My Week of Go Activities

 

30 hours a week for Go Activity appears to be my new normal. The fact that I am no longer counting time spent watching others play has a lot to do with that.

Live Play came in at second place for the week at nearly eight hours. I played 24 games. All but one of those games qualified for the Western Server Challenge. Games took about 20 minutes on average. All but one of them was blitz, so that isn't too bad.

I had a fairly impressive losing streak. When Clossius asked me how I felt about it I said, "I really don't give a crap." He applauded that attitude, and I believe we both feel that the Western Server Challenge has been been good for me. It has eliminated my fear of losing and my fear of ranking down. 

At the end of my losing streak I was 10k for 15 minutes. I took it in stride, and the game that I played as 10k which got me back to 9k started me on a fairly impressive winning streak. It brought me back to 8k where I now sit precariously.

There was only one loss during that winning streak, but it was only a 1.5 point loss.

My progress on the WSC continues to be steady. I have 90 games played with 10 more games to go in four days. I only need to play 2.5 games per day now. I'd like to finish the challenge at least one day ahead of the deadline if possible. 23 players have already met the challenge. I hope to join them soon.

I think the WSC is great to do once a year. Some might claim that it builds bad habits by encouraging people to play too fast, but I think habits are built in more than a month. I've actually done better with blitz than I expected and I have found that I enjoy it. I expect that I will continue to play it as a change of pace.

I admit that I am looking forward to playing games with longer time limits and actually getting into overtime in those games now that I am no longer so afraid of being in overtime.

My Week of Go Activities

 

It was an average week for Go Activity with nearly 32 hours of activity.

Almost 30% of that time was spent on live play. I played 24 games and spent about 25 minutes per game. The AYD Game and the two BenKyo League games took considerably more time than any of the blitz games which clocked in at as low as 14 minutes in some cases.

I am still participating in the Western Server Challenge run by Clossius. Today I was one game ahead of him, but I am sure he will get to 100 games before I do.

I have 41 more games to go in the challenge. I am enjoying playing blitz this week. The lesson I had with Clossius where he and I played blitz helped me get more comfortable with it.

My Week of Go Activities

 

It was a light week for Go Activity by my usual standards. I only put in about 27 hours.

Live Play came in at the number one spot at nearly eight hours.

There were 23 games played, so the average time per game came to about 20 minutes. That includes time spent by both players.

I am so focused on playing my games that I have spent very little time on review and study. 

With the number of games I need to play, and the number of days I have left in the month, I am going to need to play 3.3 games per day to reach my goal of 100 games, so I am still on target to reach my goal by the end of the month. 

This can be done.

My Week of Go Activities - Plus First Week of the Western Server Challenge

 

My spreadsheet got the seal of approval from Clossius during my lesson because it contained 20 games. It would have had even more if the Western Server Challenge had begun on Friday when my week starts. Clossius was all smiles over my spreadsheet.

It isn't too late to join The Western Server Challenge. There is a button to sign up.

My plan is to keep an eye on how many games I must play to get to 100 and to try to stay ahead of it a little.

I added two new columns for the month of March to track games that count toward the challenge.

I spent nearly nine hours on live play for 17 games. The last three games were counted toward BenKyo Personal Stream Time as they were a part of the Guided Go with BenKyo stream. Some of the games were as short as 12 minutes. Games come to a little over 30 minutes per game on average with league games taking the longest.

I'm playing a lot of games at blitz speed, but it is feeling good to get in a lot of games. There should be more than 20 games next week. Let's see how many.

Clossius is a great teacher and I must give his lessons a shout out. We've had 54 lessons together so far. You can watch him teach most of his lessons during his live streams on Twitch because most of his students have generously agreed to share their lessons with the public. 

You can watch my most recent lesson with Clossius to see if lessons with Clossius may be right for you. If you view this lesson you will see that he and I have a very good time together. 

Guided Go with BenKyo

Ben and I had a great stream last night in which he guided me in playing three games against opponents who were fully aware of what was happening. They muted the stream so they could not hear what Ben and I were saying. They knew that they would get the benefit of that discussion by watching the VOD later. Games were not rated, and were resigned by me 40 minutes into the game so we could move on to the next game.

Everyone knew what was happening and no one got hurt.

This was a stacked two hour Twitch Redemption on my part. I put together two of my 60 minute slots. Ben generously added in some time at the end of the two hours to offer everyone some joseki knowledge about an attachment to the large knight's enclosure. He also generously did a review of the final game of Guided Go,  which was a game I played with Kdar.

I'm hoping that those who watched the stream found it entertaining. I'll probably be doing this again.

