Time to Sign Up for Group Classes

Only a few weeks till a new session of Guo Juan's Internet Go School Group Classes. These are very high quality classes, and I can very much recommend them. If you have the time and opportunity, click on the link and seriously consider joining them.

 

Class Levels

Group A: 1d - 5d
Group B: 1k - 10k
Group C: 20k - 11k
Group D: 21k - 30k

 

2009 term 3: October 3/4 to November 21/22 -> registration started
Group A and B meet on Saturdays, and Group C and D meet on Sundays. 1,5h each lesson, 8 lessons each term.

 

Class Content
1. Topics include opening, direction of play, middle game, joseki, and endgame, plus two question and answer classes. The number of classes on each topic will vary by group.
2. Internal competition - students play one game per week with another member of their class. These games will be reviewed (most important points) by the teacher. If you have questions on your games, you can ask during the question and answer classes.
3. Winners and second places of each group competition may play a simul teaching game (2 hour maximum) with teacher Wang Jiankun.
4. Homework will be assigned.
5. Three audio lectures, selected by teachers, watched outside of class.

 

Teachers
Guo Juan 5p (lessons and game reviews + organization)
Mingjiu Jiang 7p (lessons and game reviews)
Jennie Shen 2p (lessons and game reviews)
Wang Jiankun 7p (simul games for competition winners)

Bedtime Ladder Problem

I haven't been playing much, but I have been doing pretty regular go problems. Tonight I finally managed to actually get a KGS game in. I played a guest and my 'capturing stones' problems sure did pay off.



I am white, he is black. It is not a particularly hard ladder to read, but it still made me feel good to see that I could capture those two triangle stones easily into a ladder. He didn't agree, so played out the ladder and escaped when he discovered that it failed for him. Oops ^^

Jack's Go Congress Blog and AGA's New Site

Jack is a player from the Vermont Go Club who is attending the current American go congress. He is sharing his adventures with us by writing an excellent blog. Go Jack, go!

 

He posted a link to the new American Go Association Go Database, where one can look up so many more statistics than we ever were able to do on the old site. I am impressed!

Boston Results

It was a good tournament. The disadvantage of a smaller tournament (26 people) though is that one ends up playing a lot of handicap games. In this case, I gave handicap twice out of four games.

 

I gave 3H and lost.
I gave 9H and lost.
I clearly have room for improvement in my handicap game skills.

 

Thankfully, the other two games were even and I won one and lost one. Perfect ^^

End result 1-3. Good enough for a rusty player and I am learning so much already from the game reviews. More details later.

Boston Go Tournament

I kind of forgot that there was a go tournament in Boston this week, but luckily my friends helped me remember and pushed me to actually attend. Tomorrow the four of us will drive down to Boston and meet another member of the Upper Valley Go Club there.

 

Today I considered panicking that I wasn't ready and that I couldn't play, but instead I did many go problems and replayed a shusaku game twice. My five years old assisted me by excavating some dinosaur bones right next to me and by making fairy dust out of leaves, which somehow ended up all over my goban.

 

Guide dog in training Giant helped by making sure the cats wouldn't interrupt my studies.

 

It will be interesting to see how my games are tomorrow, I have been having a bit too much life and not enough go, but who cares. I will do the best I can.

Playing Go at Borders

Once a month, our go club visits the cafe at our local Borders book store and plays a few games. We also are available to teach anyone who is interested and have the times publicized in our local newspaper 'activities calendar' so that people know about it.

 

Even although one would think that tons of people would show up for free go lessons, we tend to usually have only one or two on a good day. We still continue playing at Borders because we feel it is good public outreach to play in such a visible place and tell people about the game.

 

Last Saturday we played there and had a great time. Five of our members showed up and one new person joined us. He had played go in the past and was happy to get to play again, even if he was a bit rusty.

 

One little boy asked about the game, but he did not want to learn how to play. At least now he knows about the existence of go and maybe some day he will be interested to learn.

 

I wish I had more time to do more public outreach like this, maybe when things settle down after the move.

Resigning Free Games II

Thanks for all the reactions, I have pondered them all. I would like to highlight kirkmc's

"Apparently, your cat only pukes on your laundry when you play free games: if it were me, I'd only play ranked games then.

Seriously, though. Whether it's a free game or a ranked game, if something serious happens you'll have to stop playing. I don't think free games should be treated with such a flip attitiude. I sometimes play free games when I'm trying out new stuff, but I don't play any differently, other than, perhaps, taking more risks than I would in ranked games. I also know some people who only play free games, who don't have a rank on KGS.

You should respect your opponent no matter how you play, free or ranked, slow or blitz. Granted, you resign, rather than escaping, but it's still a strange attitude to think that such games are "throw-away" games."

 

I play free games, I play them seriously, but I am willing to resign and not worry about them if unexpected life happens. This is considered rude by some. Which I am willing to accept as their opinion even I personally do not consider it rude.

Kirkmc plays free games, takes more risks than in ranked games, which one could consider 'less serious', but he does not consider that rude to his opponent. I don't either, I am just having a hard time understanding why one can be considered rude, the other can't.

In my kgs play, I will continue to free games with the option of resigning occasionally. If my opponent resigns unexpectedly, fine. If he experiments, fine. My rule in life is to assume good intent and that's what I do in my games, and in my reaction to my opponent's choices.