My Week of Go Activities - Playing a BenKyo Baduk Lesson on a Real Board

 

In one of my lessons this week with BenKyo Baduk (Ben Mantle) we went over a joseki. He wants me to begin practicing its use in my games. I said I would play it out a real board first so I decided to watch my lesson video with a real board. I also played out a few other highlights of the lesson.

I was especially interested in starting to play things out on a real board because I have not played a game across the board in nearly three years. The last time was at the 2019 Go Congress in Madison. I don't want to be at a disadvantage when I sit down to play at the Congress.

Aside from enjoying my lesson on a real board, this is how the rest of my week looked:

It was a relatively light week on Go Activity with about 23 hours spent. Nearly seven of those hours were spent on Live Play. Nine games were played. Many of them were League Games.

I'm looking forward to the U.S. Go Congress in a few weeks. I'm really excited. I'll be meeting friends I made over the last three years in the Yunguseng Dojang. I will also be meeting new friends from the BenKyo Baduk Discord server.

My Week of Go Activities - Special Training with In-seong Hwang

 

This summer In-seong Hwang is offering something very special. He is offering pre Congress private lessons and post Congress game reviews. I signed up right away when I heard about this. So did a number of others. The three lesson packages were sold out the same day they were announced. There were only 13 of the packages and they went very fast. This prompted In-seong to add more lesson packages in August. 

My 90 minute private lessons will take place on KGS using Discord voice. I'll get to speak in these lessons. I will get three of them on three consecutive days about a week before the U.S. Go Congress begins.

The second part of the Special Training consists of a two hour private review during which we will go over my five Congress games, or any five games of my choosing. it remains to be seen if I am going to do well with recording.

I'm going to have a lesson heavy month in July with private lessons from four teachers. 

I look forward to seeing In-seong at the Congress. I attended his lectures at two Congresses in the past but did not actually meet him before.

I am in the C1 league in AYD this cycle and expect to be losing all of my games. I have risen to a level where it is not really possible for me to compete, but I am going to try my best. In my AYD game last night I had to play even against a 3k. I failed miserably. In-seong asked me if I play mostly stronger players, which is the case. He suggested that I play 3 stone handicap games against weaker players to practice fighting back from a lost position. I believe that Clossius gave pretty much the same advice once. So I guess it is time to try to make those handicap games happen.

The is what my week looked like this:

It was a light week for go activity with only 23 hours spent.

Live play came in at first place at over seven hours.

I was asked to play some rated games this week, but I am afraid that Clossius is going to be disappointed. 

It was the final week of the month and I had to hustle to get in league games in the BenKyo Leagues. I expect to get a few titles in the BenKyo Free League (soon to be renamed the BenKyo Title Tournament). I also expect to win the BenKyo B League again.

Ben will be disappointed about something this week too.

He asked me to start playing different openings in my games that are not league games. Unfortunately, all of my games were League Games this week.

Tsumego suffered this week.

I must do better.

My Week of Go Activities - One Move Life and Death Problems

 

I generally don't spend a lot of time reading go books. This week, however, I spent over five hours with "Workbook: One-Move Life and Death Problems". This is an interactive go book available to read on the SmartGo One app.

The book provides detailed analysis of dead shapes. I found myself going back to it over and over again. And, interestingly, I found myself trying to find those dead shapes in some of my games this week. I'll be spending more time with this book and the others written by Thomas Redecker.

The screen capture below is a taste of the type of detail to be found in this book.

Otherwise this is how my week looked.

I spent nearly 31 hours on go activities.

Live play came in at a respectable 2nd place with nearly five hours of time clocked. That isn't bad for six games. I slowed down considerably this week. I'm going to try to keep that up.

My Week of Go Activities - Moving Up to AYD League C1

 

Last week In-seong Hwang predicted, "Something good is coming." Last night I played my last match of the current cycle of the American Yunguseng Dojang, and something good did come.

I won my final match by 1.5 points. This was an important game because if I were to have lost it I would have remained in the C2 League, but since I won it, I will rise to the C1 League.

The game was a good one including a fairly epic ko. In-seong saved the review until the end last night, and introduced it as the classic AYD match. That made me chuckle a bit.

Below you can see that I managed to win 14 out of my last 20 games in AYD, but more importantly, I managed to break the 1,000 level in the YD rating system.

