For me OGA was never about dissatisfaction with my own games after the fact, it was simple anxiety about what my opponents would think of me or that I'd be abused verbally during a match or something. Bear in mind I can't walk around crowded public places alone without wearing headphones and listening to loud music or I'll get suspicious that others are talking about me, staring at me, plotting me harm and stuff, so I'm not exactly normal.

I've the same stuff on here, I constantly feel like my posts are being ridiculed via PM or whatever. It can happen with any interaction with others to be honest, nothing go specific. Eh, you learn to live with it or become a hermit, just how well you can deal with it will vary day to day, week to week.

Edit: Actually, specifically I've never feared losing. I've never beaten myself up over lost tournament games or similar. But I'm absolutely petrified of playing an even game with someone the same rank and being absolutely wiped off the board, not because I'd have lost but because of some kind of absurd line of thought that this would reveal me as a some kind of fraud and really I'm a lot weaker than my rank says or something. This is obviously silly, one crushing loss doesn't wipe out all the previous games that get you to a certain rank and rank doesn't really mean much in the first place anyway between two individual players but eh, anxiety is rarely rational.

Most people are too lazy to buy headphones or worry what others will think if they wear them in crowded places...

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

This perfectly describes how I used to feel before and during many of my online games. As you say, anxiety is rarely rational, but I think its causes are not difficult to make out. First of all, we know enough to know that many of our moves are bad, and all it takes is for our opponent to punish one of them to make us feel exposed as someone who didn't know what they were doing. Another thing is that anyone who has been on KGS for a while has heard some trash talk and for some of us with a thin skin, it seems to echo in our minds when we get beaten. What scared me most though was the feeling of being utterly blindsided, being rendered helpless and not knowing how it happened, and I think this goes away with time.

My anxiety gradually diminished with experience, and as I gathered it, the game losing mistakes, the sudden awful things that can happen, the cut I didn't see and so on, became less of a surprise. When I lose now, it no longer feels as if my opponent possessed some magical power or knowledge that was light years beyond me. I've seen it before. Getting caught in a shortage of liberties, misreading during a fight, seeing an unlikely invasion survive etc. It feels normal when these things happen and it's nice to see that experience causes them to happen less often. Trash talk still bothers me, but mostly because it's a distraction, a cheap trick, not because it has any merit.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Well, yes of course that's why i wrote ''...made me think about something more general...''
The fact still remains, with OGA or not there are physical manifestations of my emotions running through a game. I noticed another one yesterday in a game against a much stronger opponent: increased heartbeat
I don't think it was because of fear or anxiety, more because of excitement i believe. So, up until this point we have numbness and increased heartbeat. What about you guys?

I feel that at the start of a tournament game, hands shake and similar with tension/expectation/whatever. 5 or 6 moves into the game though I've calmed down.

Eh what? Are you making a joke or something?

Not exactly a joke, closer to a pun I guess. My impression is that almost everyone shares this traits in some degree or another... And that quite a few people are just afraid of what others will say if they *do* wear headphones. It wasn't meant to be a dismissal, or (I expect) a bad joke on something personal. It was more like a reassurement, at least how I thought it.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

No worries, just over sensitivity on my part, sorry. The standard crap people with mental illness get in my country and the UK at least is "snap out of it, stop worrying about it" which is about as useful as telling someone with pneumonia to stop coughing. The rational part of my mind was thinking "no, RBerenguel has always come across like a nice guy and wouldn't be doing that kind of thing" but the wording hit a nerve unfortunately.

I even got two for you:

Nervous stomach. REALLY nervous stomach. Be it internet or tournament games, most of the times I'll have to leave at least once during the beginning of the game for the bathroom (I'm usually ok after the opening). It is not as bad today as it once was (my record is four times during one tournament game), but it is annoying indeed and I have no idea how I'll ever be able to overcome this. I guess not only excitement, but fear as well is the reason of this. Fear of loosing, fear of playing bad moves, fear of my opponent's moves.. Among others. My only hope is that it recently got better, just as my OGA, it might get better and better in the future, too. However, if I'll ever suffer from costiveness I'll know exactly what to do. I just hope that there'll be a internet connection available. Or a tournament.

