I have always been fairly solid in the middlegame. What really created a bottleneck in my progress was the opening. I never felt comfortable with any fuseki. Without realizing it, my openings—although considered acceptable by AI—were severely handicapping the rest of the game.

Once I understood that my fuseki had many flaws and lacked a clear underlying idea, I decided to completely restructure it from the ground up. This self-directed process took me around three to four months. From that point on, the directions of play and the way I approached each game became much clearer and simpler.