My good friend, Drewch, had an important match last night too. It determined if he got to stay in C1 or fall to C2. Thankfully he won his match which means that Drewch and I will be going head to head again very soon. Ben Mantle streamed our most recent match which occurred in cycle 1 of the current season. Perhaps we can get him to stream the upcoming match.

Now for the usual weekly activities information:

I spent nearly 32 hours on Go Activities last week. It was a slow week. 

It may have been slow on activity, but sadly, it was fast in terms of my speed of play. I was having trouble making myself play, and I decided to go back to the Fox server Tuesday afternoon after having not played there in a number of months. I proceeded to play and lose six games in the course of an hour and 20 minutes.

I got some good advice from a strong go player though, who advised me to stop playing for the day if I lose two games in a row. That is a good idea and I will try to make myself do that in the future.

I actually played nine games on Tuesday. Late in the evening, after playing my MGA League match, I returned to Fox for revenge. I won two games that night on Fox.

During my Private Lesson with Ben Mantle yesterday he reviewed my first three Fox losses. I will save the final three for Clossius today in our streamed lesson which has been scheduled for 4:30 PM EDT.

My Week of Go Activities - Something Good is Coming

 

This is the board position of my game last night in the American Yunguseng Dojang at the point of resignation. I played a 4k and managed to get a resignation from her which felt really great.

Let me explain the sub title of my blog post today "Something Good is Coming".

I've been studying with In-seong Hwang through the American Yunguseng Dojang for nearly three years now. I've played over 130 games during that time and my ratings graph shows that I have gained nearly 200 ratings points in the system.

The rating system rewards you more for wins against players you are expected to lose to. It also punishes you less for losses to those players. You can see this in the chart below. It shows the various amounts rewarded or deducted due to my last 9 games.

My most recent win against a 4k earned me 17 points in the rating system while my loss against a 3k (2nd on the list) only lost me 4 points.

So what does, "Something good is coming" mean?

I've struggled with passive play. I've gotten a lot of feedback from In-seong on the need to play more actively. It has not been easy to do, and I keep working on it.

Last night I got the best review ever from In-seong. He had many good things to say and capped off his comments with the prediction that, "Something good is coming." I hope I will not disappoint him and my other teachers who have also been encouraging more active play.

In-seong Hwang is going to be in attendance at the U.S. Go Congress this year. I had attended his lectures at the Congress in 2018 and 2019, but I can't really say that I ever actually met him because we were not introduced, nor did we speak. I am looking forward to actually meeting him this year. He says that he recognizes a great many names of the attendees as current or former students.

Now for the usual weekly information...

It was a light week for go activity with only about 24 hours spent.

I took a bit of a break this week and played mostly only those games that I needed to play for leagues, though I did play one rated game on OGS.

Notably I spent nearly three hours editing and reviewing the file from my lesson with Yilun Yang last week. I want to get the most from my lessons with Yang during my third stint at lessons with him. I still have some lessons from seven years ago that have not yet been edited. That is not going to happen this time.

Something else I did last week was spending a good deal of time playing around with SmartGo One. I want to be adept at using it for game recording by the time I get to the Congress.

My Week of Go Activities - BenKyo Speed Run

 

The big event this week was BenKyo's speed run from 8 kyu to 8 dan on Fox. Actually he did not make it all the way to 8 dan because a lot of the weaker players didn't know how to resign. He devoted 12 hours per day to the Speed Run over the course of three days. I was in attendance for more than two thirds of that time. It definitely dominated my activities this week.

The Speed Run was supposed to be two days, but due to the generosity of the people in the stream, who gifted a great many subs, the event was expanded to three days.

An additional goal was created for a future 12 hour special stream event with a variety of activities. Once again, the stream stepped up, and that goal was met as well. This event will take place soon.

I clocked nearly 48 hours on Go Activity this week.

I had great lessons this week with Yilun Yang, Ben Mantle, and Clossius. I am truly blessed.

I'd like to do a special shout out this week for Ben Mantle's Patreon. Take a look at the great tiers that he offers.

If you check out the VOD from the last day of the Speed Run you can catch one of my lessons with Ben at about the 11:07:00 mark. This VOD will expire in about a week.

Get on Ben's Discord server and watch his live streams to learn if studying with BenKyo Baduk is right for you.

