Monday, September 12, 2005

Forcing myself to take a break


I'm officially announcing a 4-day sabbatical from playing ranked games. Today, I succumbed to the temptation to play even though I haven't done much studying or reviewed my previous games to analyze my weaknesses.

Yeah, ... it's very tempting to try maintaining a steep slope to that line on that KGS Rank Chart but it's not realistic.

The net result of my unbridled eagerness? I made too many silly mistakes in my game with Oa (26k); partly for lack of concentration and partly for defects in my defense structures which mungo (4k) had warned me about last week. I did a great job of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The spirit of Baka No Itte was definitely
with me today. A classic example of how to
lose a won game.


Still, the post-game review, briefly with Oa but mostly with erislover (21k), pucko (22k) and g0d0t (28k), was very enlightening and I came away with a better understanding of ladders (how to visually project them) and the Monkey Jump. Thanks gang!

My rank will settle to where it should until I have improved my skills and mental readiness. I need to have patience.

4 Comments:

At 6:43 PM, September 12, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hahaha... Baka No Itte... thanks for the laugh and making my day! \:D/

 
At 9:16 PM, September 12, 2005, Blogger ChiyoDad said...

Glad it gave you a lift. Hope that you're getting your wa (harmony) back and that you'll be back on KGS soon.

 
At 5:06 PM, September 13, 2005, Blogger frankiii said...

At our low levels, I don't think rank should even come into our minds...just play as much as you can and try to improve. If that means you lose a few rated games and drop down to 28k or 29k, then big deal.

Becoming attached to rank is probably one of the bigger mistakes a new player can make IMO.

Anyway, as always, your mileage may vary.

 
At 6:14 PM, September 13, 2005, Blogger ChiyoDad said...

Your right frankiii and thanks for the counsel.

I was however bugged by the fact that I hadn't spent enough time trying to learn from my previous games or to expand my knowledge of fuseki, joseki and tesuji. It felt to me that I hadn't struck the right balance between playing matches and filling my arsenal of ideas.

Anyway, this week is a good one to take a hiatus and stuff my cranium since I can't get many undisturbed hours to play a focused game.

It's only day one of my self-imposed sabbatical but I am feeling good about spending more time reading and doing tsumego. It'll be fun to experiment with new ideas in my next games.

 

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