ZeroWave/WhatDoIDoAfterShodan

ZeroWave: yesterday, after returning from a small tourney we had in our club, I realized that it was the first tournament in which I enlisted as a Shodan. It dawned on me that I'm very close to the point that a lot of go players reach - I got to Shodan, I'm happy, I've reached my goal... and now I stop to play and lose the will to play. This is clearly not what I want; so I decided to write down a list of things I think about myself as a player and what can i do to further study go.

First of all, I took a look at this: http://gosensations.com/?id=2&server_id=1&new_id=1270 seeing that I am around 1d-2d kgs, and I still lose to the 2-3k sometimes, i understand first and utmost that I MUST improve my reading. if I am to become a true high dan, then there should be no difference for me in beating a 17k and a 3k; I must solve more tsumego, and then some more, and then some more. another thing that I understood abut myself as a player, is that my theoretic over all understanding of the game exceeds by far the brute force of my strength - I understand the game flow really well, I have quite a strong feeling of which part of the board is the most important one (my fuseki is quite strong) and I do better on slow paced games then on fast paced ones. Time to challenge my weakness! I should play more fast games. and by "more", I mean a lot. another thing I can say quite clearly from my own "feel" of myself as a player, is that as a strategist, I can stand on even ground with my fellow higher dans. I lack discipline in tactics - which once again indicates that I should study more joseki variations, and gain a lot more experience in playing itself, and less reading books and analyzing games. I also HAVE to start counting points in yose. My feel there is also not bad, but I cannot belay this part of my go any longer. I need to find an edge there too. Last but not least, I tend to lose games that I'm leading in after missing a single move or making that final touch in the end. I'll focus more on that in the future, and overall, once again, should PLAY more in order to brute force my way out of this habit.

tapir: I agree with the reading part. But I honestly doubt that playing fast games is in any way related to improving your reading especially when you professedly lack discipline in reading!

cheers, I hope this is a helpful read to anyone. Feel free to leave comments!