My Week of Go Activities

 

I spent over 36 hours on Go Activities this week. There is a really big chunk of Clossius Time composed of four different Clossius activities. That is the large swath of pink on the left of the pie chart. I spent a significant amount of time this week watching the lesson videos of other Clossius students. 

I was a bit light on the number of games I played. There were only seven of them. That is three short of my self imposed minimum of ten. Only two of the games were rated.

If you click on the link below you can view the entire spreadsheet.

My Spreadsheet

In spite of playing so few games,  Live Play came in at over five hours. This is because the majority of the games were serious league games.

I am really enjoying playing in the leagues because it means more serious games that will be reviewed.

All but one of my games for the week fell within the 25 point "feel good" loss margin set by Clossius. The one that fell outside the margin did so by only half a point. Notice all of the light green in the OGS Game Link column on my spreadsheet.

My league game for the MGA was a narrow 1.5 victory. I felt good about the game, but I also felt very lucky. I always feel lucky when there is such a narrow victory because those games could easily have gone the other way. I felt even luckier, however, when I looked up my opponent in the AGA database. I found that she is 5 kyu AGA. I am 9 kyu AGA, and we had played an even game. My opponent played very well, and the game got complicated. There was a trade in the middle game. I am not sure who benefited from that trade, but I will probably find out next Monday when the game gets reviewed during a Zoom meeting. 

The bad news for this week is that I ranked down to 7 kyu on OGS. That is to be expected while I ride the line between ranks. I'll have to play a few more games on OGS this week to see if I can rank back up again and maintain the promotion.

There is other bad news. I've done fewer go problems on 101 Weichi lately than on the Internet Go School. I was particularly bad this week about that. I need to continue finishing my due problems on the Internet Go School, but I need to make more time for 101 Weichi too because that is how I can improve my reading skills.

My Week of Go Activities

 

This week I spent just shy of 30 hours on Go Activities. My life is feeling more balanced as a result.

I managed to play my minimum of 10 games this week. I did it by playing two games per day on five days, so I actually got two days off from playing. My games this week included an MGA League game and a Clossi League game, both of which I won.

It was hard getting in the last two games for the week, and I did force myself to play on a few days. It was quite late last night when I started to play my last game of the week, but I wanted to get it in. I was winning, but fatigue set in, and I missed an atari that forced me to resign. Aside from that it was a good game.

Look at all of that Clossius time clumped together in four categories on the left side of the chart! The narrow strip of Clossius time at the top of the chart is accounted for by the review of my Clossi League game this week.

As always my games spreadsheet is open to everyone to view. It includes links to my lesson videos with Clossius, links to all of my games, and AI-Sensei links to my losses.

My Week of Go Activities

 

My Weekly Go Activities blog post is coming much later in the week because I have rearranged my week to accommodate my new lesson day of Friday. I want to give Clossius a full week of the most recent games on my games spreadsheet.

I spent 36 hours on Go Activities this week and about half of that time was on Essential Go Activities in the form of Live Play, Go Problems, and Game Reviews. I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer worth the trouble of documenting the difference between Essential and Non Essential go activities. I don't think it is productive since I am pretty consistently logging between a third and a half of my time on Essential Activities. As a result, I am going to be dropping those statistics from my blog posts moving forward.

I am dropping a few things from my games spreadsheet as well.  I will no longer document the date that games are played. It is an extra step that does not give me any value in my spreadsheet, so I have eliminated the date column. 

I am keeping the Day of the Week column because I use it to plan my games through out the week, and I do see value in seeing if I am taking too many days off or if I am trying to get in too many games in one day.

Another column I am getting rid of is the Time of Day column that I had used to code the three hour periods in which I was beginning games. It served a purpose when I first stared using it to focus my attention on attempting to play earlier in the day. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that my domestic situation forces me to play in the evening against my better judgment. I don’t need to see the codes to remind me that I am playing too late in the day.

