Montreal!

Woohoo, looks like I'll be playing in a Montreal go tournament tomorrow. A few days ago, a friend sent out an email about it. We pondered it a bit, talked to some other Vermont players, and and will drive up early in the morning.

There will be three slow games, one hour plus byo yomi, so I should be able to avoid hasty moves. Calmness, focus, and good moves. That will be my motto for the day. Wish me luck ^^.

Minue Quote

A good minue quote to remind myself how important it is to get out my board and actually play sequences on the board, instead of just clicking through them on the computer.

"Go is learned by your hands, not by your head. There is very weird myth of learning Go. ==> 'I watched tutor's review, and explanation, (private, or free or whatever,like kgs plus) and I understand what he explained . So I learned a LOT.'

It is completely wrong.

This is just like this ==> 'I am an aikido practioner, and today, in my dojo, I watched my master's demonstration, and I understand how his skills works. ok. I learned a lot!'

In fact, he has not learned anything yet. To learn it, he must practice the skills many times, by his body, not by his head. If not, he can not use the skill."

Go is learned by our hands, not by our head, just like aikido practice"

Wise words. So I am getting my goban out more often again to study, instead of sitting at the computer where I distract myself too much anyway.

Thank You, Phantom

Finally getting around to posting a pic of my new bumper sticker, bought at Phantom's Go Shop.



Of course, by now it is covered in New England winter crud and the van is snowed in, but hey, at least you can see how me and my kids have been kind of overdoing it on the bumper stickers ^^



Guess today will be more snow shoveling, and less go studying :p

Calmness

After reading a number of the questions in the Go Q&A room on Pandanet, I decided to do something different to prepare for my weekly teaching game with minue.



Instead of my usual mindless web surfing and hanging out on KGS, I shut down my computer and got out my goban. I played through Shusaku's ear reddening game and I played through most of the third Kisei final game. I took about 45 minutes to just sit calmly and put stones down, calming my mind, feeling the flow of the stones, and slowing down my breath.

It worked very well. I think go is just as much influenced by state of mind as it is by knowledge. Yes, I still lost, but I felt I was doing better than usual. I guess I'll make this a habit. Amazing how powerful state of mind can be.

Becky's Blog

For the last few weeks, I have been wanting to post about her blog. Finally getting around to it.

Last year, Becky and Walther went to study go in China and wrote an excellent blog about it. We all were sad to have it end when they came back into the States. I was very happy, when a few weeks later, Becky emailed me with a new blog addy. She moved to London, and is blogging about her London adventures and her continuing go journey.

Me being the unorganized person I am, I promptly lost the blog addy though. Was happy to rediscover it a few weeks ago and have been enjoying reading her posts and catching up with her. Have fun at Maths and Weiqi... with a British Accent.

Sorin's Blog

Just another go blog, but a very high quality one. Sorin has entered the world of go bloggers at http://www.361points.com/blog/

I really enjoyed his coverage of the 3rd Kisei game, lots of things to think about and study. Yesterday at go club, we spent a few hours going over it, just the kifu at first, later using Sorin's comments. Very interesting.

Check out the rest of his site too, it's excellent.

L+1 with two hanes

Giving the solution for this shape. Sorin found it when I posted this shape a few days ago.

Click here for sgf file if zgo doesn't work for you.

Update: The second solution I was showing was indeed not right. I fixed it in the sgf file. Thank you, Sorin!

Forty Two!

IGN Goama Newsletter sent out his 42nd issue today. I have been reading this since the start, and I always enjoy the interviews, the trick moves, the joseki explorations and the most exciting games of the week. It has a good coverage of international go news.

A few weeks ago, it gave a link to determine your strength at go.

I realized I had never posted about this newsletter, so time to rectify that and point people to it. Click here to subscribe to the newsletter, or click here, to find the archives.

Congrats to Goama on the 42nd issue of a wonderful go resource!

Go Cartoons

Someone sent me a link to Ko Fight Club, a fun series of go cartoons. (Thanks, Mike)



This Ings clock one really spoke to me, I sooooooooooooooo hate talking clocks!!! I have lost more than one game by losing focus because of the darned clock yelling at me ^^

The link has tons more cartoons, go and enjoy.

The Joys of Living

I played this game, in which I did reasonably well, till I forgot to live. Looking back, it think I had tagged that group as 'alive' when it was, and failed to update when it wasn't. Feh! Stupid mistake!

The game was reviewed by sendol.




















Click here for the sgf file if the applet doesn't work for you.

Only thing I can blame is focus. Will have to work on that.

MANY thanks to chiyodad, who helped me to get ZGo, this sgf replaying applet to work on my blog.