Oh, and during some games (especially with long main thinking times or during summer / when the room I'm playing the tournament in gets really warm) I turn quite red in the face, too. At least, when I'm trying really hard and when I'm reading many (long) sequences. That's also the reason why I bring a fan to most of the tournaments I attend. For me, it is not just a nifty accessory, I sometimes really need it. And I really don't care if others find that a silly habit.

Come on guys, I'm sure there is more!

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WEEK 3-5
brace yourselves, long read is coming

It's been a while since my last update. I didn't think it was worth my time writing my progress down since nothing spectacular has happened. I played only a few games and solved tsumego and tesuji problems. Also, after a couple of months of restrain i smashed another mouse after a loss...i guess habits die hard

From ''Tesuji'' i left out the chapter ''Making shape'' since it seems i have a hard time understanding the concept and the final problems since i don't want to spoil them. I will review the whole book one more time and then i'll attempt them.

From ''Life and Death'' i reached till ''The J groups'' and stopped there. I had been having increasing difficulty in solving the problems in an adequate amount of time. For many problems i would take up to 20 minutes (and some times more) to read out and this started getting on my nerves so i put that aside and focused only on ''Tesuji''. This bring me to a question i've been meaning to ask; in your opinion in order to get something like 70-80% accuracy how strong must someone be 5k ,8k etc?

As of now, i'm reading ''38 Basic Josekis'' and just started ''Attack and Defense''. I have read till page 31 and i'm already impressed with the content. This book has something that the previous lacked; depth. Maybe 38 could be excused, but as i was reading ''Tesuji'' and ''L&D'' i got the impression that Davies lacked the will of explaining those concepts. Maybe he didn't want to elaborate on those concepts. Maybe the format of those books is designed in that way to train your reading through endless examples and you'll begin to understand the deeper meaning as you go along. I'd say that ''Tesuji'' and ''L&D'' are the equivalent of a supplementary book in a mathematics course; the kind of book which has little theory and is full of solved examples whereas ''A&D'' is the work of an expert on this field, full of theory and rigorous proofs. On the other hand the concept of this book is strategy instead of tactics so the deeper thinking might be expected.
Maybe i'm just biased since i recognised myself as early as page 21 and i quote
''...like a certain player we knew whose sole purpose in the game was the destruction of enemy stones.''
and he goes on to explain in depth the shortcomings of such an approach. I think i gained a stone just by reading those pages

Despite my limited experience i have the impression that chess players tend to play that way. A reason could be that they are accustomed to the nature of that game. In chess it's much easier to attack successfully than defend. In most cases even a solid defense can lead to a prolonged fight with a seemingly passive position which would result in a draw at best. Also the prize in chess is much more profound. Attack the king and attempt to mate him (all you chess players out there who want to murder me for this sacrilege please consider the notion i'm trying to convey and not the details). So, all in all especially for all those who play this do or die style i would recommend reading this book.

As usual my statistics from ''Tesuji'' and ''L&D'' is as follows
L&D
''The first L+1 group'' 4/6 (took me huge amounts of time)
''The second L+1 group'' 5.5/6
''The L+2 group'' 2/5 (rediculously difficult)
''The tripod group'' 4/6
''The J group'' 3/6

Tesuji
''Cutting groups apart'' 7/10
''Into enemy territory'' 10.5/
''Escape'' 9.5/11
''Sacrifice to gain tempo'' 11/13
''Tesuji for attack'' 10.5/18 (last 9 problems tough as nails)
''How to connect'' 7/12
''Ignore the atari'' 5/12
''Double threat tesuji'' 6/9

From now there will be a change of context in my posts. Instead of posting games to be reviewed i'll try to post positions, tsumego, tesuji, joseki and stuff that i come across in my studies/games. Maybe this will be more interesting. Stay tuned!