You can see the results of the above mentioned changes here:

Anyone who is interested in watching any of my previous lessons with Clossius can view them by hovering over the Lesson Number on my spreadsheet and clicking on the url for the YouTube upload of the lesson. You can also replay any of my games, and view AI-Sensei reviews for my losses.

My Games Spreadsheet

My Week of Go Activities

 

I spent a little over 35 hours on Go Activities this week. A good portion of that time was spent being social at the end of the e-Go Congress Zooming. Another large portion of time was spent Watching Others Play.

I took a four day vacation from Go following the end of the Congress which accounts for my light week of only six games. The reason for the vacation is that I am starting to be afraid to play again. I’m a little late with my post this week because my lesson day has been moved from Tuesday to Friday so there was no real need to post at the beginning of the week.

I’ve started the new week fairly strong with three games on Sunday and three on Monday. I’m hoping to hit 15 games this week which is a step in the right direction. I've had a problem with Fox not updating, so that is an issue to deal with. I took a day off on Tuesday and I have been playing fast and furious with my fearless account on KGS. I lost two games in a row with fearless, and ranked down two ranks going from 5k? to 7k today.

On the bright side I am close to ranking up to 6k on OGS, but that is only making me more afraid to play and steering me toward using an account on KGS that I don't give a crap about.

 

Now for the important stuff: 

My rated win loss ratio is 4:2    (66% Wins)

 9:18    Essential Go Activities  

 2:24        26%    Live Play 

 5:06        55%    Go Problems

 1:48        19%    Game Review

I joined the One Million Club on the Internet Go School

 

I have been looking forward to accumulating over one million points on the Internet Go School. It happened today when I finished all of my due problems for the day.

If you look at my study stats you will see that I tried really hard to make it happen yesterday, but it was not to be.

I love the Internet Go School. It is an important part of my go study every single day.

Not only am I now a member of the One Million Club. I am also number 52 in accumulated points, and I am getting very close to my goal of being number 50.

If you have not tried it yet consider the free trial. You might want to read a recent blog post of mine with more details about the go school. 

If you decide to sign up after the trial, tell them that buzzsaw sent you.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I spent over 35 hours on Go Activities last week.

It was the week of the e-Go Congress, so one might assume that I would play more game, but I played fewer games just as I do during an across the board real life Go Congress. Games were fewer and slower. I participated in the Open and in Pair Go. I chose not to participate in the Blitz Tournament because I think that blitz is bad for me.  I play too fast as it is. I was unable to participate in the DDK tournament because my official AGA rating is 9 kyu. Plus I promoted to 8 kyu for the tournament.

I’ve been to 18 actual Go Congresses to date. At a real Go Congress I spend most of my time being social and attending lectures. This was true of the e-Go Congress this year. 

The Twitch stream was full of great events including the Opening Ceremony, Closing Ceremony, and two lectures by In-Seong Hwang. It was possible to be social in the comments of the Twitch stream during those events. 

The addition of a Discord server made the event even more social than it was last year. People posted introductions and there was talk in the general channel. There were also Zoom Hang Out events to attend. I participated in a number of them this year, and enjoyed them immensely. 

One of the best parts of the Congress for me this year was participation in the Beginner’s Night on Tuesday. It was scheduled for three hours, but ran for four. I helped in one of the break out rooms in Track 1 for new players.

The highlight of the Congress was the Pair Go event. I was nervous about it, but it went really smoothly. My partner and I lost our first game by 3.5 points and we won our second game by 2 points making us 3rd place at our table. I felt really good about the close games. My partner and I had a great time. 

I was reminded this week of why I play go. I play go for the community. 

Now for the important stuff: 

My rated win loss ratio is 2:0    (100% Wins)

 18:02    Essential Go Activities  (over 50%)

 5:10        29%    Live Play 

 9:38        53%    Go Problems

 3:14        18%    Game Review

Positive Reinforcement for Games Lost by a Specific Margin

I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of my games for a number of months now. 

