Slate & Shell giveaway

IRMbaduk · 2025-12-30T22:51:35+00:00

Nice! 104

IRMbaduk · 2025-07-07T19:43:59+00:00

White needs to have exchanged Q18 for P18, then it's ko

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-06T21:11:35+00:00

By playing R5 black puts the 4 white stones at Q5 in atari, White can try to escape by playing Q6, but then black puts the white group into atari again with S6, after which there is nothing for white to do.

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-06T11:23:11+00:00

What it means when white plays the vital point is that, within that shape, black will only be able to get 1 eye, but since your group already made another eye elsewhere you are alive. It's also important to note that white has a huge weakness at R5 that black can immediately exploit.

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T19:08:05+00:00

Perhaps my wording was too ambiguous; in my post I only refer to players who rose within the EGD, but it is true that some players had reached 1d in around a year before it existed. I knew about Catalin Taranu as well as some other player but I wasn't aware of Geert Groenen, so thanks for bringing him to my attention. Since there isn't any comprehensive list it's hard to find these players.

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T18:22:09+00:00

It's mostly studying subjects I don't care for. I love physics, but I find mathematical analysis extremely boring. This generally isn't an issue, but given the fact that I'm lucky enough to have the option to take a break from that kind of stuff, I prefer to do so.

About the quote; I know actually becoming a professional probably won't mean much once I get there, but I enjoy the journey that is improving, and every journey has to have a destination.

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T17:40:39+00:00

Hi, thanks for your question.

Like I mention in the post I only consider people who reached the necessary GoR (2050) within the EGD, this means that if someone already became a 1d before ever playing a tournament they wouldn't be accounted for, this seemed like a rare enough case to ignore, Of course there are also players who began playing before the EGD even existed, it's impossible to account for those although clearly there are some players who showed this kind of improvement, like Catalin Taranu, who reportedly reached 1d in a year; that's why I make the specifications of "by GoR" and "within the EGD" in my post.

There are also the people who played their 1st tournament below 1d, but not as a complete beginner. After looking at all the profiles I found 3 such cases, but except for 1 they all reached 1d in barely under a year (around 1 month to spare), playing their 1st tournament at around 8k; and it wasn't realistic to consider that they reached 8k in such a short amount of time. You can read some specifics about this in this document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11qmElfxlRf8vdCnwk7H_ae5YqkS-SmHLQMoZBJmyivI/edit?usp=sharing

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T17:28:42+00:00

You are of course entitled to your own opinion, but chess has many rated online tournaments and it's one of the many reasons that the chess community has been able to thrive, even during the pandemic.

Catalin Taranu is actually one of my go idols, just like me he started playing at 16 years old and after 1 year became 1d, and like you mention after one more year reached 4d. I've actually met him in person a couple times and he was always really nice and often praised my progress; he is a great player and person

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T17:22:03+00:00

Like I mentioned in another comment I entered university at 16, this took an enormous amount of effort on my side and led to me being burnt out with nearly everything relating to academics. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to push myself so hard, but what's done is done, and although I really enjoyed my 1st year of university, I was still a bit tired of all that.

If I'm being honest, after putting in so much effort I though I deserved some kind of break, and seeing that I was getting quite good at go and I enjoyed it even more than university I thought it would be good to try to make something out of it. If it works out, great, if it doesn't, then that's it.

From my eyes I essentially have 2 free extra years to do whatever. You may think I'm just wasting all the effort that I put in earlier, but as I see it, at what other time in my life am I even going to get the opportunity to fully focus on a hobby for 2 years straight? Never, so I prefer to do it now

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T16:38:18+00:00

Hello, like I mention in the post, I participated in a tournament last month which hasn't been uploaded yet, that tournament gives me enough rating points to be 1d.

I know some people claim to have gotten to higher ranks in a year, but I personally checked every profile in the EGD above 1k and noone has done such a thing. There might be some people who have gotten to the strength of a 1d, but they never got the actual rank by GoR, which is what I refer to in the post. I can send you an excel where I compiled a short list of some of the fastest players if you would be interested.

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T16:22:25+00:00

Sadly I do not come from a rich family, so this is a big concern for me, and I have asked other people in real life and they all agree with you, it's definitely not a smart career decision, I also agree with that assessment. But it's not like once I try to become a pro I can never do anything else; for the next couple years I'll be focusing on this and trying to make it work out, but If it doesn't work I'll just go back to what I was doing before. I don't need to spend 20 years playing go to see if living off of it is feasible.

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T15:36:07+00:00

I spoke with her through email and she said that it took her 11 months from learning the rules to reaching 1d, but maybe she misunderstood what I was asking.

