The Joy of Ladders

A few nights ago, I played my weekly slaughter game with edison. During fuseki, I played this move(N3), which edison considered a mistake.



I thought that the joseki was at O4, but did not want to play that because of the White K3 stone. N3 seemed a viable alternative. My teacher minue later confirmed that O4 was a bad move on this board.

Edison hummed and hawed for a bit.

NoSide [7k]: hmm... interesting move n3
NoSide [7k]: could it be a bad move i wonder
NannyOgg [-]: well, i think joseki is O4
NannyOgg [-]: but that doesn't seem to fit the board
NannyOgg [-]: so who knows ^^
Drimgere [5k?]: >_>
NannyOgg [-]: i won't pretend to understand what i am doing :)
NoSide [7k]: temptation is very big to mess with that formation of yours
NannyOgg [-]: sure
NannyOgg [-]: don't blame me if it explodes in your face
NoSide [7k]: that's what i'm worried about
NannyOgg [-]: hehehe
NoSide [7k]: toilet break
NannyOgg [-]: LOL, i seem to do that to you at least once a game
Drimgere [5k?]: nanny loosens noside's bowels?
NoSide [7k]: i get scared easily..what can i say :)
NannyOgg [-]: hehehe
NannyOgg [-]: i'll remember that
NannyOgg [-]: and make good use of the knowledge
charkysan [14k?]: you're on a roll
NoSide [7k]: temptation to p3 is really big
NoSide [7k]: should i do it?
slade [6k?]: for some reason r3 is looking good too
NannyOgg [-]: it's your decision
NannyOgg [-]: i'll just do the exploding, you do the deciding ^^

And so it went, he did play P3. I briefly considered to cut with an empty triangle, but decided that there was no reason to do so, since the ladder didn't work for him anyway.



Of course, you can guess the rest of the story. He played a few moves and then realized the ladder didn't work. This threw him off for the rest of the game, and he ended up resigning. 2-2! I am catching up with him. I HAVE to beat him again next time!

New Goban!

Finally showing off my new goban. It is just a cheap set from Yellow Mountain Imports, but I am very happy with it. It looks great and it feels great to play on it. I still want to oil the stones, as per chiyodad's example, but it might take me a while to get around to that. For now it works just fine the way they are.



I was doing some go studying on the computer today, when I realized I should be outside when we had such nice spring weather. I took my board and studied some pro games outdoors. Very enjoyable! Later I played some capture go with my seven year old daughter.



I will get to play in a go tournament this weekend, the Western Massachusetts one. Looking forward to it. I will enter as 3k again, that rating worked out well last time. Apart from the talking clocks that is, we'll see how I do with them this time ^^

SDK

Taking a break from studying to do some writing. Any excuse will do when I am annoyed with my slow progress in memorizing the game of the century.

When I reached AGA sdk a while ago, I still didn't feel like an 'official' sdk, because I wasn't sdk on KGS yet. The KGS rankings are so much stronger than the AGA ranks, I considered myself a KGS ddk for the longest time.

Yesterday, I talked to a friend, and he convinced me that the time has come to consider myself a KGS sdk too. I seem to be playing on a 5k to 7k KGS level now, based on my games and on opinions of friends and teachers. SDK-hood is kind of inevitable, even if I still feel unsure about my own abilities part of the time. Argh, I just don't like ranks at all, it always feels like a pain when I have to deal with them.

Next on my road is AGA shodan (which doesn't seem like a big deal anymore now that I have become closer) and then KGS shodan (which seems more of a big deal, but still only a tiny step on my road to getting stronger). It's funny that the stronger I get, the less important rank seems to be getting though. Interesting. I still remember how desperate I was to to from 19k to 18k on KGS. I don't feel the same desperation about rank anymore, although my quest for improvement still is there. It just doesn't seem to be measured as much by rank, it really is about making the stones flow better and playing better moves for the board. It is measured by showing better spirit and by reading deeper and faster.

I guess I'd better go back to memorizing that pro game if I actually want to see any improvement happening.

Because It's There!

A while ago, someone asked me why I want to improve at go. I have been thinking about it, and am still thinking about it.