I'd like to credit Clossius with the inspiration for this special stream. He had played Guided Go with me in one of my lessons with Drewch who is a student of both Clossius and Ben, as am I. 

If you didn't get to see the stream last night check out the VOD.

Thanks to those who participated.

My Week of Go Activities - Plus Link to a BenKyo Baduk Review

I came dangerously close this week to going into "overtime" on my full time job of studying go. I put in just shy of 40 hours on Go Activities.

For the first time in quite a few weeks Live play came in at the number one activity. In order to achieve that I needed to play 18 games. I should actually say 16 games because two of them were teaching games played during lessons so they did not count toward the Live Play total time.

In fairness, the last two BuzzKill games were actually played on the first day of the next week, but I am counting them toward this week. I played them specifically to be reviewed during my lesson because Clossius had asked me to play four BuzzKill games. I had not managed to do it because I was very focused on playing BenKyo League and Canadian League games before the end of the month. Therefore I played two BuzzKill games right before my lesson.

During the Clossi Class on Wednesday I needed to look for a game I played as white. It was then that I realized I needed another column for my spreadsheet. Say, "Hello" to the C column. C for color.

Up to this point I have been doing all of my cell colors manually. Clossi suggested that I try coloring the Color Column conditionally based on the contents of the cell. I was able to figure that out.

I tried coloring the Rank and Result Columns based on the contents of the Result Column. I could color just the Result Column, but could not figure out how to extend that color into the Rank Column. I'll get it figured out.

My attempts to play BuzzKill style have been imperfect, and I need to keep working on it. I'm pleased to say that I can already see improvements in my games as buzzsaw. I guess I am making baby steps toward the desired goal.

Next week the Western Server Challenge begins. I do not expect to compete with anyone but myself. I just want to get in 100 games and earn a badge for that on OGS.

I had a review with Ben Mantle last night during his regularly scheduled Twitch Stream. In order to be able to attend at that time to get my review I rescheduled my American Yunguseng Dojang game. If you would like to see my game review you will find it at the very beginning of the VOD for the stream.

My review was supposed to be a 45 minute Patreon Twitch Time Redemption, but Ben was, once again, more generous with his time. The game was an AYD game. Though it had already been reviewed once, I like giving Ben a chance to go into greater detail on these AYD games. 

Ben's Tier 3 on Patreon comes with a 45 minute Twitch Time slot each month.

My Week of Go Activities - Mrs. Clossius is a Great Streamer

 

I put in over 38 hours this week on Go Activities. That is a lot of time. I actually had to do two screen captures in order to list all of my activities because they would not all fit on my iPhone screen. You can see a little gap between the two lists above.

My number one activity this week was watching Mrs. Clossius stream. 

Mrs. Clossius is a fairly recent go streamer. She and Clossius often stream at the same time from the same room and you can hear the other in the background as they stream. It isn't really annoying because it is the same subject matter.

I'm really enjoying watching Mrs. Clossius because she is just about the same go strength as I am. She and I have a similar style of play. She is a good streamer and engages her viewers well. Give her a look, and give her some love in the form of a follow, or even a sub. You can find her at Paige_dyer.

This was a light week for game play.

I played an accidental blitz game this week by accidentally clicking on the blitz button on OGS when I was trying to figure out how to change settings. It was pretty exciting, and I might do it some more on purpose.

In my lesson with Clossius on Friday we reviewed two games and then played a teaching game where we talked about me attacking and defending in sente. That was fun, and we definitely should do that again.

This week I am supposed to play four rated games with BuzzKill, and work on my attacking and defending in sente.

I started the week with a bang by playing four BenKyo League Games today.

My Week of Go Activities

 

Nearly 31 hours were spent on Go Activities this week. I spent a small amount of time on a great number of activities to the extent that in order to do a screen capture of all activities at once I had to cut the hours total from the top of the list and include it as part of my pie chart above.

The Clossius Live Stream once again came in at the number one spot, followed by Live Play, followed by my BenKyo Private Lesson time. 

I had a 90 minute lesson with Ben, which actually ran a bit over time. However, the bulk of the time indicated above was spent reviewing my very first BenKyo Private Lesson from nearly a month ago. Thursday I had my second Private Lesson with BenKyo, and I am scheduled for lessons for the next two weeks. So in February I will have three lessons with Ben Mantle. 

I am only entitled to two lessons a month from Ben on the Tier 7 of his Patreon. However, I developed a slight backlog of lesson time which I am redeeming as quickly as possible, thus the three lessons for February.