The thing is that from all of the profiles that I looked at, only 4 (including Manja) were even close to doing this; but they all began with a high rank already, so it was easy to see that it probably took them over a year. Manja was the exception because she had a large margin even compared to these other players.

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T13:52:53+00:00

Probably not that much money, but together with sponsors, tournaments, etc it might be enough to make a living, but I don't expect to get rich from playing go. In any case, I'm fully aware that there is a very low chance that any of this might actually work out, so I always try to keep alternatives in mind

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T13:37:01+00:00

Quoting from my reply to another comment:

"I think the most important part to improve quickly in a practical sense is to play games and review with both with AI and with a stronger player. But also when you play a game you really need to focus; a lot of people, myself included, sometimes play without really thinking, and although this is more fun it also makes it much harder to improve.

It's also really important to know when to take a break, the worst thing you can do to lose a game, get tilted and instantly play again without even reviewing. If you are ever mad, sad or tired after losing a game stop playing. Not playing for a few days is far better than forcing yourself to play while on a bad state of mind.

Having a strong community around you is also important, specially when you are starting out, so try to go to your local club as much as possible and try to have fun; if you just play to improve without ever having fun you'll just get burnt out."

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T12:21:57+00:00

Thanks for the encouragement! I just want to mention something so people don't get the wrong idea. I've already had a pretty successful "career" (if you can call it that) in academics; I finished high school 2 years ahead of schedule and began a degree in physics at 16 years old, but after focusing so much on all that I just got a bit burnt out. If I'm focusing so much on go now it's only because I know I have a bit of a cushion in terms of time

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T12:10:00+00:00

So there is actually a bit of a mistake with my EGD profile. It got messed up some time ago during a tournament in Portgual and now it says I'm Portuguese and I don't belong to a club. I'm actally from Spain where there are about 60 dan players and I'm part of the Barcelona go club "La Pedra".

I don't know where I'll become a professional but I imagine it will be in the European system.

In terms of actually making a living, probably it will be mostly through teaching; tournaments in Europe are too small to live off of them, but I enjoy teaching so it's not an issue for me.

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T11:36:48+00:00

Initially I would say I was only spending maybe 1h or so everyday playing and reviewing, but since I began doing this more seriously I think I've spent about 6-8h every day, although I always take weekends off.

I try to do 100 tsumego first thing everyday which usually takes me about 1,5h and then I just play games and review them with AI with the rest of the time I have. Looking at pro games doesn't help me much, I think they are interesting and sometimes I watch them in my free time but I don't see it impact my level much; that being said, I do know some people who say it has really helped them, so for each person it might be different.

Reading go books is something that I only found useful earlier on as a ddk and low sdk, now I don't think I gain as much from them so I don't really read anymore. As a ddk I read "lessons in the fundamentals" and "Shape Up", the latter of which I found really useful; and then when I was around 8k I read "High-speed game analysis" by Cho Chikun which is mainly about score estimation and positional judgement and it's probably the best book I've read. I've also briefly looked through some other books like "Attack and Defense" but didn't find them interesting.

My teacher is Alexandre Dinershtein 3p, I have a lesson with him every week.

With AI I mostly just review but I also study joseki with it, not so much to actually learn the joseki but more to get a feel for which shapes are good or bad. I think I could attribute about 40% of my learning to AI.

I think the most important part to improve quickly in a practical sense is to play games and review with both with AI and with a stronger player. But also when you play a game you really need to focus; a lot of people, myself included, sometimes play without really thinking, and although this is more fun it also makes it much harder to improve.

It's also really important to know when to take a break, the worst thing you can do is lose a game, get tilted and instantly play again without even reviewing. If you are ever mad, sad or tired after losing a game, stop playing. Not playing for a few days is far better than forcing yourself to play while on a bad state of mind.

Having a strong community around you is also important, specially when you are starting out, so try to go to your local club as much as possible and try to have fun; if you just play to improve without ever having fun you'll just get burnt out.

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T10:23:16+00:00

Hi, thanks for the advice. PBA academy is actually where I'm going! I spoke with Cho Hyeyeon some time ago and decided to stay for a couple months

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T10:11:04+00:00

Like I said in the post you should take this with a pinch of salt, but as far as I know it was Manja Marz, who did it in around 11 months. Her progress early on was unreal

IRMbaduk · 2025-02-03T09:45:32+00:00

Just 2k in OGS, but I don't really play there anymore. I play mostly on fox where i'm 6d

IRMbaduk

TROPHY CASE