I love the way the game seems to get deeper every single day, even if I sometimes do think back wistfully to when the game still was simple. Making a move used to be so easy, I would just play the first likely move and it was fine. Now I am slowly beginning to realize that every move affects a lot of stones on the board, and I am starting to see that my opponent might not always follow my plans. Sometimes he even has a plan of his own! The fiend!

I love the way the stones sometimes flow just the right way. Mind you, this doesn't happen very often, usually they seem to be placed very awkwardly. But once in a while, I do have a game which I feel good about, where the stones fall into the right place, almost by themselves. There is a good flow to the game. I want to increase the number of games where that does happen.

I love the intellectual challenge I get from trying to improve my go game. Improving is not trivial at all, I had NO clue at all about how hard this road would be. Yes, I am enjoying every step on this road, but I will not say that this road is easy at all. When I first got back into go, I had no idea how badly this would consume me, how hyperfocused I would get on this game. And even after working hard for quite a while, I still feel very, very weak at go.

I love the sense of history I get when replaying and studying old games, and when reading about go players long ago. This drives me to improve myself as to get closer to their mastery. My go would be awesome if it would be only half as good as the old go masters.

Still, none of those reasons seem to be why I want to improve in go. I do know that the drive is there, very, very strongly. I cannot stand still, I have to play, study, do tsumego, and get stronger, there is no other option. After thinking about my reasons for a long time, I can only explain my quest for strength in George Mallory's words 'Because it's there.'.

Weekly Slaughter 2-1

Argh!! Last night, Edison beat me during our Weekly Slaughter game. I can't even blame him much, it was more me making a lot of bad decisions. He stood by and watched while I suicided my invading group. Good learning experience ^^

I will have to spend some time reviewing the game and figure out all my bad decisions, so that I won't make them again. I didn't like move 8 for me, and it only got worse from there. Oh well, next time I'll do better. It was a fun game anyway, at least till I made that doomed invasion. No idea what I was thinking, but it wasn't a particularly good plan.

The best way to describe this game came from shy: shygost [-]: now white departs wisdom... to panic. Yes, that is what seems to have happened. Very apt description.

Some random game comments:

NoSide [7k]: u know what i don't understand about our games?
NannyOgg [-]: no?
olczyk [14k]: A lot?
NoSide [7k]: our pace is almost as slow as a pro title match.... yet these people actually hangs around to watch :)
NoSide [7k]: amazing isn't it?
Battousai [-]: actually this is slower than the chinese and korean title matches :P

I started studying the game of the century: Honinbo Shusai versus Go Seigen. Go opens at sansan, hoshi, and tengen, very interesting. Yet another famous historical game, I love the sense of history these games are giving me. This is a game which was played in 1933. I relish the thought that we can study and learn from games which were played this long ago. And that go players around the world have been learning from this game for more than 70 years.

White To Play

We have started a Ruler of the Hill type tournament with our go club, it is a fun way to get some good games in. Not to mention that there is a lot of taunting going on between the two teams, always good for the club spirit, right? Sunday night, Eksu of the other team was king, and I seemed to be the most logical one to challenge him. Soon, we got a battle game Nanny-Eksu going. It started with tengen, and only got worse from there. At some point the position was like this:

W to play. Pretty simple, right? The top group obviously can be killed. Somehow I totally misread and played tenuki... I knew that he could live or connect back now. Shows you how much time I must have spent reading that out, this is not a particularly deep problem. Sigh. I glanced at the top, said 'Too bad!' and played K2... Ended up losing the game by 4.5 points. Oh well ^^

I actually don't mind the top much, that was just a silly misread. I have more regrets about a ko I played later, and my end game. There could have been a lot of improvement in those two. My ko threats were too small and my endgame sucked. The rest of the game I felt mostly good about, it was a fun game to play. When he started with tengen, my fighting spirit demanded me to attach to him and crosscut. So we got the pinwheel fight starting at the center of the board. I love those kinds of games!

Later, my teacher sendol reviewed the game, which opened my eyes to some possibilities I hadn't seen before. So much to learn, so little time.

