My Week of Go Activities

 

This week I spent exactly 40 hours on Go Activities. Saturday was the first day of the South Central Go Tournament with three games played. 

I increased my games played this week to ten, bringing Live Play in at nearly six hours.

I decided to play in the South Central Go Tournament at my official AGA rating. I made that decision based on my performance at two recent online tournaments where I played as a 9 kyu. I went 2:2 in both events. I’ll give Bart Jacob credit for doing due diligence on checking online ranks and comparing them to established AGA ratings. I got an email asking if I had a reason to believe that I should play as a 9 kyu rather than at my 6 kyu KGS rating. After explaining that my online rank has always exceeded my AGA rank, describing my recent tournament performance, and describing my long standing tournament anxiety, he was fine with my decision. To avoid potential problems I disabled my rank on KGS this week. I did not want to create a psychological edge for myself by showing off my shiny 6 kyu rating.

Correspondence Play took on a larger chunk of time with the addition of a few new leagues. This proved to be a mistake. I’ve soured on correspondence play, and I have been opening the games and playing them as asynchronous blitz to dismiss them ASAP. I’ve also been timing out because some of these games expect a move within 24 hours. It’s hurting my rank, but I am okay with it. I'm just not enjoying it.

Essential Go Activities      13:02       (hours:minutes)  about 1/3 of time spent

5:50                45%              Live Play

4:43                36%              Tsumego   (Combined)

2:29                19%              Reviewing My Games

Game List:

My win/loss ratio is a shameful 3:7.

I’ll be inserting a little commentary about some of these games, so things will be a little more spread out than usual.

For actual game links, and a more compressed view of game results, scroll down to the bottom of the post.

I played my first four games of the week over the course of two days on OGS. All five of the games on OGS this week had only 15 minutes of basic time. Playing under time pressure wasn’t doing my game any favors. My rank dropped from 7 kyu to 8 kyu on OGS, which I don’t really mind. I’ll accept it on faith that it is good for me to practice making decisions quickly, and I will continue to play these 15 minute games to practice this.  I suspect that if I played some rated games on KGS my stale 6k rating would probably fall to 7k. That would be okay too. This may explain why I lose to AYD members who are two ranks lower than myself on a regular basis. They are probably playing more games, more quickly, and not guarding their ranks. Maybe I should do the same.

Win   2/8    OGS    buzzsaw-johngp        W+10.5         7k/8k

Loss 2/8    OGS    buzzsaw-Nikita Pilshchikov    B+7.5   7k/7k

Loss 2/9    OGS    Rqke-buzzsaw                  W+4.5       6k/7k

I noticed when I reviewed the above game that white got 7.5 komi even though he is one rank stronger than I. If the komi had been correct I would have won that game. My opponent offered to show me the joseki in the lower left corner after the game. That was really nice. We reviewed the game and had a nice conversation. he played a joseki “mistake” that I thought I knew how to punish, but he turned it to his advantage. I recall Clossius discussing this joseki during his live stream a week or so ago with some caution about how it could be tricky if the player is stronger with a reason to make the “mistake”. He may be tricking you. This is probably something that I should be asking him to go over with me. I remember finding that discussion interesting at the time, but not fully digesting it. 

I’m black. This was supposed to work out in my favor.

But it turned out like this, which was not good for me. WTF?

My opponent suggested that D2 is the correct response to C5. Maybe Clossius can offer more insight during my lesson. I’d actually like to track down the clip where he discussed this joseki in his live stream recently. I believe it may have been discussed during a game review rather than a lesson. That might be something for him to clip out from the video on demand for the day and post separately.

Loss 2/9    OGS    syz756283-buzzsaw         W+19.5     6k/7k

The komi was also wrong on the above game, though it did not change the result. I had my auto match preferences set to +/- 1 with automatic for komi. I was assuming that it would adjust komi for one rank difference, but apparently it was not doing so. I have since changed my rank preference to 7k only. I would prefer a three stone range if I could get the komi right. this works on KGS, why not OGS?

Win   2/10  KGS    Rhett23-buzzsaw         B+4.5     AYD    888-747

The above game scored as 0.5 on KGS because we forgot to mark a dead stone. 4.5 is the correct score.

Loss  2/11  KGS    anonymous-buzzsaw    W+18.5   AYD   1149-896

Loss  2/12   OGS   Kiguchiterrier2-buzzsaw   W+2.5  7k/7k

I felt as if I was winning the above game, but I was wrong. It was another fast OGS loss. I’ve dropped to 8k now. I'm amazingly cool with this. Protecting my rank was making me afraid to play.