It is very useful how you keep track of progress in terms of books which you read.
Can you post full titles of the books.

I just want to say you don't need to set goals to achieve higher . If you love Go and continue to persist in it you WILL get better. No one at my school (I'm in high school, started in 5th grade) plays or even heard of Go (except for a couple Asians that don't know how to play). While I've had a private teacher to boost me with how to play the game, the path from 5k to 2D was all by myself, and I surprisingly only played a game per week or even once per month.

Oh and when I say persist that means persist smartly... I found reading some books not only interesting but also helpful. Don't bash out 10 games in a day because your mind needs to be perfectly clear! If you play on IGS and you find me on I will be glad to talk. I'm kind of lonely.

-Blue Hazel
2D IGS

Then do you have any idea what it's like to start Go at the age of 35 or over?
Be mindful your experience and advice are based on your perspective.
Other people's mileage may vary. Tremendously.

As people age, yes they are unable to learn as quick- that has been proven. That wasn't my point. Speed isn't the thing.
As one engages in any activity, he is revealed to different scenarios and learns from them. I wasn't trying to imply similar progress speed, but that self-improvement happens naturally.

Sometimes trying a new method of looking at the game gets you past roadblocks, and that is what I believe I did. No matter HOW OLD, people are able to grasp things sooner or later.
Review games you have both won and lost. This lets you analyze what you did wrong/what your opponent did wrong (why he lost).

When I said not setting goals, I meant not saying like "I want shodan". Instead, simply have "I love go, and I will continue to learn and grow as I engage in this art." Setting specific goals is getting stress that can be unnecessary, while having goals to learn is not.

Bottom line is, regardless of age, you put in the time, it'll happen. A slower learning curve, no matter how slow, has a positive slope.

Well, it has been a while since my last post but i'm still around. In those past couple of months i didn't play much on KGS (no surprise there), solved a couple tsumegos, finished at last the 4th volume of graded go problems for beginners with 60-70% success rate, read some other books and didn't progress at all or not that much. Fortunately i discovered DGS in April and i've been playing there, it's a great place to experiment with/learn josekis and this is what i've been doing. It was kind of training for the EGC 2014 (there's gonna be a long post later about my experience there). Anyways i bought like 10 books from the EGC and when my exams finish in September the plan is to delve into them. Perhaps i should focus more on playing but tsumegos are so fun :p

In a previous post i wrote something about changing the context of the journal and i'm eager to do it. So instead of posting my boring games and wait for someone to review them or worse my even more boring statistics -which none cares about- i'm gonna give back to the community however i can. Maybe it will be some variation in a joseki, a nice tsumego, a strategic concept, an interesting position who knows? A week before i leave for Sibiu i started solving the intermediate Cho Chikun and since there are no solutions i thought maybe i can give it a shot. So here are the solutions and some false variations for the first 12 problems. DO NOT TRUST ME! There might be mistakes in there so be careful.



ps. for some reason it changed the order of variations but you can figure it out

Well, it's been quite some time since my last update. Not a lot has happened since last time concerning go. The main thing is i participated in the 2014 EGC in Romania. Supposedly i would write about this in my previous post but i was so tired after i returned and then time passed and i lost all interest in go and when i found it again it was too late, so long story short i didn't write that report.

In few details, i stayed both weeks and they were my two greatest weeks of my life. The people i met, the games i played, the lectures, the simultaneous games with pros, the casual chat and play with a beer next to you, i won't forget any of this for the rest of my life. My daily schedule went something like this: wake up at 08.00, eat breakfast, go to the venue, play a round in the main tournament, watch a lecture, sign for the simul, eat lunch, watch more lectures, play a simul, play in the evening round of rapid, stroll around aimlessly with a big smile on your face, watch a lecture, go out with people i met there, drink some beer and play some go, go back to hostel and sleep at 00.00-01.00, rinse and repeat. I could do this for the rest of my life and i wouldn't be sad. If i were to speak about the tournament, the people etc. i would need too much time so i'm not gonna bother that much. What i will say is that i met so many nice and generous people it made think more positively about the world. I don't know, maybe it's the east asian culture of politeness that permeates the game, but i was positively surprised. Being around so many nice people makes you too behave in a certain way. I was never big on politeness and behave in a pleasant way (i did not behave rudely earlier, but i tried to be honest even if i was unpleasant), but that experience made me rethink my attitude towards others.

