My Week of Go Activities: I Like to Watch

 

Recently I have started to spend a great deal of time watching a couple of my friends play on Fox. I have a good friend who recently started to play on Fox and since he created his account on August 1st he has played 222 games. That is a lot of games in 30 days. I really admire how much he plays and he has ranked up a few times since he started and is now 10k. I can't remember where he started. I think it may have been 15k.

I, on the other hand, started at 18k where I met up with some sandbaggers. I have only gotten up to 13k in a longer period of time, but I have played many fewer games. I double ranked up once and have only single ranked up since 16k. I missed my chance to double rank up from 14k to 12k. It was so close.

I have some serious catching up to do with my friend.

Now for my usual weekly content.

I spent over 24 hours on Go Activity last week. Five and a half of those hours were spent watching others play. I don't even log all of the time I spend watching others play so that is probably an under estimation.

I took a bit of a break from my own play last week. I was able to do this because I had not had a lesson with Clossius for two weeks, and knew that I had a great many games for him to review during our two hour lesson.

I basically took a week off with the three games I played being played on the last day of my week which runs from Friday through Thursday because my lessons with Clossius are on Fridays.

The games in the "Reviewed" Column with blue cells were reviewed during my lesson on Friday. Clossius has gotten very efficient at reviewing games because of the 20 minute time restriction on reviews for NAOL. My lessons are two hours long and he managed to review six games during my most recent lesson. I find that impressive.

I have another lesson with Clossius on the 1st of September so I am going to have to make an effort to get in at least six games worthy of review. I've got three already, so this should not be a problem.

My Week of Go Activities: Back to AGA 9k

 

First of all I managed to win enough games to rank up from 14k to 13k with my sandbagging account on Fox. I only have to win three more games and I will be able to double rank up to 12k which would be great. I only double ranked up once and that was from 18k to 16k so this might be my last chance to double rank up before I reach the level of my legit Fox account which is 6k.

In other news, the U.S. Open games from the U.S. Go Congress have been rated and I managed to rank up to 9k again this year. I've been riding the rail between DDK and SDK for four congresses now. Previous to that I was very solid 9k and was even 8k for a while in 2012.

My goal for next year is to get to 8k based on my Congress results.

I also have a goal of getting my NAOL rank back in sync with the AGA rating. Currently my NAOL rank is 13k which is actually kind of laughable.

Now on to my usual Go Activities report.

I spent nearly 32 hours on Go Activities this week. Tsumego Dragon came in first with over six hours of activity.

I've been working hard to try to catch up to Clossius on the Leaderboard of Tsumego Dragon and I have earned four baby dragon for completing daily tsumego. It is still in alpha and the early alpha subscription price is still available. The little gold dragon next to my name designates me as a subscriber.

I spent a good deal of time this week watching others play. In particular I was watching a couple of friends of mine play with their Fox sandbagging accounts.

I played seven games this week and aside from one loss and a draw I won the majority of the games. All but one of them was played on Fox. I have started to use 20 minutes of basic time with 3 periods of 60 seconds.

That's it for this week.

My Week of Go Activities

 

 

I had over 29 hours of Go Activity this week, and played 12 games which took about six and a half hours to play making my average game time a little over 30 minutes which is still quite fast.

A great many of my games were BenKyo League Title Tournament even games.

I have no special plans for this week other than trying to rank up on Fox.

I spent a lot of time this week watching a friend of mine play on Fox. That was fun.

My Week of Go Activity: Alpha Testing Tsumego Dragon

 

One of my teachers, Shawn Ray, perhaps better known as Clossius, is developing a Tsumego App. It is called Tsumego Dragon. It is currently in the Alpha stage. He has nearly 100 people helping to test the app as he builds it. 

In the image above you can see that I am number six on the leaderboard for the month. The app works on both the desktop and also on mobile. It looks really nice on the iPhone.

You can currently use the app for free, but if you care to become a paid member and help to defray the costs of development, you can join for the price of $4.00 a month now during the Alpha stage. If you do you will be grandfathered at that low price even after prices increase during Beta and beyond.

Shawn may have plans to allow some free use of the app after it is fully developed. Perhaps a certain number of problems a day, or a free trial period, or some such restriction. 

Problems are largely geared to approximately the 9k level as many of Shawn's students are near that level. That is great for me because I am 9k OGS.

I have Tsumego Dragon front and center in my collection of Go Apps on my iPhone.

Now for my usual Go Activities information:

I spent nearly 21 hours on Go Activities last week.

Haha. I created a new Activity for Tsumego Dragon. But I named it Tsumego Dragoon. I have since changed it, but I am going to leave the mistake here for a laugh.

I only played five games last week. I did win all but one of them, and that one game was a 0.5 loss, so it was a good week for wins.

I've been asked to play more games and I have already played nine games this week and I have two more days left in my week. I think I will shoot for 15 games.

I was disappointed that my NAOL Game which was the 0.5 loss did not get reviewed for NAOL. The one from the first week wasn't a great one to review, the one from last week would have been so much better. I got Clossius to review it during my lesson on Friday. 