My teacher, Shawn Ray, encouraged me to create this spreadsheet as a launch pad for game review during our lessons on OGS.  When I play games on servers other than OGS I upload those games to my SGF Library on OGS. Putting links to all of the files in my spreadsheet allows us to easily begin reviews of games from any server.

In my most recent lesson Shawn and I talked about how he wants me to have positive reinforcement for games that I lose by fewer than 25 points. I am 8 kyu now on OGS. He said that when I get to 5 kyu that we should change that threshold to 15 points.

We came to the conclusion that I could continue to color code the Result and Rank columns as I had been doing all along in order to show the severity of wins and loses. However, he wanted me to color code the Games List column to be green for any game I lose by fewer than 25 points. He said that this would make me feel good about "close" games. The definition of "close" will get more stringent as I improve. I decided to go with a light green and a light red (pink).

Shawn said that he wished he could automate this for his students. It would actually be a great feature for OGS to add as an additional column with the ability to indicate the threshold, and to change that threshold over time depending on what your teacher recommends, or how much positive reinforcement you need.

Gosh! I actually feel so much better about myself now. I really do. 

I lost seven out of 14 games last week, but only two of them were by more than 25 points or by resignation, and one those games was only one point above the threshold.

Shawn is not only my teacher. He is my go psychologist.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I spend a little more than 36 hours on Go Activities this week. It looks as if this is going to be my new normal. I wanted to get 15 games in this week but I fell short by one game after I spent about two hours on the first Round of the Open in the e-Go Congress.

I was dead tired after that game, but I was also very disappointed because I had won it yet, due to a bunch of technical issues too great to go into here, the entire first round of the Open ended up in the trash heap. I found that discouraging enough to put me off playing my final game for the week.

Even though I only played 14 games I had over ten hours of game play. A good chunk of that time was spent on two AYD games and Round 1 of the Open yesterday. 

I am having a major problem with Fox. I can play games, but I am unable to download them. I'm not sure how to resolve this issue.

Now for the important stuff:

My rated win loss ratio is 3:6    (33% Wins)

 19:41    Essential Go Activities  (over 50%)

 10:04      51%    Live Play 

 7:04        36%    Go Problems

 2:33        13%    Game Review

 

Beginner's Night at the eCongress

I'm reaching out to my friends who may be curious about the game I play called Go. The Korean name for the game is Baduk, which is a lot easier to do a Google search for.

Anyone who knows me at all is aware that I devote a good portion of my life to playing and studying the Asian board game called Go.

If you are at all curious about the game I urge you to take advantage of a rare opportunity to learn about the game along with other beginners. Tuesday, July 20th in the evening at 8:00 PM EDT the eCongress is holding a Beginner's Night on Zoom utilizing the Online Go Server as the playing venue.

Rather than trying to describe this event to you I will provide a link to the document prepared by those hosting it for the American Go Association. All of the relevant details can be found in the document.

This event isn't just for total beginners. It is also for fairly new players who have the experience to  make it through a large board game, but want help learning more.

I will be attending the event as an observer though I might end up getting recruited to help depending on how many people show up.

The image above is the ending position of a 9x9 game played by my grandson Evan while he was visiting last month. We set up an account for him on the Online Go Server and he played a number of games with bots. I reviewed these games for him afterwards. I hope he continues to learn about go online.

Come join us for a night of Go. 

Discover a new passion.

My Week of Go Activities

 

Last week I put in fewer than 34 hours on Go Activities. I actually consider that to be a positive thing because I am trying to find some balance in my life.

In spite of a much lower number of hours than usual, I was able to play 15 games. This is fewer than I would like, and I am still trying to aim for 20 games per week, but I think I can be satisfied with 15 games.

The big news this week is that I created an account on the Fox go server. Interestingly all of my wins have been against 3k players.