South Central Tournament Games:

Win    2/13    KGS   buzzsaw-AkiraGiang     W+58.5    NR/7k

The above game was too easy. I was wondering if maybe I had made a mistake by not self promoting one or two stones.

Loss   2/13     KGS   buzzsaw-Bradical       B+21.5       NR/2d?

The above game dispelled my illusions. I asked my opponent if his rating was due to ratings drift. he said that it was, and that he only plays on KGS for tournaments. After we were finished, and he had soundly trounced me, I asked out of curiosity what his rating became on OGS after the update. He said it had become 5k. Well that explains things. I dropped to 8k on OGS this week. So he is three stones stronger than I. Looking at his a OGS rating once the day was over, however, it is 4k. I feel better now. Four stones separate us. I friended him. I’m going to learn from this guy.

Loss   2/13     KGS   Jaydee-buzzsaw        W+1.5     7k/NR

The above game was a tough loss. Jaydee and I are friendly rivals in AYD. It’s been a while since I’ve had a win against her. This game only had 0.5 komi because she is an AGA 8k, while I am an AGA 9k. If you take into account the decimal portions of our ranks we are actually about 1.5 stones apart. Last week we had a YD Free League game which I lost by 0.5 points, so I felt I actually had a chance to win this game. Gotta try harder I guess. I’ve already identified what I think are the two biggest problems in the game.

Thoughts on the Tournament:

After day one I am 1:2. In spite of two disappointing losses I had a great time in the first day of the tournament. The second day results will be a part of next week’s report. I am certainly glad I did not self promote. I will not do that until I manage to perform at a 4:2 level in a six game tournament, or at a 3:4 level in a four game tournament. Then I will self promote one stone and see how things go. 

Goals for Next Week:

Play at least ten games.

Continue to play with 15 minutes of basic time on OGS.

See if I can get into byo yomi.

Game Links:

1.   Win   2/8    OGS    buzzsaw-johngp        W+10.5         7k/8k

2.   Loss 2/8    OGS    buzzsaw-Nikita Pilshchikov    B+7.5   7k/7k

3.   Loss 2/9    OGS    Rqke-buzzsaw                  W+4.5       6k/7k

4.   Loss 2/9    OGS    syz756283-buzzsaw         W+19.5     6k/7k

 

5.   Win   2/10  KGS    Rhett23-buzzsaw         B+4.5     AYD    888-747

6.   Loss  2/11  KGS    anonymous-buzzsaw   W+18.5  AYD  1149-896

7.   Loss  2/12   OGS   Kiguchiterrier2-buzzsaw   W+2.5  7k/7k

8.   Win    2/13    KGS   buzzsaw-AkiraGiang     W+58.5    NR/7k

9.   Loss   2/13     KGS   buzzsaw-Bradical       B+21.5       NR/2d?

10.  Loss   2/13     KGS   Jaydee-buzzsaw        W+1.5     7k/NR

My Week of Go Activities

This week I spent only 34 hour on go activities, largely because I was very ill on Friday, which is my AYD day. I spent the majority of the day escaping into sleep, hoping that I would feel well enough to play my league game that night. Luckily I rallied just enough to play my game. I cut the review time short, however. My game was the second one. After that I left, and I watched the rest of the reviews for my group on video the next day when I was feeling better.

The YD Game Review category inched ahead of the Live Play category as the top activity for the week. I used to only watch the AYD Reviews for my own League, which is the D League. However, I have now started to watch the C League reviews as well. A number of my friends are now in the C League. The reviews are of a higher level, and I do my best to follow along.

It is worth mentioning that this is the first week in three YD cycles that I have not played in both EYD and AYD. I think it was a good decision to drop EYD. Being sick on Friday, I did not fully appreciate not having to devote eight hours of time to strictly scheduled go activities, but I am sure that I will appreciate it next week when I have my wits about me.

I reached my eight game goal for Live Play this week, but the amount of time I spent playing was considerably less than last week with the same number of games. The games were simply much shorter, especially the AYD game I played while I was sick on Friday. It clocked in at only 35 minutes even though we each had 40 minutes of basic time. I won that game by resignation, by the way.

Eight games is not feeling like enough anymore though. Clossius asked me at my last lesson if I was aiming for 100 games in a month. I'm not, but I should be aiming for more than eight a week. Perhaps 50 for the month might be a reasonable goal for which to aim.