Ear Reddening Game

Studying the famous Ear Reddening Game, it is quite interesting. I had seen it a bunch of times, but never seriously studied it. I like it because it's the first Shusaku game I am seriously studying, and of course, I like it because of the taisha. I never realized that Shusaku was only 17 years old at that time, wow.

I also love the sense of history it gives me. This game was played in 1846, and we can play and study and enjoy it today, 160 years later. Just awesome.

I just got the 'Appreciating Famous Games' book, I might focus on those games for a while instead of, or in addition to my modern games. They are quite interesting, and fit very well with my current territory oriented game play. So much to study, so little time.

1 - 1

Last night, I played a game in our The Weekly Slaughter Series. Wow, they are very intense, I take these way more seriously than my normal 'plunk and pray' games. I made my first mistake on move number 7 (chose the wrong joseki) and it only got worse from there. There was fighting, and then there was more fighting. At some point, I decided that I could give up the center for a lot of territory, so I offered that exchange. He took it, and boy, that was the wrong decision. Where I thought it would be easy to reduce the center, it was not at all. Heck, the center was virtually territory already. I consider that my bad bad bad bad mistake of the game, blech. As the reviewer said 'B's blunder'. On the other hand, at least it was a well planned blunder. The decision might have been wrong, but it was a well planned mistake.

Now I was stuck with a virtually impenetrable center and I was behind by way too much. My only chance was to outyose him. So I played a very focused yose ('Do I really need to reply to that sente or can I pull a 'My sente is bigger than yours!' bluff?') I huffed and I bluffed and I blew his lead down, ending with a 8.5 points win. Wow!

This is fun! Looking forward to next week's game. For now I will spend my time pouring over this game and using it for serious review material.

BTW, I was going to make some tea to go with my game, but once I started playing, the world around me stopped to exist. I woke up from my game focus around 3am and by then I thought sleep was more appropriate than tea ^^.

Watch the Weekly Slaughter

Going to play a weekly game with go friend edison Will be fun to have a serious game each week to look forward to, and I am sure this will provide lots of study material. I am keeping track of the scores on my sensei's home page. We will play tonight, midnight my time (EST). And no, I am not revealing who I think will be slaughtered.

Now off to go club! It is spring break at our college, so will most likely be a slow day. Still fun of course!

Winning a Won Game

I really should start doing that. I am having too many instances of playing a reasonable game, and then giving it away by a bad decision somewhere in the middle game. I guess it might be time to seriously look at the 'Winning a Won Game' lecture series on AudioGolessons.

One thing which still happens too often is that I overattack. Getting so enthusiastic about the attack, that I leave weaknesses which come back to bite me in the butt. I should learn to attack for profit, and to stop the attack when enough profit has been gotten, and further moves do not lead to a lot of gain. Sounds so easy in theory.

My minue lessons are going well, he is teaching me a lot about simplicity. I tend to overthink and the get too cute in my moves. Should go back to basics. Shygost gave a lesson tonight in which I listened in, and he had the same kind of message to his student, so that was a good reinforcement of the concept. Simple is good! Simple is strong! I had a very close teaching game against him, till I lost focus in late end game and let him kill one of my groups. Purely lack of focus, blech!

Rank Inflation

Just more and more realizing how much rank inflation there seems to be in the AGA ranks. It wasn't as apparent when I was a DDK (double-digit kyu), but as a SDK and getting closer to the dans, it becomes more apparent. For all the people who actually work themselves up to shodan, there also seem to be a lot of people who just enter as a shodan, even when not having reached that level yet. Tournament after tournament. Never reaching shodan level as their official AGA rank.

I don't think there are easy answers for it, but it definitely seems to be an issue. I will do my part to beat it by not self promoting to shodan. I will earn it by entering as 1k and winning most or all of my games. That is, when I am ready for that. In April I will just enter as a 3k again, seems fine for now. Need to beat my clocks issue anyway.

I started taking some lessons with Minue on KGS, a strong Korean player. I had seen him teaching in the KGS Teaching Ladder a few times and really liked his style. When one of my on line friends on KGS started taking lessons with him, and raved about the lessons, I decided to try a few myself. He is great! Very hands on teaching style, I am learning a lot.