Now for the important stuff:

My rated win loss ratio is 8:7    (53% Wins)

 18:56    Essential Go Activities  (over 50%)

 7:38      40%    Live Play 

 6:29      34%    Go Problems

 4:49      26%    Game Review

 

I Think I Got Someone Banned on Fox

Two days ago I created an account on the Fox Go Server. I had been wanting to do this for quite some time since apparently every serious go player has a Fox account. A number of my AYD friends are now playing on Fox and I need to be able to follow them there. As a Mac user, however, I needed to jump through a few hoops to be able to do this.

I eventually decided to install Parallels Desktop in order to be able to run the Fox Go Server. Crossover was not working for me. I am very happy with the way Parallels worked out because I did not want to play around with the command line which was another option. It was just easier to install a virtual machine to accomplish the task of playing on Fox.

I was lucky to be able to obtain the user name buzzsaw on Fox. I have the name buzzsaw on every go server I use now: KGS, OGS, Pandanet, and Fox.

I’ve played four games so far. I lost the first two and I won the second two. Those last two games were played as no komi games against 3k players. I am 5k.

This blog post is about the excitement involved in my most recent game.

Here is the board position when the excitement started. My opponent was typing things into the chat which I could not read. I informed him that I could not speak Chinese whereupon he accused me of being a dog.

I had just finished watching a live stream by Go Magic where I learned that Chinese refer to AI programs as dogs, so I suspected I was being accused of using AI, or even of being AI, which was actually quite exciting and complementary.

The full chat is included below in a series of screen captures. I did these captures so I could report his unsportsmanlike behavior. I also wanted to figure out how to keep him from playing with me again. I don’t need that kind of drama. I wanted to block this guy.

A friend of mine who had helped me learn how to use Fox suggested that I report this user. I noticed that there was an Admin button. I clicked it but did not see that it resulted in anything. However, an Admin must have looked at the conversation and banned him because his account had disappeared.

That saved my friend and me the trouble of posting these screen captures to Reddit. It also saved me the trouble of blocking him. 

It is worth noting that he sent me a game request immediately after the game was over. So he did want revenge. It would really be funny if he happened to be the same 3k I had beaten the day before.

I decided to create this blog post in order to document this exciting event. It is always a good day when you are accused of being an AI program by an angry Fox Player who is two stones stronger than you.

My Week of Go Activities

 

This week I spent over 40 hours on Go Activities. That is a little light for me, especially given that I played a lot of games this week. I tried to meet my goal of 20 games, but fell a bit short with 17 games.

New activities for this week include practicing Pair Go for the eCongress, trying some blitz games, and doing a Shadow Go game with a fellow Clossius student.

I did really well with my rated games, all of which were on OGS. I ranked up from 9k to 8k and appear to be on the verge of ranking up to 7k.

I achieved an impressive victory of 44.5 in an AYD League game. I was disappointed that a co teacher ended up conducting the review because I really wanted In-Seong to see that game and comment on it. I hope he clicks through this game before he does my yearly review which will be due in a couple weeks at the end of this season.

There are a few new features in my spreadsheet. I’ve added a column for the day of the week that I play a game. I have started to list blitz and Pair Go games in the events column. I color coded the “R” for game number five with a green cell to indicate that I ranked up with that game. If I rank down again I will indicate it with a pink cell. I only lost five games this week out of 17 and three of them were non rated.

I will admit to being a bit protective of my rank on OGS now that I have ranked up, and am close to ranking up again. I need to get back in there and play some more rated games.

Now for the important stuff:

My rated win loss ratio is 7:2    (78% Wins)

 20:23    Essential Go Activities  (over 50%)

 9:21      46%    Live Play 

 5:06      25%    Go Problems

 5:46      29%    Game Review

 

My Three Legged Study Stool

Financial advisors talk about the three legs of your retirement plan. They are Pension, Social Security, and Savings. 

Well, I date myself. They used to talk that way when people actually earned pensions. Being a retired teacher I’m lucky enough to have a pension, so my retirement plan does have three legs. 

The point is that three legs provide stability to a stool, so these three legs provide stability to your retirement plan. 

