It’s been over two months since my last update. Life and work have drawn me away from regular online play outside of American Yunguseng Dojang. While I’m still going over Shusaku games from time to time and practicing tsumego each day, my diminished activity shows I needed a mental break from the game.

Yesterday I received my second AYD report card. Let’s be very clear, over the course of a whole year my AYD rank has not shifted at all. For all intents and purposes, to an outside observer, I’m exactly where I started! So it’s with some understandable apprehension I read over the report. But to my own surprise, even though nearly all of the skills from my previous report card had fallen, I felt better about Go than I had in the past couple of months.

In Go, and perhaps this is just a direct reflection of my personality and life, I tend to over-think and over-rationalize my decisions. In-seong has freed me. He’s right. I don’t need theories, I need to feel the stones and find my own way.