Overall it was a good week. My win/loss ratio ended up being 5:3.

I needed to play two games on Saturday to get my eight games in. At that point I was 5:1 with my only loss being by 0.5 points. I felt pretty good about my record. I then proceeded to balance things out a bit with two losses on the last day of the week. I felt under pressure to get those two games in and it was getting late at night. I felt rushed, and I think it showed in my play. I want to avoid that next week by playing earlier in the week.

Essential Go Activities      11:41       (hours:minutes)  about 1/3 of time spent

5:09                44%              Live Play

4:47                41%              Tsumego   (Combined)

1:45                15%              Reviewing My Games

The numbers for YD games represent League Ratings

Win    1/31   KGS    arunasr-buzzsaw    B+6.5    YDFL   1119-883

Loss   1/31   KGS   Jaydee-buzzsaw    W+0.5    YDFL    1011-883

Win     2/1    KGS    plenty-buzzsaw     B+19.5    YDFL     840-883

Win     2/2    KGS    buzzsaw-plenty     W+31.5    YDFL    883-840

Win     2/3    OGS   buzzsaw-Coarse Himalayan     W+8.5    7k/8k 

Win     2/5    KGS   buzzsaw-likeyeah   W+R      AYD     883-568

Loss   2/6    OGS    buzzsaw-Mister_Y    B+R       7k/6k

Loss 2/6      KGS    arunasr-buzzsaw W+R     YDFL    1132-888

Goals for Next Week:

Replay some  pro games.

Spend more time on review.

Play more games with shorter time limits.

Try to play one OGS game early in the day. (Get a game in early.)

My Week of Go Activities

This was a very active week with more than 40 hours of go activity. This is the most time I have spent on Go Activities in one week.

Live Play, once again, comes in at the top of the list at over seven hours. In all fairness though, if the three Tsumego Categories were combined they would come to about 25% and exceed Live Play.

I have made a few changes in my go categories this week.  It is worth mentioning them.

I've added another Tsumego category called Tsumego Books. That makes three tsumego categories, all of which are red. I started and finished Graded Go Problems Volume 1 this week, and I started Graded Go Problems Volume 2.

I've added another Clossius category called Clossius Patreon and YouTube. So there are now three Clossius categories, all of which are shocking pink. All Things Clossi added together come to 10:26, which is 25%, and the amount of time spent on Tsumego combined.

I've changed the name of my YouTube and Twitch category to Others on YouTube, Twitch.  "Others" meaning not Clossius, so if I am watching someone other than Clossius, the time will fall within that "others" category. 

I've kept the two categories for the Guo Juan Internet Go School, but they are the same yellow-orange color now.

I've kept the two categories for the Yunguseng Dojang, but they the same yellow color now.

Essential Go Activities

I'm going to continue reporting on my Essential Go Activities each week. I've written to the developers of the Now Then app to see if I can automate that process. I will continue to do the math if I must.

Essential Go Activities      20:42       (hours:minutes)  Nearly half of all time spent.

10:25              50%              Tsumego   (Combined)

7:18                35%              Live Play

2:59                15%              Reviewing My Games

Game Records

There are only three games available for review this week. The rest are either with a player who does not want his games reviewed, or they are YD games that have already been reviewed. I met my goal of eight games.

My user names are buzzsaw, goddess, and fearless.

My win/loss ratio is 4/4

YD ranks are listed for all games with YD players rather than KGS ranks.

EYD - European Yunguseng Dojang

AYD - American Yunguseng Dojang

OGS - Time (30 min 5 of 30 AGA rules)

YDFL - Yunguseng Dojang Free League Game (40 min 3 of 30)

Games are even except OGS games +/- 1 which have 0.5 komi

Win      1/24   KGS     buzzsaw-Drewch     W+10.5     AYD     882-875

Loss     1/25   KGS     anonymous-buzzsaw         W+R      1167-893

Win      1/25   KGS     buzzsaw-Drewch          W+R     YDFL   893-866

Win      1/28   OGS     buzzsaw-Nikita Pilshchikov  W+16.5    7k/7k

Loss     1/29    KGS    goddess-remy66         B+26.5     AYD   860-762

Loss     1/29   KGS     plenty-buzzsaw          W+11.5    AYD   828-893

Win      1/30   OGS     necromant-buzzsaw       B+R       6k/7k

Loss     1/30   KGS     arunasr-buzzsaw        W+3.5   YDFL     1119-883

Goals for Next Week

I intend to play more games.

