Until next week?

I played a 6-stone handicap game this evening against genchan (23k) and won by 33.5 moku. It was a free game (his preference) but I also wanted an unpressured match. NannyOgg (-) was observing and said that I played well. Many thanks for the compliment!

As with most of my recent matches, the sum of my lessons, experience, practice and studies are contributing to the effectiveness of my play. What I had learned about pins from my July 28th game gave me 8-moku. As before, yoyoma's guidance on denial-of-base was critical. It was still too early for me to apply any of the lessons that mungo had taught me this afternoon (and I still need to review everything) but I was still able to apply his earlier ones.

My rank graph. Ever so slowly inching back upwards.

The differences in strength among the lower kyus is rather small but I think it is reasonable to assume that I have gotten at least one stone stronger even though my 30k rank doesn't reflect it. This renews my hope for the long road.

This may be my last game until Wednesday of next week. Today was the calm before the edge of the storm at work. The fiscal month-end is coming; and after that comes the fiscal quarter-end. There will be a brief lull between the two where I hope to ramp-up my games again.

I should still be posting to my blog since I may come across some interesting readings. Stay tuned.

I was happy to again meet Shugyosha (29k?) on KGS. I had played him on IGS back on June 30th in a very enjoyable game that I didn't mind losing. He's taking some pro lessons so he may begin to develop as quickly as, or perhaps even faster than, Zero9090 (now 20k) has been. He's a fine opponent and he strikes me as a sharp mind. I hope he achieves whatever goal he has set for himself.