Very Busy! Hello and Small Go Update

Hello everyone! Yukigami here~

I haven't been able to post much of anything lately because of school ><
Right now I'm at a very busy spot, with two essays and two tests all jam packed into a short time period. I'm losing sleep!

For now I'll just post a little Go update.

Recently my Tygem suffered a lot. I was already not performing as well as usual for a bunch of games, but I lost some over and over due to disconnection, poor sportsmanship (forcing me to lose via spamming counting and draw requests in my face), and otherwise time out. There were a lot of legitimate losses, but the illegitimate ones were extremely frustrating!

Anyway, when April swings around I'll have to play some games and get it back to 7d :)

I started playing on WBaduk(formerly OroBaduk) again for the first time in years! My name there is Yukigami. The ratings there seem slightly softer even then Tygem ranks, or otherwise about the same. It was very easy for me to get to 7d there and I think 8d could be possible! I'm glad that it doesn't take quite as long to rank up there as it does on Tygem. The relative downside however is that when you rank up, you remain just at the threshold and a loss can put you back down to the previous point of almost being at that level. I got to 7d so far but I've only played against one 7d so far. He was pretty decent I guess, I made some silly strategic mistakes probably due to lingering complacence caused by the 4d-6d opponents leading up to that game.

KGS is more or less the usual, floating between upper 4d and lower 5d, though I haven't been playing much there lately. Compared to on Tygem or WBaduk, it's difficult to find an opponent on KGS sometimes.


Okay, adios!!


Good luck with essays/exams/important deadlines, presentations and pursuits!

~Yukigami

Tygem: January 25

Hello~

Here is another little update about my Go~


I've been pretty hooked on Tygem - my game quality may have suffered as a result. But no excuses! So here is the report.

I easily got to 7d, with my last 12 games at 6d being a string of 10 straight wins, followed by a loss and then a win to get me the rank up.

Since reachng 7d, it's been much harder. I seem to be an average 7d at the moment; While my first 8 games as 7d resulted in a decent record of 5-3, the reciprocal of that was added on unfortunately and I am now 8-8 at 7d (But still with an all-time win record of around 67-70%, which I hope to maintain...

Unfortunately, winning half your games is not enough to keep your rating on Tygem. This is a good chance for me now to lay off the Tygem for a bit, focus on school (which I really, really need to focus on, particularly at this crucial time), and then when I have time, review all my 7d games and do some Go problems. If I increase the speed and coherence of my reading and improve my overall sharpness a bit, I should be able to start winning more than half. I suppose the current big goal is to consistently win enough to keep myself at 7d, progressing toward 8d powaaa!!


Lately it seems like I have at least one Go student at all times, so that's good. The extra pocket change is pretty useful to me, to be honest. I enjoy teaching a lot. I hope I also get more English tutoring gigs.

Bye for now~


~Yukigami


P. S. New banner!! Thanks Johnny~!

My Go: Jan.23 2014

Hey~
Yukigami here~


I would just like to hereby report some of my progress. I've been playing a little more online, now, after having not played much at all in some time. But online at least, it would seem that I am in top shape. I don't know if that will translate to real life too well or not, but here are some screen caps revealing the current state of my online Go playing.

KGS is nothing special. The only somewhat new thing is that, unlike in the past, having '5d' rank is not really anything to mention. Whereas before I was a strong 4d, but sometimes a weak 5d, now I am generally 5d and only occasionally 4d, and unlike before it seems I can win against other 5d close to half the time. Getting back to 5d whenever I've fallen has proven easy lately. Before, whenever I'd attained a rank of 5d, I would get cautious and tend to play 4d more a lot more than 5d, but it's not like that now.

Furthermore, while some aspects of Go may have deteriorated a little over the last 2-3 years, my reading, fighting, and overall board vision has improved drstically - and it seems like it's taken another step up. That said though, it still doesn't seem like my level is another drastically different now. But we'll see! I'm certainly on a roll!

Here you go!

In case the Tygem screen cap is hard to see and you just don't feel like clicking on it to enlarge,

there are 10 straight wins on the end,

29 total wins and 8 total losses,

13 wins and 2 losses as 6d so far,

+2 games to get 7d, -13 to drop a rank. 

 KGS stats for 'gilgil':

Jan. 21 Tygem

Hey~

So right before I finish catching up in my Fantasy and Horror class before I leave for a The Digital Text tutorial, I played on Tygem again. (Yukigami)
I tried betting on some games, but I lost money. Also, it seems like I may be betting too many points, due to the payout rate... haha

I've been Tygem 7d before, and even won plenty of games. My best result ever (not that I've played tygem that much, not more than 2-3 hundred games tops between all accounts) was getting two wins away from 8d!! Man, that would have been something!
7d is probably about my level (and it's sad that I was there over two years ago, but now still find myself losing ~some of the games against 6d).