He is big on doing problems without solutions, saying that long research in Korea has shown that that is best. So I got out my Korean Problem Academy books yet again and am doing a bunch of those every day. I feel that I read deeper when there aren't any solutions available. Also still stydying on pro games, I think especially the pro games are helping me a lot in getting better sense of direction and of timing.

So much to study, so little time.

I HATE Talking Clocks...

Had a great time at the tournament. My friend encouraged me to enter as 3k, to challenge myself. I liked his arguments, so I went for it. It turned out to be no problem at all to play as a 3k.

I played 1-3, which doesn't sound that good, until you hear the story behind two of the losses. Both of those were on time with won board positions... Those talking clocks really do get to me, argh!!!! Still don't care much about the time losses though, I feel that I played good games, and won the games. Even if the records indicate otherwise ^^. So winning 3 out of 4 games as 3k isn't too bad, I feel good about the tournament.

Someone asked me whether it bothered me that recording my game slowed me down and maybe led to the time loss. I thought about it and decided that no, it didn't bother me at all. I feel strongly about learning from those games and reviewing them later, and I just am not strong enough yet to keep them all in my head. I love having the records to pour over and review and obsess about.

I also thought about whether I should have played faster on purpose, but no, it felt right to eliminate the hasty moves and play the best possible moves I could come up with as opposed to the first likely move. Speed will happen, I just need more tourney experience with the talking clocks. For now I will go with slow good moves over fast sloppy ones.

My first game, I gave 2H to a 5k. I did not do well this game, he ended up with too much territory, and I misplayed an invasion. Also, I failed to defend a group which should have been defended. I'll have to spend some time reviewing this one and see where I could have done better. I am not good at giving handi, I feel behind from the start. Need to work on that.

My second game was an even game against a 3k. We decided colors by nigiri, I chose black, so that I could hit him with Jabberwocks. This game went really well, and I won the game on the board, but lost it on the clock. We both were in byo yomi and this clock just keeps yelling at us, how annoying. Oh well. Felt that this was a good game, but I am sure I will still find room for improvement when reviewing.

The third game, I got 3H from a 1d player. This is another game I feel good about, apart from running out of time. I killed a nice big W group. W tried to complicate and told me later his only hope was that I would lose on time. I obliged him by doing so, must have made his day ^^.

The last game, my only official win, I gave 9H to a 14k. Ironically, this is the only game which I do not feel good about. I am really bad at playing against 9H, and I have to shamefully admit that this win was based on bullying and overplay, not on good go. Blech.

But overall, I played a good tournament, the time losses just are unfortunate. I feel that I can consider myself AGA 3k now though, so only three stones to go for my short term goal .

Tenuki to Vermont!

Tomorrow, I will be playing in the Tenuki to Vermont Go Tournament. Looking forward to it, even although I have the eternal fear that I will mess up all my games. Yes, I know that even if that happens, I will be fine. But somehow the stress of it gets to me anyway.

I'll get over it. Funny how I usually don't care about winning or losing, but still am stressed about it the day before a tournament. Seems bad, guess it's something to work on.

I will just enjoy all the other aspects of the tournament, and ignore the stress. At least, that's my plan. I will have four serious games to study after the tourney. I love playing serious and slow games, I haven't played many plunk-and-pray games lately. Well, sometimes I still do, but less of them ^^.

Now the only issue will be to leave the house before 7am. *Yawn!*

New Kisei!!!

Yesterday, Yamashita Keigo finished off Hane Naoki in an overwhelming 4-0. (Best out of seven finals series) When I went to bed last night, the outcome of the game wasn't certain yet, so I was happy to wake up to a win for Yamashita. Please welcome Yamashita, the new Kisei.

We have studied the second Kisei final game at club, but I haven't really studied the other games from the series yet. Guess that will be on my study program for the next few days. Today I have done 20 of the 'Get Strong at Handicap Go' problems, reviewed some shygost lectures, want to start transcribing one of his lectures, and want to do a bunch of 'Get Strong at Attacking' problems. Maybe after that I'll start looking at the Kisei games. So much to study, so little time ^^

Yesterday was go club, always fun. We had nine players show up, not bad at all. I played two slow and serious games. Made a bunch of bad mistakes, but learned a lot. I am more and more leaning towards playing only one or two games a day, but take them really serious and spent quite some time reviewing later. I haven't even touched my Rated KGS accts in ages, which might be good because they tend to be the 'plunk and pray' type of games. I am much more apt to play seriously with my Nanny account.

