Early yose. (Learning to Lose part 2)

Lately many of my games have more or less started with an early yose. I've heard that beginners do that more often than more advanced players. I would add, that especially those who have no confidence in their play tend to also resort to an early yose, whether they are beginners like me (struggling in the 20 to 18 kyu range) or those with somewhat higher ranking like 10th or 9th kyu.
I happened to see some video reviews for games played at those ranks and it seems it is not that weird for even the more experienced players.

Couple nights ago I was playing on KGS and met a guy whom with we had a discussion about this phenomena that seems to affect all the games if the previous games didn't go that well. We coined the term "losers' fatigue" although not being too sure if that was the real name for it. He told me it often bothers him too, and that it's the worst thing for a person, if this loss of confidence were to happen in midst of a tournament. I concur, I would not like to get into that kind of situation. The truth is I have been having bad games for a while, and I seem to be getting worse, not better. So if it were a tournament, I'd not get very far.

Looking back at my gaming records it looks like I've played almost every day since the beginning of this month. So I was reminded I might be better off if I really took a small break from playing and relax a little. But even if I do take a break from playing, I'm not planning to abandon this blog for very long. I'm still reading about Go, and while I will use my spare time to catch up with my other hobbies, aikido perhaps. I will pass a thought or two here every once in a while. (I don't really think my break is that long either. Maybe a week at most.)

But before I go, I'd like to share a couple of book recommendations I got from a game review yesterday. There were actually three books. All of them were said to be very good books for beginners at my level. The first one was Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go by Toshiro Kageyama, and the second and third were James Davies' books Tesuji, and Life and Death. I'll probably later make a book list with links to Amazon or other web bookstore and add some other recommendations so that you can easily order them if you like. I'm thinking about ordering one of these when I visit the town later today.

Update: (As promised.) Here are the links to Amazon.com:
- Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go (Beginner and Elementary Go Books)
- Tesuji (Elementary Go Series)
- Life and Death (Elementary Go Series Vol. 4)

(I also ordered myself the book Tesuji via our local bookstore.)

Anyways, I'm off now. See ya later! /gg ^^