I
've been messing around a lot with 9x9 go in my spare time these days. It's a very different beast from 19x19, and fits my schedule a little better. On the larger board, a great deal of victory is decided by strategic considerations, while on the tiny board, if you make one tactical slip the game is over. I've always been more a strategic player than a tactical player, so 9x9 serves to force me to play to my weaknesses.
I've been stuck at a certain plateau on 9x9 for a while now, not advancing in rank, and routinely going through periods of very poor play that wash out any gains I make. This can be very frustrating, as the games are over so quickly that I often feel like I was playing on autopilot, not learning anything. But I recently came up with a system for playing that, while it hasn't borne ratings-fruit yet, has increased both my enjoyment, and my feeling of learning something from each game substantially. The idea is that I need to be able to describe my plan for the game in words at basically any time. This sounds obvious, but in Go it's very possible to just play "moves that look good", or feel necessary, and even back them up with a little bit of reading, without really knowing where they're going to get you.
This is clearly a very bad habit, and I'm trying to fight against it. This means spending time in the game clarifying what I hope to achieve in various situations, which is actually good -- previously, I'd been using too little time, just making snap judgements, and only using time to read when it was already too late, and I was in losing battles.
Having a clearly defined plan really helps with learning, because after losing a game I can ask: "Was my plan bad? Or did I execute it badly?" Being able to drop into this mode of questioning instantly makes it much easier to learn from my mistakes, instead of just shrugging my shoulders, and telling myself to "read more" next time, or something like this. It gives me something concrete on which to grade myself, which is ever-so-important.