My goal for this week is to play a great many even Title Tournament games for the BenKyo League. Seven of the nine games I have already played fit that description. I was asked by Ben to play stronger players even. But in order to not be selfish I post an offer for an even game with any rank. That way weaker players who want to play stronger players even can take that offer if they want. 

Clossius told me in our last lesson that he can tell that I am feeling more confident, and I believe that I am. 

My Week of Go Activity: NAOL 13k

 

The good news is that Season 4 of NAOL has begun. The bad news is that I ended up as 13k after the dust settled from the first three seasons. They finally decided to adjust our entry ranks, and after three seasons of play I dropped from 10k to 13k.

After my disaster of a Go Congress, especially with my Covid Brain Fog, I was not looking forward to playing my NAOL Game on Tuesday. Lucky for me I managed to pull off a win. I gambled by playing end game before looking to protect the lower left area. My opponent had followed me earlier in the game, so I worked on the assumption that he would follow me as I played end game. I was right about that so it worked out okay. I should have played a protective move at d3 instead of f3 however when I finally did bother to protect my mayo from invasion.

My opponent went in at the 3-3. When he did I decided to try killing from the 2nd line. I was told later that I took a risk with that and that I could have allowed it to live and still been ahead.

If you want to see Clossius review this game you can tune in to the 1:04:15 mark in my recent Two Hour Lesson with Clossius. After he opened the game record he asked, "What is this?"

He was particularly proud of the fact that I handled the J-Group so well in the lower left corner. The corner turned into a classic life and death problem.

The Game Record can be found here.

And the AI Sensai Review of the game can be found here.

I was nervous about the game but was very pleased to see that my friends from the BenKyo League were present to cheer me on. I dropped the link to my game in the "Let's Play" channel of the BenKyo Discord Server knowing that I was likely to get observers. I think I had as many as seven.

Here are some of the gems they left me in the chat to discover after the game was over.

If you are interested in joining a community offering this kind of support take a look at the promotional site for the BenKyo League. If you decide to join BenKyo League please tell Ben that buzzsaw sent you. We have a referral program.

After the game was over I naturally promoted BKL to my opponent.

This game was selected for review and was reviewed by Milan the day after it was played. It is really nice that we get at least one game reviewed for the season.

Now for the usual Go Activities info:

I spent over 22 hours on Go Activities this week.

Over seven of those hours was spent making up for days I missed on the Tsumego Club when I was at the Go Congress.

I played ten games not including the Teaching Game with Clossius.

Aside from a BenKyo B Group game and an NAOL game all of my games were with the new AI Sensei rated play system. I am enjoying it, but I am playing much too quickly. Those ten games took me about three and a half hours to play. They should have taken longer.

Playing against AI tends to make me speed up because my opponent plays instantly, but given that I have limitless time I should be playing more slowly.

I'm hoping to be bold enough to play more humans in the coming week.

It turns out that the AGA reimbursed me for half of my registration fee for the Congress in compensation for having to isolate.

Two Weeks of Go Activity: And Congress Report

 

This is my room at the Congress as I am getting ready to leave and return home. Notice the food containers piled up on the floor. They were delivered to me three times a day when I was stuck in my room for four days after testing positive for Covid on Wednesday, the day off.

The Congress handled the situation well, and they had a number of confirmed cases before the end of the Congress.

Notice the bunk bed with the plastic mattress. This was where I spent four days waiting to be able to leave. Next year I think I am going to have to swing for an actual hotel room. It won't cost a lot more and if I get stuck in it with Covid I will at least have a comfortable bed, a TV, and access to room service.

This is how I spent four days. I was really glad I decided to bring the laptop. I seriously believed I would only use it at the airport. How wrong I was.

I can't complain about the way the Congress handled things. They did deliver food from the cafeteria three times a day and even picked up my medication from the local CVS. I had a tele health meeting with my GP in my dorm room on Wednesday and I had my drugs by late afternoon the same day. I started my dosage that evening.

I have only myself to blame for catching Covid because I became complacent and removed my mask because nearly no one was wearing one. But wearing a mask indoors is not going to be enough next year unless I am able to remove food from the cafeteria and eat outside. I'm hoping I can do that.

I am 2:0 now with Covid at the Congress. I caught it last year and I caught it this year. I'm coming again next year and I hope to make it through without Covid for the first time.

Well that is enough about Covid.

Here is what my Go Activity looked like the week of the Congress and the week after.  I did not keep track of activities so there is no pie chart.

I managed to play three games in the Open.  I was 2:1 at the time that Covid Struck. The game I lost was only by 2.5 points so I feel pretty good about that.

One of the highlights of the Congress was playing a simul game with Yilun Yang. I took nine stones and did fairly well. The best part was when Yang came by and looked at my move and said, "Good." before he played his move. 

Yang ponders the board of the player next to me. Clossius is in the background thinking about his next move. Clossius won his game. I had to resign mine eventually.