Since I have added private lessons to my Go Study Plan I have started to think of my plan as a stool with three legs.

What are these three legs? I’ll start with the order in which they were added.

1. Lectures and Spaced Repetition Problems at the Guo Juan Internet Go School.

I’ve been a member of the Internet Go School since its inception. During some years when I was not playing go I took time off from the Internet Go School, but that never lasted for long. I currently have over 1,000 consecutive days of study on the site. I have no plans to stop studying there as the site just gets better and better as more lectures and problem sets are added. The site was recently rebuilt from the ground up and looks fantastic. If you have not taken advantage of the free trial you should. Tell them buzzsaw sent you.

 

2. League Play at the American Yunguseng Dojang.

I've been studying with In-Seong Hwang now at the American Yunguseng Dojang since September of 2019. I joined following the U.S. Go Congress in Madison. Having gone for a year without playing a game between my last two congresses, I decided to join AYD purely to insure myself 45 serious games with reviews before my next Congress. 

That was the plan, but I found so much more in AYD. I found lectures that are mostly above my head, but are interesting nonetheless. They will be there for me to dive into seriously when I am stronger. I also found a sense of community, especially with players near my strength who have banded together to study and provide moral support to each other. We are the little fish in the very big pond of AYD. 

The European and American Yunguseng Dojang leagues are designed for students 12k and above. I was 9k when I signed up. Studying in AYD was a great start in getting serious about go again, but something was missing.

 

3. Private Lessons with Shawn Ray AKA Clossius. 

Having renewed my interest in playing go through AYD, I decided to get some personal attention to improve my love of the game. I'm no stranger to private lessons having taken more than 300 of them with Yilun Yang quite a few years ago. I came across Shawn Ray's Twitch Stream through a link on OGS near the end of 2020. 

A few of his students allow their lessons to be live streamed. It wasn't long after starting to watch those lessons that I decided I had to get some of that good lesson action for myself. I've taken weekly one hour lessons now with Clossius since the beginning of the year. He has reinforced my attention to the basics through his Clossi Approach. Check out his web site, and his Twitch stream to learn more. 

What I like about lessons with Clossius is that he applies just enough pressure to get me to go outside of my comfort zone. For instance, I'm playing 20 games a week now. I never would have chosen to do that on my own. I'm doing more go problems than I ever did before, and I am enjoying it, but I needed the push. 

Shawn has more faith in my ability than I have in myself, and as a result I am cautiously optimistic about improving. He isn't just my teacher. He is my coach. Even if I add in occasional lesson sets with professionals, which I hope to do, it is likely that I will continue to study with Clossius. I need a coach. I've thought about doing a ten lesson series again with Yilun Yang or perhaps Guo Juan. I've heard good things about other teachers as well, and I might try a few of them.

The pandemic has eliminated across the board play for me. The 2020 Congress was cancelled, and the 2021 Congress has been cancelled as well. I participated in the eCongress last year, and am doing so again this year. I am promoting to 8 kyu as a result of having gone 5:0 at my most recent online tournament.

I am hoping that we are going to finally get a Go Congress in 2022, and so far it looks as if that is going to happen. As regional tournaments start up I will consider attending them even though for the past ten years my only tournament experiences have been at the U.S. Go Congress.  I hope to change that moving forward.

I think I have come up with a good study plan with my three legged stool, and when we finally get to play again in real life I will get to see if my plan has paid off. I think my team will get me as far as I am capable of going.

My Team

Guo Juan - Professional

In-Seong Hwang - Amateur High Dan

Shawn Ray - AGA Mid Dan

 

My Week of Go Activities

 

This week is the second week of my vacation from playing Go. I am finding It very refreshing. I played one YD League Game this week. I spent an hour and 13 minutes on that game. That was the extent of my playing for the entire week. There were times when I actually felt like playing last week, but I wanted to give myself a rest. I'm glad I did.

