I was the 9k that I knew myself to be. What is the difference? I think it might have been easier to try to maintain my rank rather than to try to fight my way up to where I was supposed to be. In any case, it is water under the bridge, and I have to move on from here.

My EYD rating is likely to continue to trend downward.

I don’t mind losing, and I intend to stick around to see where these numbers go. I’m going to sign up for a whole new season starting in January in both AYD and EYD.

I initially wanted to try playing in EYD because I enjoyed the experience of playing during the day when I participated  in the Summer Stage event that took place over the summer. By that time, however, I had made many friends in AYD and was reluctant to leave them, so I decided to do both. I came to deal with my sleep deprivation issues by moving my wake up time to 9 AM and moving my bedtime to 1:00 PM. That is working for me so far, so if it ever comes down to a choice between AYD and EYD I will probably stick with AYD because of my friends there. But I digress...

Here are the monthly results so far of the D2 league, the lowest league, in AYD. If it were cycle 1, or cycle 2, of the season I would be standing a really good chance of moving up to the D1 league. 

Unfortunately, there will be no movement in January placement based on win records. Placement will likely be based on ratings points and the comings and goings of members. Some current members may drop out, and new members may join. That will mean the shifting of members into lots of six and the addition or elimination of leagues. It happens after each season. At the end of the 2nd cycle this season we happened to lose some players and ended up with two D leagues rather than three as leagues were consolidated. Every once in awhile In-Seong will adjust ratings for a player he feels may not be quite properly placed, so that can happen as well. You can see these adjustments in some of the ratings charts on the web site.

Here are the monthly results so far of the E3 league, the lowest league, in EYD. I will be lucky if I maintain my place second to last. I’m kind of hoping that a DDK or two might choose to join next season.

The current season is almost over. A new season will begin in January, but if you sign up for the Yunguseng Dojang you will get to watch lectures and reviews through December while waiting for the new season to begin. I highly recommend the leagues not only for the teaching, but also for the friendships made. I’d love to see more players near my rank join in the fun.

I should point out though that one should be at least 12k to join in the YD.

National Go Center Tournament

Last Saturday the National Go Center held a four game tournament on the KGS go server. In spite of my record at the Canadian Open I decided to enter at my official AGA rating, which is 9k. I might add that I am a very weak 9k having just managed to squeak by from 10k to 9k at the Madison Go Congress in 2019.

Though some might have thought that failing to self promote was wrong, I had a suspicion that the CGA ranks were a bit soft compared to the AGA ranks. My results bore that out, though I may have simply had a bad day. I went 2:2 winning my first and last games of the day.

Below I will post a hand written index card that I used to set up games and document results, the final board positions, and links to the games on the ai-sensei site. The round labels after the screen captures are clickable links to the game records.

Round 1

Round 1

Round 1 was a clear victory at 92.5 points. The opening was baffling to me, but I managed to isolate a large number of white stones. It was then a matter of holding the lead.

Round 2

Round 2

I suffered a crushing defeat in Round 2 by Robert Qi who won by 46.5 points. I came to find that Robert is the father of a go playing child. He got tired of just watching his son at tournaments, and decided to take up the game himself to fill the time. I also discovered that he and his son were in attendance at the Go Congress in Madison last year. What a small go world it is.

Round 3

Round 3

I lost Round 3 to Marion Edey by 13.5 points. Upon stalking Marion on the AGA database I discovered that she has a very low AGA number. She has been playing a long time, and she knows her way around a go board. 

Round 4

Round 4

I won Round 4 against Angel Zhou by 17.5 points. Angel was my opponent in the 6th Round of the Canadian Open. I did not assume that I could win against her again. She is a young player from a go playing family, and she could easily have improved significantly in the weeks separating these two events.

Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed playing in this tournament. It was well run by Gurujeet Khalsa and Garrett Smith who met the challenges of running a tournament online very well. They used Zoom to check players in for rounds. Games were played on KGS, and I am sure that fun was had by all. I look forward to future AGA online tournaments.

1st Place in the Canadian Open Go Tournament 8k/9k Band

The main event of the Canadian Open was played over three days; November 24, 25, and 31. Two games were played each day. I managed to win my first three games, lost my next two games, and won my last game for a record of 4:2. 

Three days after the event was over, in the early hours of Wednesday, November 4th, while I was agonizing over the soul of democracy in the United States... the presidential election was underway... I got an email with the Canadian Open Results. 

I expected something for my good record, but I was overjoyed to learn that I had taken first place in my band which included the ranks of 8k and 9k. I am a 9k player so I was surprised that I could take first place. Second place was also taken by a 9k. He had played me in the first round, and lost. While I went on to win my first three games, he went on to lose his first two games. When the dust settled SOS was on my side. None of the 8k players did any better than 2:4 which explained why a 9k was able to win a band with a stronger rank.

This happens to be a big deal to me because, in spite of having taken 3rd place and 2nd place multiple time at U.S. Go Congresses over the years, I have never managed to take a 1st place prize. I feel as if my studying is paying off.

During the days of the tournament I was posting my games to the Go Group on Facebook. I received a lot of reactions and comments, which was really nice. I will post below the final board positions for each game and links to the games on OGS.

I win rounds 1, 2, 3, and 6.

I lose rounds 4 and 5.

Round 1

W+8.5

https://online-go.com/game/27791236

Round 2

B+63.5

https://online-go.com/game/27796168

Round 3

W+12.5

https://online-go.com/game/27814472

Round 4

B+9.5

https://online-go.com/game/27818576

Round 5

W+R

https://online-go.com/game/27956747

Round 6

B+5.5

https://online-go.com/game/27961819