My biggest disappointment of the Congress was being unable to play Pair Go with Ben Mantle. We had prepared for it and were excited about it. Ben did manage to substitute someone else and play Pair Go after all. I am happy about that.

Clossius reviewed my first game during a lecture on teaching Go to DDK Players.

My second game was reviewed by Mateusz Surma a pro who has written a series of problem books titled "You won't get dumber while thinking". 

There was a surprise ending to that game and he did a double take on my iPad when he saw the mistake that black made. After the review I bought two of his books. I got him to sign them.

These are the ones I bought. However, after attempting the problems in the easiest book I decided that I ought to get the two books that are easier. I found them on Amazon and had them delivered.

I have finished the problems through problem 16 in the easiest book without missing any. What I need to do is to find a way to have my husband check my work on these problems so he can tell me if I got them right or wrong. I don't want to run the risk that I will answer incorrectly but see the correct answer when I check on myself.

I did a few unranked self paired games at the Congress. I did at least one Baum game but didn't bother to enter that into my game record. I missed entering one of my self paired as well.

I was allowed to attend the Banquet at the Congress on Saturday night because it was determined that it was safe for me to be there with a mask.  I had to eat outside the banquet hall and there were two other Covid people who were allowed to attend the banquet. We found each other and ate together outside the banquet hall at a table in the hallway.

I managed to make it home Sunday afternoon later than expected. My flight was delayed by quite a bit, but it was not nearly as bad as last year when I had to spend about ten hours in the Denver airport because my flight was canceled and I had to fly into a different airport to get home. My husband provided me with Chinese food when I arrived home which I was grateful for. 

I isolated for a couple more days upstairs though I probably would have been fine just wearing a mask and having free movement throughout the house. My husband wanted to be conservative though so my second isolation period began in a bedroom upstairs. On Tuesday I tested negative. My isolation continued for two more days and I tested negative again on Thursday after which my husband was willing to be in the same room with me.

During my isolation I started to play go again.

I needed to play my final game of the AYD season on Tuesday night. I actually did pretty well in that game and almost won it, but I didn't. I've signed up for the next two seasons of AYD. There are only a few seats left at this point.

I played 14 games in the week following the Congress. Only one of them was a serious league game. The rest were either on Fox or were played with the new beta feature of AI Sensei where you can establish a rank for yourself and play against humanlike bots designed to be the strength of OGS players. This feature is free until the end of August and will be a feature of all paid accounts after that. So give it a try and see how you like it.

I started at 9k which seemed right because I won some and lost some and it took me ten games to rank up to 8k.

A few of my friends are trying this new feature of AI Sensei and it will be interesting to see if their ranks pan out to be the same as their OGS ranks. My AI Sensei rank has already exceeded my 9k OGS rank, but I expect that if I bothered to play rated on OGS I could probably raise it to 7k.

I have decided to take a break from serious play for the remainder of the month so I have blocked off my Calendly so there are no slots available until August begins.

I'm feeling down because of the Go Congress. I missed half of it and I feel as if I wasted a lot of money and got an unpleasant experience. It was much worse this year because last year I didn't have symptoms until the end of the Congress and tested positive after I got home. This year I tested positive halfway through the Congress so it was really quite terrible and depressing. Even though I had a laptop with me I didn't want to use it to play go because of simply wanting to escape into sleep the first few days and then because of the brain fog from Covid.  I think that is why I like playing the AI Sensei beta. I'm not dealing with a human being. There is nothing to be embarrassed about.

I'll keep playing the beta for the rest of the month and see how I do. Clossius wanted something rated to assess. Now I have something for him to look at.

My Week of Go Activities: Ready for the Congress

 

This image is cropped from a much wider panoramic view of players from last year's U.S. Go Congress. You can find me in the back near the top. I am the gray haired woman sitting down with a guy in a black shirt standing behind me.

This year the Congress is being held at Kent State University near Cleveland. I will be leaving tomorrow morning. I'm very excited.

I've been quite busy this week cleaning and preparing the house for company. My daughter and grandson are coming to stay with my husband while I am gone so he will not be alone for a whole week so not a lot of Go Activity happened this week. I actually had to fit in five Fox games last night so I would have material for my lesson with Clossius today. I hope I have enough games for two hours.

This was a slow week for Go Activity. I didn't even break 16 hours, but that is because I was so busy preparing for my trip to the Congress.

With Live Play coming in at nearly four hours I spent an average of 30 minutes on each game I played. The AYD games took a good chunk of that time though, perhaps even half of it.

I played eight games this week. Three of them on Tuesday and five of them on Thursday. I won all of my games but one of the AYD games which I lost by 3.5 points.

I am very much looking forward to the Congress this year. If you are a reader of my blog and you are attending the Congress please come up to say hello to me even if we have never met before. I'd be happy to show you the app I use to keep track of my Go Activities if you are interested.

I have no plan yet for the Congress except to have fun.

I may not even bother to record my Go Activity while I am there.

We'll see.