Thursday, September 06, 2007

Chinese Opening

This week is Chinese Opening week at our go club. We decided to study the Chinese opening by all listening to the first lecture at Guo Juan's audiogolessons, and study it together at go club.

The studying by ourselves went well, but we got kicked out of club early today. So we only studied for a bit together. Still, it was useful to have study buddies and motivation, and all look at the same lecture. I made an SGF file from the lesson, to help me look up details more easily. I knew most of the things in the first lecture, but it was a good refresher.

Today's go club was sad because of missing J, who had to go back to Singapore. It just isn't the same without him. But the good thing was that we had a visitor from London / Japan, who actually hiked six hours on the Appalachican trail to reach us (he was visiting his sister in a neighboring town). So he got to hike the Appalachian trail AND he got to play go at our club. Very nice gentleman, I enjoyed meeting him.

He was 6k, so I gave him 6H. I still am not good at giving handicap. I made big mistake when I took the corner at some point instead of jumping out. I was behind enough that I had to kill something, and luckily black obliged by not leaving a weak group. B flailed for a while, but eventually resigned. Not easy to play handicap as W, but I am getting better at it.

Next I played a 4k friend, at 4H. The game was pretty even (after he donated one of his corners in middle game) and I felt mostly ok about that game. I resigned because we wanted to get some studying in, but I feel that W was hopeful by then.

I will try to play a bunch of KGS games with Chinese opening, since I haven't used it seriously for quite a while. Will be interesting.

3 comments:

Stjep said...

Getting kicked out of the Go-Club early is not cool.

Our Go-club meets in a small café (the owner is a Go-player himself). But when arrived there this week (after having walked throughthe rainy streets) i realized there was some kind of celebration, all the tables were occupied and no one of my fellow Go-buddies was around :( (this is especially troublesome as it takes me 30 minutes to get there).

But afterwards a couple of players showed up and we had a great evening :D

Unknown said...

What lecture did you listen to of hers to generate the SGF, or what was the most useful material for studying Chineese opening? I am familiar with the basic formation but not the more in depth thinking and response appropriate for a double-digit kyu.

David, of David's Go Dojo

Unknown said...

David, I listened to her Chinese Opening 1 lecture. It is a very basic lecture, I think you will get quite a lot out of it. It is nice overview of what to do when your opponent invades too early and things like that.

There is a book on the Chinese opening too, which helped me a lot when I studied it two years ago. I will have to reread the book some day. So much to study, so little time :D

And Let'sGo, good for you that you ended up having a great evening anyway :)

Nanny