Go

I have been playing Go now for nearly 8 years, I have had pretty slow progress because my engagement with it is very patchy. When I actually get down to studying it, my rank seems to increase quite quickly, so I think I have some knack for it and the kind of thinking that is involved in understanding its many facets.

 I have recently started playing on OGS, which is a turn-based website community dedicated to offering an environment in which people can not only set up games against other people, but after you have gained a somewhat accurate grade, also tournament games.

This kind of system is a little different from the real-time strategy you get on say tygem and KGS, it allows you to study your own game while you're playing. What I mean by this, is that because you are dealing with a game over a long period of time, you can not only put your own reasoning into it, but you can go away and study games and strategies that allow you to improve your game while playing.

For instance you can go away and study an approach move that someone might use, or study a fuseki that someone has played that you have never seen before. This type of learning is quite interesting, because it allows you to apply the studying and skills you learn over the period of just one game, which, when the game is done, you can see how you improved from the early parts of the game to the later.

Some people might assume this is cheating, but it is impossible to avoid, are you really going to stop studying Go for the time it takes to finish one of these games (up to a few months) not only this, your opponent is going to be doing this aswell, because it a fortuitous time to understand the repercussions of your strategy not just in retrospect, but while it is happening, and with the ability to put it into the context of your studying practices.