I intend to spend more time on game review. I will be asking the Clossi Approach questions as I review to build the habit of asking the questions in my games.

Change is Hard: I Need a Go Psychologist

plenty-buzzsaw

I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for awhile. Now is a good time to do it because of a game I played last night in the American Yunguseng Dojang, and my feelings associated with it. One would think that a lot was on the line with this game because the winner would stay in the D2 league, and the loser would fall to the D3 league. I cared little if I won or lost the game, and I did not care about whether I fell to the lowest league. I cared about playing a better game, which is not necessarily a won game. I cared about what my teacher would think and what he would say.

I have been told by In-seong to play fewer unnecessary protective moves, and to play more active moves. This has been something that I have been struggling with for months now. In spite of my efforts, the balance has been evading me. I have actually made grave errors in attempting to self correct, often in haste between my EYD and AYD games.

One of the things that In-seong tells me is that I need to see the board from my opponent’s side. That makes sense because if his stones were mine, and they had a weakness, I would see it. If I can see it, then I can exploit it. I’m still struggling with this though. I get caught up in the pace of the game and I fall back into old habits.

In a recent lesson with Clossius, who has diagnosed the same problem, I got some concrete advice about how I might sharpen my ability to make these positive changes. He suggested that I ask the Clossi Approach questions as I review my games. That made so much sense to me. During review I would not be under time pressure, or psychological stress. The result would already be in, and perhaps I could see the board more clearly, and know what I should have seen during the game. I would essentially be kibitzing my own game. They say that when you kibitz that you are three stones stronger. I tried asking the questions during one of my reviews, and I think it paid off last night. I was doing well during my game.

It turned out that I had a winning position, even without the stones I got when my opponent missed an atari. However, I made one fatal mistake at the end that lost the game for me by 11.5. You can see that mistake in the image above. A link to the game in ai-sensei is provided.

I was upset about this blunder. My opponent and I are good friends in YD and we discussed the game immediately afterwards on Discord. I admitted that I was considering not showing up for review. I’ve never done that before. I was ashamed and worried about being present for my public humiliation. By the way, no one is ever publicly humiliated in a YD review, except maybe in their own mind. Although I thought of not going, I remembered that some of my best reviews with In-seong were for lost games. I’d never skipped a review in over four seasons, and I was not about to start doing so regardless of how I felt about a game. I pulled up my big girl pants (it’s a good thing you hadn’t noticed that they were down), and I showed up for the review.

I got sympathy for my mistake. “It happens”. I was told that it was a good game, and I got a lot of specific positive feedback. I ended up feeling a lot better. I was glad I showed up. Always show up.

One thing that might help me moving forward is that I have dropped out of EYD because it was very stressful for my husband to have me devoting eight hours to scheduled go activity every Friday. In spite of being sorry to leave EYD, I do recognize a few benefits to participating in only AYD. First, it was stressful to play two important games only four hours apart. The temptation to try to apply advice from the first game to the second game made it even more stressful for me. Second, I was usually too tired to give my best to the second game. Third, the four hours I spent each Friday on EYD activities can be allocated on other days to playing more games. I won’t be spending any less time on Go. I will just be scheduling it in a way that is less objectionable to my husband.

Luckily I have many YD Go friends who I can talk to about my psychological problems with Go. One of those friends is actually a psychologist, but he says he wants my insurance card. he is only kidding. 

I hear there is a new book about go called “Psychology” which I would like to get, but I may wait for it to come to the GoBooks app. 

I’ve got two more games I need to play today to meet my goal of eight games this week. My Weekly Go Activities blog post is due tomorrow. It is time to stop procrastinating and start playing.

Thanks for listening.

I Have Fallen Into the Life and Death Rabbit Hole

 Last week during my lesson with Clossius, I was advised to increase my Tsumego practice using the site 101weiqi.com. I think I have a Tsumego addiction now. With only four days into the week I have already spent over five hours on 101weiqi.com.

 During my lesson I was given two specific links by Clossius leading to the problem sets Connect and Cut off.

Above you can see some of the categories offered. This is only a partial screen capture of the many types of problems available on the web site. 

I was advised to work through these two sets of problems three times. I have enjoyed doing these and I know that I have completed Connect at least once. I did many of the problems in Cut Off, but I have not been entirely systematic in my approach in completing these sets. I’m going to need to set up tabs in Chrome for each of these sets and keep track of what I have accomplished. A Tsumego Journal in Evernote might be in order.

