twold
Intro
Hi. My name is Marek Bernát. Presently I am studying physics in Prague. I learned to play go in the April 2007.
Here's my KGS rank
I also want to play in some live tournaments this year (2008). I already did attend one the previous year (summer 2007), but I was so weak I decided to wait a bit. Also I was quite surprised by the rank difference. On KGS I was about 10k in the summer, but in the tournament they told me to play as 16k and still I lost almost all my games :-) But I suppose the difference is lower in the higher ranks, e.g. it is said that EGF and KGS dans differ by stone or two.
Useful stuff to study
- Tesuji
- Lessons in the fundamentals of go
- Opening theory made easy
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On your side
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Tasuki's tsumego collections
Game memorization
Right now (beginning of 2008) I am working my way through Killer of Go. I found it useful to memorize some games. Not learning them by heart, but to try to get a little grasp of every move so that I could tell where the next move will be mostly by reasoning and only sometimes supported by memory (so maybe memorization is not a very good name for this process). This helped me quite a lot in memorizing my own games with no effort. Really, sometimes I just try to replay my games and I can go without any error 100 moves or so. I am sure I can achieve complete subconscious memorization in time. I really like this. Some months ago I thought that only very good players (e.g. high level amateur dans and pros) could do this, but now I see it's absolutely natural.
Combinatorial game theory applied to go
Also, I am trying to get a little grasp on CGT, infinitesimals and related stuff. It took me quite a while to even get started, given that there is no starting point (it is like learning words from a dictionary that only explains them by other words you don't know). So some good concise introduction would be really helpful. Still, I am infinitely thankful to Bill Spight for creating all the articles. In some discussion I saw someone asking, if anyone had understood the concepts just by learning them on SL, without previous exposure to CGT. So yes, I have. Believe me, it can be done. It just takes time and thinking (the more of both the better). I still have a way to go, but basic building pieces are in place now.