My record so far since creating my account a couple of weeks ago or so is 21 W 8 L (and I know I'm caring too much about my record, but 2-3 of those losses shouldn't be there... sob sob. I'd be happier if I'd lost those games due to tricky moves or my opponent insolently cutting and invading all my sure-territory in the endgame, but that's not how it was...)

Since upgrading to 6d my current record is 5 W 2 L, and I guess I won't make up any excuses. After all, I'm sure on the other end they aren't always necessarily focusing on the game either.

Due to having been pretty sick (still a bit sick but I have my voice back!! ...mostly.) and just stupid, I've fallen just a liiiiittle bit behind in my courses, most of them. But I can easily catch up I think. In order to speed along through Fantasy and Horror, since it's one of my easier ones imo, I listened to an Alice in Wonderland audiobook because I already understood the story from the class lecture anyway. I tried to project some deep ideas as to what kind of hidden meanings/messages could have been conveyed by the story The Cartography Wasps and The Anarchist Bees, but the prof kind of responded as though there really isn't that much depth involved. So it would seem that this course is going to be a little shallower than some of my other courses (The Digital Text, on the other hand, seems super duper ambiguous and wishywashy, but it's still kind of cool and he did say there's some coding involved soon).
And yeah, laugh as you may that I have to read Alice in Wonderland, hehe.

I've been listening to that audiobook as I play on Tygem, since personally for me, neither really gets in the way of the other and I was successful with both, so it was efficient for me. I will read the next novels/pdf's properly though.

I don't even know if I'll have a lot of free time until Summer comes, but I'll at least try to post a few times a week, and the sections of the site (which I need to edit and alter a little, as some sections such as Tabletop RPG or Funny probably won't get much content most of the time) will fill up little by little. On that note, another thing I need to do, as I've taken notice, is edit my Go-related posts.

I'll start for example by editing and reworking my Introduction to Go.

When summer DOES come though...
Oh man...

There will be lots and lots of posts, just you wait!!
And when that time comes, if not sooner, I'll be trying my best to figure out all the best ways to build up traffic to this blog and spam dis sheeet all over the place :)



I'll post a Go game review soon! and some Go problems!!
I'm a pretty active Go teacher, so you can look forward to a lot of Go content! (and anecdotal experiences and humour, articles about my deeper thoughts on Go, homemade tutorials on various topics, links to other good Go resources, Important Joseki for everyone to learn, common pitfalls of Kyu players as I see them, and more~)


Ganbatte!

Ore wa Ganbaru~!!

~Yukigami

Online Go: gilgil, Yukigami

Hi~

Yukigami Deeeesu!



Do any of you play Go on Tygem? My account is Yukigami.
I've played a fair bit on Tygem in the past, but I recently made a new account - just says ago, actually. Thus, I had to start at 5d as usual and play a bunch of games. I lost more than expected, 6/22 games, several due to things happening offscreen. The last loss I got was basically a Tygem loser using a combination of counting requests and 'passes' to confuse me and cause me to lose on time. It's worse than it sounds, and it wasn't as though I'd lost focus, or responded incorrectly to some kind of insolent actual move by him, which is another thing. I'll post about that soon I guess. I found it funny this time, instead of getting upset. The guy had lost by 59.5, and instead of resigning or counting the game with me - counting requests he'd been spamming at me over and over and then declining the result of - he just kept trying to confuse me, spam the F out of me, or hide his 'pass' behind counting request pop-ups, which eventually worked... haha


Who plays on KGS?

My KGS account is gilgil.

I also have a newer account called Vulpix with almost no games.

"gilgil" is a reference to the Fate series' awesome golden asshole Gilgamesh, who, as a character of the Nasu-verse parody anime, Carnival Phantasm, was featured in a comical racing episode riding what was referred to as "The GilGil-mobile".

Here are my games lists and rank graphs.

gilgil: games, graph

Vulpix: games, graph

More of my games can be seen on the College Go website, as a member of U of T's team.
My games as a team member are found here.

Here is the still-in-development U of T Go Club website, by the way. We have an active Facebook page, too.

Furthermore, I will be posted lots of games of mine over time, including old or ancient ones I've managed to dig up or that I'd recorded on the same day. Just check the Go section.


I will post shortly about my thoughts on KGS vs. Tygem!

~Yukigami