While posting the above screen capture to a Discord server, and singing the praises of 101weiqi.com, I got distracted by the category Basic Life and Death. There are 1995 problems in that category, and I had to take a look. That is when I fell down the Tsumego Rabbit Hole. It was late last night and I did 100 problems from the L&D set. Then I prepared to retire. Then I did over 50 more problems and reluctantly put the iPad down. 

I woke up this morning with a hankering for L&D. I’ve spent over an hour today on the L&D category, and I am up to problem 270. I’m keeping an L&D tab open on Chrome so I can get back to where I left off on these. The site is hard to navigate with so little English even in Chrome.

I can really see the value of these simple problems. I love how I can visualize the stones because there are so few places to play in these problems. I can see the obvious right answer, but I am taking the time to see each stone in the continuation. I am asking myself what white needs to live and how black can take that away. The right first move is then obvious because any other move gives white what they need to live. However, rather than playing that first move and letting the solution flow from there, I challenge myself to see every single move up to the end. This is where the reading practice comes in. Why did I not know this before?

I will go back to the Connect and Cut Off problems, but the L&D Rabbit Hole is very tempting and reassuring.

All during my many years of go study I have been told to do easy L&D problems, but I never knew where they were. Now I know.

My Week of Go Activities

I’ve started to think of my weekly activities post as a launch pad for my lessons with Clossius, or as Shygost calls him, Colossius, which reminds me of a pretty cool statue.

To prep for creating this blog post I have started to type the details for each game I play into an Evernote file right after I play the game. When I am ready to create a post I copy and paste that Evernote document. Then I insert the game links from OGS.

This was a very active Go week with over 36 hours of activity. I exceeded my goal of playing eight games. I spent eight and a half hours playing go. I started out losing, and got a little discouraged. As the losses began to mount I decided to head over to OGS hoping to kick a little butt and smack some stones on the virtual board. I ended up winning two games that night and feeling a little better about myself. I actually felt as if those two games were too easy. I ended up playing a total of twelve games this week. My goal is eight games, so I increased my game play by 50%

Live Play comes up at the top of the list this week!

Because of homework from Clossius, given during my last lesson, there is a new category in my Go Activities. There are now two Tsumego categories. They are Tsumego Apps and Tsumego 101 Weiqi. They are both the color red. I have been enjoying the 101 Weiqi web site, which is best viewed in Chrome using Goggle Translate. I have not totally figured out the site even with Google Translate. Clossius gave me two links for easy problems to do, and I have been working on them since Wednesday, the day of my lesson.

The Tsumego Apps category includes apps such as Baduk Pop and Tsumego Pro. Clossius suggests that I can use these types of apps when I am lounging. He would prefer that I use the 101weiqi.com website when I am sitting at my computer.

I’ve decided to report on a set of categories which I am grouping as Essential. They are Tsumego, Live Play, and Reviewing My Games. These are the categories that most people probably consider when they think of time spent on go activities. Reporting on these essential activities separately will put my Tsumego practice into perspective. Doing this report requires me to do a little math.

Essential Go Activities      15:35       (hours:minutes)

04:01            25.8%             Tsumego   (Combined)

08:30            54.6%             Live Play

03:03           19.6%              Reviewing My Games

I’ve listed all of the games that I played this week, but some games are not available for review during my Lesson with Clossius. Those game do not have links provided. 

My user names are buzzsaw, goddess, and fearless.  

EYD - European Yunguseng Dojang

AYD - American Yunguseng Dojang

AM - Auto Match (25 min 5 of 30)

YDFL - Yunguseng Dojang Free League Game (40 min 3 of 30)

Games are even except OGS games +/- 1 which have 0.5 komi

Loss    1/17       KGS     goddess-elmi           B+25.5       EYD - NR/4k

Loss    1/18       KGS     buzzsaw-anonymous    B+26.5     YDFL - 6k/3k

Loss    1/19       KGS       imayo0022-fearless      W+R        AM - 5k/6k

Loss     1/20      KGS      fearless-tknrobin         B+16.5      AM - 6k/7k

Loss    1/20      KGS      anonymous-buzzsaw     W+23.5     YDFL - 3k/6k

Loss    1/20      KGS      anonymous-buzzsaw    W+28.5    YDFL - 3k-6k

Win     1/21     OGS        buzzsaw-libersebasm      W+26.5      13k/14k   

Win     1/21     OGS        buzzsaw-hano12              W+R       13k/14k

Loss    1/22     KGS       goddess-saiyo              B+0.5       EYD - NR/4k

Loss    1/22     KGS       Ghopper21-buzzsaw     W+22.5    AYD - 6k/6k

Loss    1/23     KGS       buzzsaw-sirocco                B+19.5        6k/5k

Loss    1/23     KGS       anonymous-buzzsaw          W+R.         3k/6k

Let me be clear. I am not concerned about my Win Loss Ratio. Most games played on KGS in the YD are with players stronger than myself, especially the Free League games where I seek out stronger opponents. Losing means learning.