From the time i returned i didn't play much go, i kept playing in dragongoserver, solved occasionally tsumegos, but that's it. From this February-March i started a go club in my university in Thessaloniki which has been doing relatively decent. I borrowed some space from the natural science chess club (or stole, semantics) and tried to spread the word among students. I met some new people, organized some meetings, tried to teach a little bit, with below average success but that's life huh. In the meantime i made a page on fb in an effort to organize the Greek go community and with the guys from Athens i think we made some progress. This is the group https://www.facebook.com/groups/350505475160028/, we have approximately 100 members from all over Greece, but mainly students from Thessaloniki and Athens. After May the European Go Centre in the Netherlands sent us 12 go sets that we shared between the two cities and we have organized many meetings with mixed success. This zeal led to many old members start playing again and as of this moment Greece has been having by far it's greatest season in the European team championship in pandanet. We have a difficult task ahead of us since go is so unknown here, but we'll keep trying. Couple months ago someone organized some meetings in Crete, so there's that.

So this is were things are of this moment, even though i graduated i still try to manage the chess/go club in the university, i still play on dragongoserver (1k), have read some books, solved couple hundred tsumegos last couple months and started playing again on wbaduk (5k). There is no new year's resolution, what i need is to finally manage my own daemons so that i can continue improving in go and life and from time to time write silly posts concerning go such as this.

ps. in our fb group we communicate in Greek but i post regularly sgf files with tsumegos or pics (i'm a huge problem enthusiast) and you don't need to speak the language to understand those. Even the comments in those sgf files are in English so anyone can try them. You can check those in the files section so if you are interested stop by to say hello, heck maybe even become a member , why not?

Continuing from yesterday's post i would like to say this; the thing that hit me hardest is the difference between my lvl and a pro's. I had no delusions of grandeur prior to the tournament but man talk about a gap. None can understand what i'm talking about unless he sees a 50 year old pro playing 5 simul with handicap, a glass of beer by his side, taking turns demolishing his opponents left right and center. And after each defeat wiping the goban clean with a sweep of his hand and start reproducing each game while commentating. At times he was not sure of the move order but his opponent would show him the move and he would say ''oh yes'' and continue for the next 30 moves or so. Simply amazing

I also participated in a tsumego contest in that year's EGC. Basically we had 60 minutes to solve 20 problems and time would be a tiebreaker in case two people got the same score. I was one of the weaker players that participated and you can guess from the problems i didn't do very well, but still i take solace from the fact that even very strong players didn't manage to solve them all. For example Shikshin got something like 88 out of 100 if i remember correctly so my 40-50ish should be fine :p The only thing that bothered me is the fact that you only had to write in the diagramm the first move, so someone could get lucky. Anyway here are the problems, they are all black to play, find the best continuation, some might ko (i don't have the answers).

Enjoy!

ps. i hope i don't violate any copyright issues

If I remember well, only the winner got 100 out of 100. After him there was a bunch of people with one mistake that were ranked by time. I don't remember the exact number, but not more than 100 players participated.

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La victoire est un hasard, la défaite une nécessité.

You are correct Jhyn, in fact the winner was a teenager from Romania if memory serves me well. I think Ilja came 3rd-5th or something. I knew 3d players who got about 70%, which to be honest was kinda shocking.

I did get around 70%, I think. My guess is that some problems looked deceptively simple and since we knew that time would be used for the rankings, we tended not to pay enough attention. I felt pretty stupid for some of them afterwards.

(You're from Greece, right? I think we talked, and maybe played football together, but my memory is fading. If you remember, I was a French 1d, Benjamin Hellouin de Menibus)

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La victoire est un hasard, la défaite une nécessité.