In spite of not playing I managed to put in over 33 hours on Go Activities. Watching Others Play came in first followed by Clossius Lesson (Others). I was catching up on lessons played by my YD friends who are also Clossius students. I also focused on Spaced Repetition Problems from Guo Juan’s Internet Go School.

I’ve made a good start back with playing even though my company has not yet gone home. They will be here through tomorrow afternoon. However, if I were to achieve my 20 game goal for my lesson next week, I needed to start playing four games a day on Sunday. Here is my progress so far for the week. I won four out of five of my games plus I ranked back up to 8k on OGS.

The one loss was embarrassing, but instructive. I lost focus, and got confused about the status of some stones. I had previously cut off three stones which I could capture easily to get myself out of trouble. I got flustered and forgot that fact. If I had kept my focus I would have easily gone on to win that game even though I lost a few points in the middle of the board. Here is the game for anyone who is interested.

I play a little trick on myself in setting my goal for 20 games by putting the day of the week I intend to play games into the handicap cell on my spreadsheet. That helps to keep me on track.

Something big that happened this week is that I had a frank discussion with my husband about the time I spend studying go. It turns out that I had been focusing on Go Problems and Go Videos above Live Play because I wanted to be able to be interrupted from my study if my husband wanted my attention. I explained this to him, and he agreed to accept the fact that, in order for me to play my games during the  day, when I am more fresh, that I will need to be inaccessible to him for periods of time in the neighborhood of 30 minutes at a time. I think this is going to be a literal game changer. It will definitely make me more willing to play in the middle of the day. I had often been postponing my game play for the late evening after my husband was asleep, which was not optimal for me at all.

I'm feeling a lot better about playing again.

I Made the Leaderboard on Guo Juan's IGS

 

I've stopped trying to do extra problems to get into the top 10 of the Leaderboard on Guo Juan's Internet Go School. Some days, however, I manage to make it onto the board simply by doing my due problems early enough in the day. Today was such a day. I hit number 9 today. Yea me!

I love the Internet Go School. It is an essential component of my go study.

Last week I played only one game because I was on a vacation from playing for two weeks. I did spend a lot of time on go activities, however, spending over four hours on Spaced Repetition Problems from the Internet Go School site.

I also spent nearly two hours listening to new lectures in order to add more problems to my due problems set.

If you are interested in more of what I have to say about Guo Juan's site, which I highly recommend to all go players, please check out this recent blog post.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I engaged in over 33 hours of go activities this week, which is low for me. I have company in the house for two weeks, so I cancelled my next two go lessons and cut way back on game play this week, playing only four games. I am amazingly happy not playing. This week I only played my required league games for AYD and the Clossi League plus a teaching game with Clossius during my lesson on Tuesday.

I stole moments from family time to watch others play, to watch videos when possible, and to review my own lesson as well as the lessons of my friends. I pretty much kept up with my go problems, which I consider my most essential go activity.

I created a new category this week because I was teaching my grandson how to play go. He is visiting for two weeks. I set up an account for him on OGS. The first few games he played I coached him a bit. Then I told him it was time to start learning from his mistakes. He played so I could not see the game in progress because we learned that I can’t help but butt in if I can see what he is doing. We review the games after they are played. I am hoping that he keeps up with this after he returns home.

I’m not going to bother sorting out essential go activity from non essential go activity this week.

My goal next week is to spend time catching up on YD game reviews.

My Week of Go Activities

 

This week I put in a little over 50 hours on Go Activities. I fell short of my goal of 20 games because I had to clean the house and do other preparations for a two week visit from family which is coming up soon. In spite of that, I still managed to play a respectable 15 games. You can see my list of games for the week in my spreadsheet.

I added two new categories to my activities this week. I did that to fine tune the time I spend on all things Clossius. These new categories also help to obscure the amount of time I am actually spending on Clossius related activities. For those who are curious it came to over 14 hours this week. 

