Pasky

I'm studying and playing go since the start of December 2006. As of 2007-11-01 I'm around 1k or 1d on KGS; 4k (rating 1796) EGF.

Currently my most favorite professional go player is Cho Chikun (after the usual period of fascination with Takemiya Masaki). I tend to play extremely territory style, create very solid (and perhaps a bit overconcentrated) positions and then enjoy destroying the opponent's moyo. (But this is the reason why I like Cho's games rather than the other way around.) But this style again is changing lately, with more focus on attacking and fighting.

I'm an intuitive player with rather sucky reading. My current study schedule consists mainly of replaying through a collection of 750 Go Seigen games on my cellphone and Cho Chikun games on my notebook.

My ongoing journey to shodan

James Davies' Tesuji was my first Go book and it was awesome. However, I think the greatest first Go book (when you already know the rules and have a bit of experience) is Making Good Shape - it's bound to bump you by at least four stones up and that's for real! ;-)

Also excellent companions for the journey through the kyu realm are Get Strong at The Opening and Get Strong at Invading. (There's plenty of tsumego and basic joseki info online, so I don't think a book for that is too worthwhile.) As you reach the low kyus, I greatly recommend The 1971 Honinbo Tournament - despite it's "cheap" ordinary look, this is one of the true hidden gems: extremely detailed but understandable and interesting commentaries of the tournament games. Not only will you learn a lot, but you will also get a peek at all the considerations pro players have to make during a game.

Other than that, to improve it's great to learn few professional games - it's much easier than you'd have thought, even if you have horribly bad memory like me! It's also elegant way to learn some joseki and especially get the all-important feeling for shape. Besides, it's kinda fun and you can experiment with using the same patterns in your own games and see what happens. If you're a Hikaru no Go junkie like me, an excellent starting point might be learning some HnG games you like - My Friday Night Files is a treasure store of HnG games, you'll find just about any there.

I suck at fighting, so I started playing at wBaduk. I have to admit that so far I struggle with 9k there. ;-)

My favorite KGS page: Minue. This is the best homepage I've see on SL, and even though its content is mostly geared at ddks, I have still reached something like a minor enlightenment when reading some of the casual remarks by Minue on how to think about Baduk.