My Week of Go Activities - Yilun Yang Returns

 

I spent 32 hours on Go Activities this week. 

Tsumego at 101 Weiqi came in at the number one spot.

The big news this week is that I am starting lessons again with Yilun Yang. I first started lessons with Yang in 1998.  I had taken a workshop with him in 1997 after which I attended my first U.S. Go Congress. It was a half a year after that when I began lessons with Yang.

My first round of lessons with Yang lasted for 5.5 years. The reason I stopped in 2003 was that I was still teaching and I felt as if I was not devoting enough time to go to justify continuing with lessons.

This is from our final lesson in 2003.

In 2007 I retired from education and started up lessons with Yang again and began blogging. My second round of lessons with Yang lasted for 8.5 years. I got to the point where the only games I played were with Yang and at the yearly Go Congress. I should have gotten more active with go and continued with lessons, but I stopped once again believing that I would never start lessons again.

Things changed though in 2019 when I joined the American Yunguseng Dojang. I made many friends online, and got a lot more active with playing and studying. I took on two teachers for private lessons, Shawn Ray and Ben Mantle. 

As the Go Congress got closer I started thinking that I should start up with Yang again to complete my excellent team of teachers. I had my first lesson back yesterday afternoon. I numbered it 337a using the same numbering system I had used in my previous lessons. Those lessons were two hours each and almost always resulted in two files so I would append the number of the lesson with a letter. Sometimes I would have Yang review games and end up with four files for a lesson. My new lessons with Yang are an hour and a half so if we do a teaching game it will only be one game rather than the two games we used to play, but there will still be occasions when I have him review games rather than play a teaching game, so I'll continue to use the letters.

So I just had my 337th lesson with Yilun Yang. I hope there will be many more.

I'm a little late with posting this week. I am already four days into the next week and it is looking decidedly unbalanced so far.

Ben streamed for 12 hours straight three days in a row and I managed to be in attendance for about two thirds of the time. He was doing a speed run up the ranks from 8k to 8d. He didn't get all the way because the weaker players especially don't seem to know how to resign.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I am really late posting about Go Activities, so I am going to post two weeks and not comment on it very much. Then I will move on from there. Hopefully next week I will have more to say. Above you see the chart and stats from the most recent week.

Below you will see the chart and stats from two weeks ago.

That's it for this week's post.

My Week of Go Activities - 5k Certificate on 101 Weiqi

 

When will it end?

I earned another certificate on the 101 Weiqi web site. This time for 5k. 

I do think I have reached a level that I will maintain now for a couple of months. I don't think I will be seeing a 4k certificate any time in the new future. 

I'm now doing five problem sets of 10 problems each every day at my own level. Those 5k problems are challenging.

It was a very active week with over 42 hours of Go Activity. Tsumego came in at the number one activity again this week. That is likely to continue.

I'll make this a short post since I am posting late in the week.

My Week of Go Activities - 6k Now on 101 Weiqi

 

I was getting a little discouraged about my progress on 101 Weiqi, but I managed to get another certificate this morning. I then checked when I got my 7kk certificate and realized that it was only eight days before, so I am actually making good progress. It is going to slow down now for sure.

Today I decided to edit my homework assignments so that I am getting five sets of 20 problems every day.

I believe that my intuition is improving on these go problems because I could see where this problem was going within seconds. That feels good.

Here are the stats for this week on Go Activities:

It was a very active week for Go Activities with over 37 hours spent. Most of that time was spent studying.

Tsumego 101 Weiqi came in at the number one spot again consuming at close to 10 hours and 25% of time spent.

A new category was created to time the 9x9 games that I have been playing to practice playing slowly.

I played a small number of games this week aside from the 9x9 games which are not being placed on my spreadsheet, so you do not see them here. I tried isolating under handicapped games at the bottom of the sheet, but will not be doing it again since that turned out to be a pain in the butt.

Clossius seemed pleased with my ability to slow down in the 9x9 games. I admitted that this skill has not transferred yet to my 19x19 games but I think I am doing a bit better. We decided to find a way to slow me down in my regular games. Before I can make a move in a game I need to find a cut and read it whether it is meaningful or not just to have something to do to slow myself down. 

I will be doing slow 9x9 games again every day this week before moving on to slow 13x13 games next week.