There are four YD Free League Games with a player who I will call “anonymous”. He has been a great help to me, and to other players at my level in the YD by playing and reviewing games with us. He is 3k on KGS and I am 6k on KGS. I am actually pleased with the amount by which I am losing these games recently. He says I am getting stronger. Our first few games were lost by resignation or large margins. Now I usually lose by an appropriate amount for the rank difference. I did lose our last game by resignation, however.

The reason we played four games this week is that we were attempting to get in a five game series for this season of the Yunguseng Dojang. The rules of the Free League require that players be within 300 rating points of the YD Rating System. The rules also limit the number of games played against any one player to a total of five. 

The night that we played two games we found ourselves 2 rating points short of being 300 rating points apart. YD games were looming in the days ahead, and we wanted to get in as many games as possible on the assumption that we would soon be out of range to play, and might not get to finish our five game series this season. Our records for this week left us in a position to play one more game last night. These games are not available for review because we made an agreement to that effect. This is one of the reasons I went out of my way to play additional games this week.

The AYD League and EYD League games are not available for review because they have already been reviewed by either In-Seong Hwang or one of his co teachers.

I invite anyone who is interested to attend my lesson on Wednesday at 2:00 PM EST in the Clossius Twitch Stream.

My Week of Go Activities

 

It was another busy go week with over 30 hours of activity. The Clossius Live Stream came in with the most time due in part because of a 24 hour live steam from Friday through Saturday. I tuned in for some of the stream late Friday night and again for about the last three hours after a good night’s sleep.

Live Play took up over six hours with my two YD games consuming over two of those hours. I managed to get in my eight games this week, but I had to play three of them on Friday and three of them on Saturday. The Saturday games went late into the night with the last game ending shortly before midnight. I fell down on game review this week, but I intend to review those games early this week.

I wanted to play most of my games on KGS this week, but when time got short I decided to go back to OGS to get my last three games in.

My user names are buzzsaw, goddess, and fearless.

Links are to OGS for all games. KGS games appear to score in a strange way.

Here are the games for the week of  1/10/2021 to 1/16/2021:

Loss     1/12     OGS     larrymstar71-buzzsaw       W+R

Win      1/13     KGS     kjhoiu-buzzsaw                 B+0.5

Win       1/15    KGS     goddess-dillon            W+1.5    (EYD Game)

Loss      1/15    KGS     raindog-buzzsaw         W+5.5    (AYD Game)

Win       1/15    KGS     plenty-buzzsaw               B+47.5  (YDFL)

Loss       1/16    OGS    Xinhauanese-buzzsaw        W+20.5

Loss       1/16    OGS    buzzsaw-seantoshi1         B+89.5

Win        1/16    OGS    buzzsaw-seantoshi1            W+20.5

I ended up putting two games up on OGS with 25 minutes of basic time and 5 periods of 30 seconds of byo yomi with AGA rules just to see if anyone would take them. They ended up being taken by the same guy. They are the last two games listed. He beat me the first time by a great deal, and he lost the second time. I friended him on OGS.

I intend to do more Tsumego.

I also intend to get my games played earlier in the week and to spend time reviewing them.

I am off to a good start because today was an EYD weekend and I have a league game in already for the week.

I am looking forward to my lesson on Wednesday.

My First Go Lesson With Clossius

 

I had my first hour long lesson with Clossius (Shawn Ray) yesterday. I enjoyed it, and I look forward to continuing on a weekly basis with lessons open to public view through his live stream on Wednesdays at 2:00 PM Eastern time.

Before the lesson got underway I noticed that someone in the Twitch stream chat had spoken up to say that he was in the stream for the first time due to reading my blog. Thanks for showing up and I hope you come back again.

