Hello, my name is Shiki. I will be 22 in July. I first learnt go in first year of high school. Reading 'Hikaru no Go', which had just finished being serialized at the time, was what put me on to go. I was very excited to discover such a fun, free world, so I immediately began playing. One of my new friends at school also played go. I studied quite a bit and reduced the number of handicap stones I took and in the end staged an upset, forcing my friend to a handicap (though I was still quite weak) [wry grin], but at this time my friend gave up playing...which was sad.I didn't have the courage to go to a go club and time gradually passed . . . After two years, I finally started playing go on the Net. All the people around me are strong players, but I've made some friends of my own level and also have become friends with some high-dan players. Every day I play a few games and have a lot of fun. The only thing is that a year has passed and I've hardly gotten any stronger. The number of my friends dwindled, I became busy myself and I've stopped playing go.Last week I started playing on Pandanet again, but I wonder how I can get stronger. I do a bit of study with life-and-death problems and playing over games, but I don't improve.I feel like screaming, 'Help me!!' Consultation One: Mr. Shiki Hello, Mr. Shiki. I'm very happy that a young person like you is enjoying go. You seem quite keen, playing on the Net and studying. I can picture you enjoying a game. As for how to get stronger, my guess is that after improving you've come to a barrier blocking further progress. This happened to me when I was 4-kyu and again when I was 3-dan; I just couldn't get stronger. If you continue playing, you will definitely be able to surmount this barrier. I have three suggestions about how to study. 1. Find a rival Please make your target a player of the same strength as yourself or a little stronger. If you look at the games of other people from this standpoint, you will discover different ways of thinking from your own. Try to absorb the good points of other people's play. 2. Solve rapidly simple life-and-death problems People tend to tackle difficult life-and-death problems, but I recommend doing problems that you can solve at a glance. If you go through these problems repeatedly, your play will become sharper. It's also satisfying to do problems that you can solve. If you do five problems a day and keep it up, I'm sure it will benefit you. If you get tired of easy problems, you can challenge more difficult ones. 3. Play through a game record two or three times How about playing through the same game record more than once? Two or three times would be a good target. The repetition helps you understand the flow of the game. There's no need to push yourself to play through the game to the end. Playing through just 100 moves would be quite effective. You don't have to make unreasonable efforts to do all of the above. Just try something when you feel like it. If you keep playing, I'm sure you will get stronger. Since you find go interesting, there will be no problems. Go is a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy it more and more.