Once my backlog time is redeemed a month of instructional time with Ben will look like this template:

I get so much instructional time from Ben at Tier 7 that I felt the need to create a spreadsheet to keep track of redeeming it. The spreadsheet actually has other cells to the right for recording links to lesson videos and VODs from Twitch. I also have cells for notes.

I get 165 minutes of time on Ben's Twitch Stream which can be stacked, which means it can be combined in any way I want. That is not to mention the time that will be devoted to the game review I get which comes with Tier 5.

I can schedule time in advance or ask for it spontaneously when Ben is streaming. I also get three hours of lesson time (two 90 minute lessons). All Tiers include benefits from previous Tiers. The spreadsheet above shows the Tier at which a benefit kicks in.

Here is what my games looked like for this week:

I played 12 games. Seven of them were rated. BuzzKill played four games, all of them after 10:00 PM. I'm tired when I play as BuzzKill so I am amazed that I am at 6k on KGS with this account.

The purpose of the BuzzKill account is to play more aggressively. I'm working on it, but it is definitely baby steps.

In my Friday lesson Clossius reviewed the two most recent BuzzKill games. After that we played a brief game in which I was not allowed to defend in gote. Nor was I allowed to make a big move if there was something to attack. I found the exercise useful.

My Week of Go Activities: I Won The January BenKyo League By Brute Force

I'll make short work of my usual activity charts because I want to devote the bulk of this post to writing about the BenKyo League, and promoting it a bit.

It was a busy week with almost 35 hours of Go Activity. Nearly 50% of that time was spent watching Live Streams. Clossius came in at position #1. He's gotten serious about doing more streaming in the new year, and he lived up to his promise in a big way this week.

Also this week is a benchmark lesson with Clossius. It is lesson #50.

 

Now for the big news this week:

I managed to win the January BenKyo League by brute force alone. For the first time this month we were allowed to play every other league player twice which clearly worked to my advantage. It would also have worked to the advantage of anyone else willing to put in the time and the effort to schedule and play a large number of games.  

Below is a portion of the League Spreadsheet that shows the points earned by each participant at the end of the month. My row is highlighted in green. The player in the lead is always highlighted in green on the table and, as far as I know, Ben did not need to highlight a different row throughout the month.

When I say that I won by brute force I mean that even though I lost half of my games, I played so many that I earned enough points to pull well ahead of my closest competitor. I played a total of 16 games while he played 8. He had an impressive win ratio, losing only one game. However, the league awards three points for a win and two points for a loss to encourage participation. Therefore, playing many games can result in a win if other players fail to fill out their row. 

I have no doubt that my main competitor would have won easily if he had been able to fill his row, so I kept a careful eye on the situation, going so far as to play two additional games on the final day of the month to be extra careful.

Clicking on the full table below provides context. 

Aside from the one player who said he intended to be inactive this month, I managed to fill all but two spaces on my row.

Given the fact that my AGAID# is 8, my results feel somehow fated in retrospect. 8 wins, 8 losses.

The BenKyo League is a Tier 4 benefit of BenKyo Baduk on Patreon.

Now is the perfect time to join in the league since the month is just beginning. 

All games are handicapped so everyone has a chance to win the league. Victory comes with a prize of a 90 minute Private Lesson with Ben. Join Tier 4 and ask Ben to add you to the table. 

Let's play!

My Week of Go Activities: I Jumped to Tier 7 of BenKyo Patronage

 

It was an active week with nearly 30 hours of Go Activity. The BenKyo Live Stream once again dominated my time.

I played eight games this week, and they took a little over a half an hour on average. They were a bit fast because they were mostly BenKyo League Games with 20 minutes of basic time.

Six out of eight of my games were BenKyo League games this week. The league is handicapped so these games necessitated the addition of a new column on my spreadsheet. I now record the number of handicap stones for each game.

You will see that I gave 9 stones in two games this week and 7 stones in another two games. The pink highlighted cell in the Rank column indicates that I fell from 7k to 8k as a result of three losses in a row this week. I am not concerned.

Look at all of those BenKyo League games!

All but one of my games this week was colored "Feel Good Green" in spite of the fact that I lost five out of eight of my games. The one big loss I had was an AYD Game where I had essentially killed an invasion but failed to pull back one line as I finished blocking it off. Big mistake. Live and learn.

You can see my shame here: SashaOtter-buzzsaw

The sad truth is that I nearly played the correct move in the game. I beat myself up about it for a while, but not for long. I am getting a lot better about moving forward emotionally after a bad loss.

My Go Problems suffered this week as a result of putting my attention on the January BenKyo League. I was intent on trying to schedule as many games as possible. I'd like to win the league at least once for the glory.