I was a little nervous about the technical aspects involved in doing the lesson. Shawn and I met in a private conversation on Discord at the lesson time and started a private chat there. I was using wired ear pods that came with my phone. They worked fine, but we had some difficulty getting started because there was an echo for which we had trouble identifying the cause. It turns out I didn’t realize I had to mute the Twitch stream. My voice was being echoed because it was being picked up by the Twitch stream on my microphone. Once we got that problem solved we were ready to go.

I know that Shawn reviews using OGS, but I prefer to play on KGS, so I have been uploading my KGS games to SGF storage on OGS. To make things as simple as possible I provided a link to the game I thought would be good for review in our private chat on Discord before the lesson began. That worked well.

Shawn brought up my most recent blog post during the lesson and provided a link to it in the Twitch chat, which was really nice. I hope I have some new readers as a result. It occurred to me later that he could easily start a review by clicking on any of the links I provide in my Weekly Activity Report. This gives me motivation to continue with the reports, as they will provide him with information about how my games are going on both servers.

Once Shawn started the review he asked me to follow along on OGS instead of Twitch because there is a lag on Twitch. Being away from Twitch was a good idea for another reason. I was not distracted by viewer comments during our game review. The board was bigger too.

We talked a bit before we started the review about a few things. We did only one review, but did so in depth. 

Shawn types up notes for his students and provides them through private Discord chat at the end of the Lesson. That is a nice touch.

I’ve decided to create an Evernote file for each lesson I take. It will include the url of the video as well as urls for the game on OGS, ai-sensei, the review of the game on OGS with variations, as well as Shawn’s lesson notes.  After I review the video again I will add notes of my own. I will also open up the review file from OGS with variations and add a few comments specific to board positions.

I’ve created a new category to account for the time I spend on my Clossius lessons. I will include time I spend reviewing the video from those lessons as well as lesson time itself. The image above is from yesterday.

If you did not show up for my lesson yesterday, but want to see it, you can look up Clossius on Twitch and view any of his recent Videos On Demand which remain available for a couple weeks. You can even view the chat from the stream. My lesson is from the January 13 stream starting about 12 minutes into the stream.

I won’t be posting about every lesson, but I do invite you all to join me Wednesdays at 2:00 PM Eastern Time on the Clossius Live Twitch Stream. My lessons will be four times a month moving forward.

If you want to support Shawn you can look him up on Patreon. He has a waiting list now for lessons which you are free to join without obligation. 

I Signed Up for Private Lessons with Clossius

Clossius Reviews One of My Games on Twitch

Tomorrow at 2:00 PM Eastern time I am starting weekly one hour lessons with Shawn Ray, AKA Clossius. I have given him permission to live stream the lessons via Twitch because I admire the way he is trying to reach as many people as possible. If sharing my lessons can help, then I am all in.

I am no stranger to putting my private lessons on display and won’t be self conscious about others watching, so anyone who is interested can join the stream to watch.

For a number of years, near the turn of the century, I opened my two hour Saturday morning lessons with Yilun Yang to observers in the Wings Go Club room on KGS. In fact I was the first to bring Yang over to KGS. The server was new, people were very polite, but there was little teaching content available for people to view. It gave me pleasure to share my lessons with others, and Yang was fine with it.

I discontinued private lessons about six years ago and took about a four year break from studying go. That changed in 2018 when I decided to sign up for the American Yunguseng Dojang. Since then I’ve gotten more serious about studying.

If I am ready for lessons again one might wonder why I am taking lessons with an AGA 4 dan rather than renewing my relationship with Yang. Let me first say that everything I know about the game is built on a solid foundation learned from Yang starting at 19 kyu and ending at 9 kyu. Others have built on that foundation in group settings. Among them are In-Seong Hwang and Guo Juan. 

I have more than 300 lessons with Yang to look back on, and I do load some of them up from time to time. The fact that I never got beyond 9 kyu with Yang is ALL on me. I didn’t work hard enough for it, and when I stopped playing go, except during my lessons with Yang and at Go Congresses, I knew that it was appropriate to take a break from lessons.  My identity was “I am a Yang student” so this was hard. Picking up lessons with Yang might be valuable to me now, but I want to give the 4 dan a chance first. 

Why now? That’s easy, though a bit silly. Clossius posted a couple days ago to his Patreon group that he had one weekly lesson slot open that he was thinking of breaking down into multiple slots. I impulsively thought to myself, “Oh yeah? Not if I have anything to say about it.” And I signed up. I had decided to slowly immerse myself in all things “Clossi” by upping my game reviews and eventually trying one lesson a month, so it just made sense to jump in with both feet when Clossius threatened to make that slot disappear.

