150 out of the way.

after an exhausting 9 hours I've finally finished my 150 Tsumego for the day.

here's the story.

 

At 11:35 I began on Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of Life and Death elementary problem 150. I went for about an hour and ended somewhere around 180. I took a break read my bible, ate breakfast, drank a smoothie, and got back to work.

finally around 3:00 when I was on problem 220 and was incredibly tired of Tsumego I found a thread on the internet that suggested listening to music while you do problems. It was amazing. I downloaded Spotify and started listening to phantom of the Opera. my pace tripled and here I am at 8:15 finished with problem 300.

Thank you Lifein19x19 community! Well that's about it. I'll tell you where I am at tomorrow evening.

Tsumego with a fury

I've decided I won't play on kgs until I have done 150 tsumego for the day
and that I'll keep that up atleast untill I've finished cho chikun's elementary go collection.
so far so good I've done 28 problems today and its only noon.
wish me luck. The long road is ahead. I'll post again when I've finished this goal.
my current rank on kgs is 10k  but I've changed it to - for the duration of this experiment.

My Eternal Rival - NOT DEAD AFTER ALL

When I started playing go the first person I called my rival was a guy named Sparks[17k]
He was a bit stronger than me at the time, but he showed me a cool chatroom called stream of go stones
and introduced me to some of his go colleagues. In fact he might be one of the main reasons I got as strong as I did. Anyway I took a break from go for a month or so and when I came back he was gone. Hadn't seen him since untill today. Sparks has been playing under a pseudioname which he kept secret so his ex girlfriend  stalker couldn't find him. Great to know my eternal rival is still alive. unfortunetly at this time I can not reveal his identity

I beat a rival Kalin1[5k?]

Some days he plays well and some days he plays poorly. He's been a huge obstacle for me during my go journey. He's kalin! He plays on kgs 6-7 days a week. I've been looking forward to being able to play him as an equal for months now. This was a huge motivation booster for me, as you can probably tell since I decided to write about it. :P oh here is the kifu

87.5 w (kalin1)

110 b (me(dukedaniel))

Dsaun's shape lectures.

Dsaun[1k] taught me sooo much today using one of his lectures. He teaches an audio lecture almost monthly (which is available for free on kgs, you can view recordings of his past lectures for free, although they do not include the review games he does afterwards reinforcing his points) After the lecture he went through 7 high dan games showing examples of how to use shape as he went. I learned how important good shape can be and how to use it effectively. I would reccomend every player struggling with shape or who does not understand shape to come to one of his lectures. I'll be writing a post as soon as his newest lecture is scheduled.

about Dsaun

He was born in germany (as an U.S. citizen.).
He speaks french.
He loves go (especially teaching it).
He started playing go seriously in 1993 though he first learned the rules in 1975.

12k

Hey I got to 12k matches are getting a little harder now.
sorry for this mostly blank blog entry. haha.

What do I do in my spare time? + A WIERD COINCIDENCE

So when I'm not learning Japanese, playing Go, or writing a blog about learning Japanese or playing Go, What do I do? Well lots of stuff but A big thing I do is design and program video games. In fact today I was doing just that. But as any good programmer knows, programming is not fun if there is noone to share it with. So I was in my usual programming chat room! It had been a while since I had visited that room so of course one of my acquaintences asked me were I had been for the past few weeks. When I told him I was playing Go he had no idea what I was talking about. (now here is where it gets interesting). So we had a short conversation about what I was going to be working on and then another of my friends logs in. The first thing he says is 'So does anyone want to play go?'
I thought he must have had an alt logged in or something. But nope. He had no Idea I had been playing Go. I asked him his rank. '12k' he said. This must have been the biggest coincidence ever.