April Challenge

I know I said that a small challenge for March would still happen, but uni got in the way of that, so my apologies. Moving on...

It's time for the first monthly challenge!

The challenge will be:

Get out of your comfort zone!

Game count: 5 

This was one of the first things I came up with (and so did Eyecatcher). It is actually pretty simple. Think about your style of play. Is it aggressive? Passive? Influential? Territorial? Anything else?

For this month, it's time to change things up. Come up with an idea that is out of your comfort zone, or the opposite of what your normally play. Think about it before you start the game. What style will you play (if the situation allows it)? Which opening will you use if you're black? Of course, you'll have to try and stick to this for the rest of the game.

The goal is not to win more games, but to find new things. Maybe you will enjoy playing in a different way than normally. Maybe you won't, but you might find ways to counter it when others play that style against you. Heck, maybe you won't get anything out of it. But does it hurt to try it out?

Of course, I will participate as well!
As some of you might know, my style is generally (too) passive. I've been trying to work on it, but it hasn't gone very well for me so far.
So it's probably no surprise that I will try to play more aggressive. Before I play a move, I should remind myself of this. Is this move passive? Am I avoiding a fight here? If the answer yes, I will change my move, even if I am not entirely comfortable with it. If I lose, I'll have something to review. If I win, I'll also have something to review.
I will try to do this for at least 5 games in the month of April, and I challenge you to do the same! Of course, you should find your own comfort zone, and what is outside of that.

Do you accept this challenge?

If you do, leave a comment with your area of comfort, and how you will get out of it!

My plan is to give weekly updates on my own progress, and of course, you can let me (and everybody else) know your progress too. If you complete the challenge you will get an honorable mention on the future wall of fame! (Which is worth absolutely nothing, but it's the idea that counts.) Of course, you can make this more challenging by adding more games, or the other way around!

One thing though, this month my uni has a 2-week teaching break, in which I will be travelling, so those weeks have no weekly updates. Which defies the point of weekly updates. Next month will be better. I promise.


In unrelated news: 9x9 go has been solved!!

Quote Mania 3

"Don't just give up. 

Life is about getting knocked down over and over, but still getting up each time. 

If you keep getting up, you win."

Another quote from NANA by Yazawa Ai. 

Maybe you remember me mentioning that I kept quitting go? It was kind of the reason I even started this blog. Maybe you also remember that I said that every time I went back to playing go, my rank kind of jumped. No extreme amounts, but usually I would 'skip'  1 or 2 stones.

So for a while I would then feel that I was getting stronger very fast, and honestly I was. But then after a while I would naturally stagnate. Even though I knew there is more to go than just a rank, frustration would ensue and I would feel that nothing I did would make me stronger and I would give up. And all that in less than 2 weeks.

But go isn't something where you will improve a lot in a very short time. Of course, it depends on the amount of time you put in it, and your initial rank (ddk's will improve a lot faster than dans, usually), but even then you'll have to be patient for the 'results' to kick in.

You will have to do tsumego on an almost daily basis for a while until you notice a difference in your reading skills, you'll have to apply newly learned theory a few times before you'll get it right, etc.

Honestly, you cannot get better at go without losing, because you need those learning moments to get stronger. It might be almost impossible for me not to think about my rank or getting stronger (because I'm competitive like that), but at least I shouldn't let it hold me back from enjoying go.

From now on I will not see losing as a bad thing, but as an essential part of improving.

Jump into the deep

I haven't posted anything in quite a while but not to worry! Go is still part of my life, and this is probably the longest it has ever consecutively been in my life. Time for cake!

On a more serious note, some time ago I said that I was doubting on whether or not to sign up for the World Students Go Oza championship preliminaries. And I said I would make that decision the 23rd of November, which was yesterday. 

I was very, very close to just letting it slip. So close that I didn't sign up yesterday, and procrastinated the decision until the very last moment, which was today.

But guess what? This scaredy cat just signed up!

I am not confident at all, and I know that I will be utterly destroyed, but the main reason as to why I decided to sign up is not even with go.

Without getting into too much detail (this would become a very, very long post if I would), my 20th birthday was last week and it kind of made me depressed that I'm not a teenager anymore (not a popular opinion, I know). Anyway, I decided that I need an attitude change and that I will stop procrastinating/never doing anything/being a lazy ass. So singing up is kind of my first step to that.

All philosophy aside, I still suck quite badly at go and I won't improve much within two weeks, so I am a nervous wreck. I really hope I am not the only sucky player that signed up, and that people won't think I am wasting their time. But the only way to find that out is to play, so from now on:


*Also, I hardly ever play on IGS, and my old account is still a provisional 15 kyu. Now, I'm not strong at all, but that is just not accurate anymore, so I made a random new account for the tournament that is 5 kyu. I have no clue what the rankings at IGS are like, and my own strength is all over the place so this is quite literally a wild guess. 

** Did I mention that this the first ever 'tournament' kind of thing I have entered? Because it is. Hahahaha. I will go cry my nerves out in a corner now.

Quote Mania 2

‘There is no certainty, there is only adventure.’

It’s time for the second quote mania! This was said by Roberto Assagioli, an Italian psychiatrist. I honestly have no idea who he was or in what context it was said, this is one of those quotes I just saw floating around on the internet.

Regardless, I think it is quite applicable to go.

You never know where your opponent is going to play. You might have an idea, you might even be 99% sure, there is always a chance that your opponent will play elsewhere.

I think everybody gets surprised by moves now and then, whether they are good or bad.

To me, it’s exciting when that happens. A little frustrating, but exciting. It is what makes go fun, because you’re always learning new things. When you find out that the unexpected move is bad, you have learned that it doesn’t work. When you find out it is good, you have learned a new way of playing.

I think it gets frustrating when you start judging the surprising moves as bad. ‘Nobody has played that before, therefore it is a bad move.’ Admittedly, I have done that too. Some 150 moves later  I realized that maybe, it wasn’t such a bad move after all and I should have thought about it more. Result: I had lost a very frustrating game.

So, I changed my mindset. When I play an opponent who consequently makes surprising moves, I do not get frustrated anymore, but excited. Because I will get to experience something new. Because I can learn from it. Because I can go on an adventure!

Quote Mania 1

I have mentioned this before, but I am a communications student. I chose that study because I'm quite into words, writing and, obviously, communicating. Although I wouldn't call myself a great communicator, I am interested in how others communicate.

Anyway, this whole blog happened because I like writing (and go, obviously). 
While I was thinking about content for this blog, I suddenly thought of a file that I have had on my laptop that I made a few years ago. It contains quotes and phrases that I think are interesting, either because they inspire me, motivate me or just because I liked the way they were written/said.

They come from all over the place.

Even though none of them were written with go in mind, some can easily be related to go. So I will try and connect these quotes about everyday life and motivation to go. Perhaps they can even be useful, but I doubt that. 
The quote for this week will be:

 'People are only what they think of themselves.'

The source is NANA (either the manga or the anime or both, I don't remember) by Yazawa Ai.