I look forward to seeing if Clossius can drag this perpetual 9 kyu to 5 kyu. That is his challenge. Let’s not talk about getting to dan level. 

The one thing I am not sure about is how to download the videos on demand from Twitch so I can have a record of my lessons. If anyone knows please fill me in.

I hope that my AYD and EYD opponents will tune in to my lessons so they can see my weaknesses fully revealed allowing them to strike more strategically at my soft underbelly.

This is going to be fun.

Edit: I talked with Clossius about downloading today during his live stream. It turns out that I can’t download the VOD. However, he is willing to send me videos of the lessons I play because he does download his streams, but does not keep them forever, so I need to ask for the files in a timely fashion.

My Week of Go Activities

I spent a whopping 37 hours on go activities last week. That is nearly twice my usual amount of time. I attribute that to the new YD season beginning, but also to the fact that I have been spending time watching the Clossius live stream on Twitch.

I created a new category this week. Clossius (Shawn Ray) now has his own category for his live stream. Anything of his that I watch which is not streamed live will fall under the category of Twitch and YouTube. I believe that he is streaming four days a week on a regular basis now starting at 2 pm Eastern Time. He has subscriber reviews and lessons most days, but he does still have one day a week where he does open reviews, meaning that anyone can sign up for the queue to get a review. I managed to get a review of one of my games on Thursday during the subscriber review time. I am a Patron of his on Patreon. You too can become a patron for $4.99 a month to get access to Patron only content as well as the right to join the subscriber queue. Check out the other patron tiers while you are there. He has a variety of game review and lesson tiers.  He has recently met a significant goal on Patreon and is planning a 24 hour stream next weekend or the weekend after.

I managed to meet my goal of eight games this week. I started playing late in the week. I procrastinated until Wednesday to play my first game. I then had to play two games a day after that ending up needing to play three games on Saturday to meet my quota.

Five and a half hours were spent on Live Play this week. Two and a half of those hours were spent on the two games I played for AYD and EYD. OGS games were fast because those were the offers available, and I did not feel like sitting forever and waiting for a longer challenge to be accepted.

I played half of my games on OGS this week and the other half on KGS, but I am uploading all of my games to AI-Sensei. I have also been uploading my KGS games to sgf storage on OGS because Clossius uses an OGS link to review on the OGS platform, and I intend to submit some of my KGS games for review.

Below I provide the links for all of the games using OGS, even those played on KGS. Be aware that KGS games uploaded to OGS do not always look properly scored when they load. Rest assured, however, that I did make sure they got scored correctly when they were played. I believe that you can view these games with full AI review because I am a supporter of OGS.

My user names are buzzsaw, goddess, and fearless.

Here are the games for the week of 1/3/2021 to 1/9/2021:

Win   1/6      OGS     buzzsaw-jacomus    W+R

Loss   1/7     OGS     buzzsaw-Go777-2    B+R

Win     1/7    OGS     buzzsaw-surtur        W+R

Loss    1/8    KGS    Ddoox-goddess      W+23.5  (EYD Game)

Loss    1/8    KGS    akiva-buzzsaw        W+32.5  (AYD Game)

Loss    1/9    KGS    buzzsaw-gull          B+3.5

Win     1/9    OGS    buzzsaw-damingmao   W+16.5

Win     1/9    KGS    fearless-modish        W+18.5

The last game listed was interesting because I jumped in to do an invasion that was perhaps a bit of an overplay. I probably should have been punished, but I managed to live. After getting out I saved a tail, but AI-Sensei suggested that I should have taken a big move on the board instead.

My invasion was at L16. My first instinct was j17, the move that AI is suggesting. I knew it instinctively, but stepped back to L16 instead, which I suppose got me into trouble.

By the way I am 6k on KGS and 12k on OGS but that may deserve its own blog post.

Win or lose I am not particularly proud of the games I played on OGS. I feel as if the games I encounter there are largely based on street fighting, and that they are not particularly civilized. I guess I need to get used to that. I ought to be able to punish improper play.

I prefer a peaceful game, but I’ve been told by In-seong to actually turn off the part of my go CPU that sees my own weaknesses and to strike at the weaknesses of my opponent instead. So maybe civilized games are not what I need right now. Time to get out into the playground to get roughed up and to rough up a few opponents while I am at it.

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.