There are now five Clossius activity categories. Clossius Lesson (Others) is new. I watch the lessons of two of my fellow YD members who are also Clossius students, and I decided to give that activity its own category rather than counting the time under Clossius Patreon, YouTube. 

Another new category is Clossius Group Class. This class is something new that Clossius is doing for Patrons at the $25.00 tier level. Being at a higher lesson tier I will get this benefit as well. The first month of classes is free for everyone as details are worked out. I not only participate in the class live, but I find it valuable to review the class through the recorded video the next day. We are practicing stone visualization, so being able to pause the video to concentrate on where the stones are supposed to be can be helpful.

Now for the important stuff:

My rated win loss ratio is 4:6    (40% Wins)

 20:18    Essential Go Activities  

 7:49      38%    Live Play

 7:15      36%    Go Problems

 5:14      26%    Game Review

 

I'm having family visit for two weeks. Therefore I am cancelling my next two lessons with Clossius and cutting down on go activity for the next two weeks. I will be playing my league games.  I also hope to participate in the Clossius Group Class either live or by watching it after the fact. 

I'll be back to taking lessons with Clossius in July.

My Week of Go Activities

 

Surprise! Live Play came in first, for the first time ever.

I am giving it a place of honor in the blog post.

This week I put in nearly 53 hours on Go Activities. I am proud that I increased my Live Play time to nearly ten hours. I increased my number of games played to 20 at the suggestion of my teacher. I agree that this increase in play is going to be good for me. I also agree that the number of games is probably right. 

However, the sharp increase turned out to be painful for me. However, the pressure was entirely self imposed.  My issues are my own, and no one else's fault.

I don’t think I have ever been quite as miserable playing go as I have been in the last half of this week. I felt compelled to fit in the games I needed in order to meet my quota. I had started my week at a rate that was better than usual, but not nearly good enough if I were to meet my new goal. I put myself under that pressure. That was my decision. I could have started playing four games a day on the fourth day rather than attempting to make up for lost time. I could also have built in a rest day on Saturday as I hope to do moving forward. Lesson learned.

I was doing quite well at the beginning of the week. On Sunday I resurrected my goddess account and got her to a healthy 5k. I even got a resignation from a 3k on Tuesday. But after playing two games on Tuesday with 14 more games to be played in the final four days, the pressure set in. It got to me, and it was down hill from there. I managed to stabilize goddess at 5k even after losing four games in a row.

However, after most of the week was over, I had one more day to play, but I had five more games to complete. The rating of goddess was looking tenuous, so I decided to focus on OGS for those last five games. I thought I could hold 8k there even if I lost since I had recently been as high as 7k. That expectation proved to be folly on my part. I went on to lose four games in a row, dropped to 9k, and finished up the day with a 1.5 point win.

I was on a downward spiral from Wednesday on. I was miserable. I’m not sure if I was miserable because I was losing or if I was losing because I was miserable. I don’t remember which came first. Regardless, it was a most unpleasant four days.

That being said, I am not giving up on playing 20 games a week. I just need to figure out how to do it without making myself so miserable.

In my spreadsheet for next week I have committed myself to playing four games for five days. Putting the days of the week into the Handicap cell may help me to meet my goal. It is my plan to rest from Live Play on Saturday and Sunday. If I slack a little during the week I will still have Saturday to make up for it. Or I may choose to forgive myself the slack for my mental health and promise myself both Saturday and Sunday off.

It is Sunday today. I am really happy to not be playing. I took advantage of the time today to review my lesson from last week which is a real gem. That video can be found here. My lesson starts at about minute six into the video.

And to be clear, I know that it is totally my own fault that I was miserable this week. I put the pressure on myself. There was no pressure from my teacher, merely a suggestion to play the 20 games.

I think I need a go psychologist.

Now for the important stuff:

My rated win loss ratio is 6:10    (38% Wins)

 30:00    Essential Go Activities  (over half)

 9:53      33%    Live Play

 12:06    40%    Go Problems

 8:01      27%    Game Review

I am hoping for a happier week.