Halfpointer

Last night, I played a game in the Iwamoto Tournament. I have been doing about average in this tournament, winning 3 out of 6 games so far, placing me 42nd for the moment. I like that number anyway :-)

The game was going ok for the most part, apart from helpfully making him fix his shape at some crucial point, and some other less than optimal moves. My big mistake was giving him way too much of the center though, way more than I should have given him. Which made the game extremely close, even although I didn't realize how close. We were fighting one of those one point kos, when he passed, even although he still did have ko threats left. He thought I was ahead, so it wasn't important anyway. He was shocked when he saw the end result. Black +0.5. Yes, he was white. Gotta love those half point games.

It was a fun game, full of learning opportunities, as usual.

The Wings Go Club June league is over, I never got around to playing six games, only played three this month. Still tied for third place, so not too bad. I will try to play six games again this month.

I really like having my rank turned off at KGS. Suddenly I was able to beat 10k's who I had never beaten before. I feel stronger already :-)

Finally finished the first volume of my Korean Problem Academy books I had been working in it on and off, but never sat down and methodically did a bunch of them every day. Three weeks ago, I finally did and book one is done now! I think there are about 700 or 800 problems in them.

They don't have answers, which I first wondered about, how useful they would be because of that. It turns out I didn't have to worry. I actually think it is better not to have the answers because it forces me to really read out every sequence, and to be extremely sure about the right answer, as opposed to slapping a stone at the vital point and hoping for the best. Which is the way I often do the problems where there are answers available. Yes, I do realize that is not the best way, but sometimes it is mightily tempting.

With those problems, I have to actually sit down, concentrate and decide which solution is the best, and why another move does not work. Most of them I can do pretty fast, but some do stump me for a while. I do believe this helps to improve my reading power though.

This week at go club we had a beginner whom I gave nine stones. He turned out to be much less of a beginner than I thought he was, so that was a pretty hard game. I did manage to win, but only barely. I lived where I shouldn't have and killed some things which shouldn't have been killable. Always interesting to play against high handicap. I started a bunch of high handicap games on Dragon just to practice it more.