The more I play, the less important my rank seems to be anyway. The only time when it seems to count is in tournament play, because I don't really want to sandbag or to enter at a too high rank. But apart from that, I couldn't care less.

Fundamentals

I am rereading 'Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go' by Kageyama. I am only on chapter 2, I have decided to limit myself to one chapter a day, so that I can really think about what I am reading. That's the nice thing about rereading, I don't feel like I want to read and read and can't stop, because I HAVE to know what's in the rest of the book. This time I can savor it slowly, and enjoy his wit and his stories.

This chapter was on cutting and connecting and will make me more aware of those issues again, which hopefully will improve my game. It also makes me even more aware of the importance of fundamentals, especially quotes like "You have to soak up the fundamentals as you practice on your own, studying them until they become a part of your very being. If the fundamentals do not operate subconsciously when you sit down to play, you have not mastered them yet."

So will pay more attention to the fundamentals in my games, I have been trying to play more simple and basic moves. I like shygost's playing style, a simple style, mostly just following the fundamentals, which he says the koreans call 'flower go'. Meant as an insult, but it got him to 6d, so it can't be too bad, right? :) Good style to experiment with.

So much to study, so little time.

Forcing Moves Revisited

I have been more aware of forcing moves and how to reply or not reply to them, have kept an eye open for how pros handle these issues. Very interesting. Sometimes I even remember to apply it in my own games, or I do play the obvious move, but not till reading out every possible variation. (at least, every possible variation I see with my measly kyu reading). I am working on that aspect of them.

I slowly am starting to realize that the other direction is important too. When to play forcing moves, and how not to overdo it. When is sente a good sente to play, and when is a sente move bad or crude?

In one of shygost's lectures, snakeeater mentioned the proverb "If you play every sente move, you lose." Shy agreed with him. "Yeah! I've never heard that proverb, but I totally agree with it. I remember when I was 6k. I thought 'Oh sente!' I was so psyched about sente, I'd just play sente all over the place. And then I would lose all my games. I said 'Wait??? What's going on here?'"

Then there is the issue of crude moves. The moves which are aji keshi, and often help your opponent. I should get rid of all of them. Just need to focus on that while playing. I am more aware, but still have lots of room for improvement.

Today was go club, eight players showed up, quite good for a Saturday afternoon. We looked at a pro game (Chen Yaoye 5p vs Lee Sedol 9p), and played a bunch of games. I played anti chinese against a chinese opening, and it took me till move 18 before I made a game losing move. Farther into the game than usual ^^. And it wasn't even a forcing move, I must be improving!

With every move I will keep this advice in mind 'Nanny wasted all the aji. If nanny wants to be a shodan, she must learn how to use the aji'.

Forcing Moves

A few weeks ago, I played a fun game against snip. We both made our share of mistakes, which got pointed out to me by ivosf. But the big thing I got out of the review was a new sense of the importance of resisting forcing moves. Here's an example from the game.


W had just played M11, and I replied too hastily with M12. I did exactly what W wanted me to do. How disgusting! Ivo showed me that L14 was a way better move here, and I shamefacedly have to admit that I hadn't even considered that one.

But of course, it is not about the actual moves. It is about the attitude. This review stressed a bunch of things for me which I had been getting slack at, or which hadn't sunk in yet. The biggest one being the way I should reply to forcing moves, doing my uttermost best not to give my opponent what he wants. My pro game study will help with that, since they are usually very good at this.

When someone plays a sente move against me, I will triple check whether it really is sente. I will reply so that things get better for me and worse for him. Even more so than I have done before. And I will only make the move he wants as a very last resort and very reluctantly so. Heck, maybe I should resign instead of making a painful or submissive move.

Go, Yamashita, Go!

Over the last few weeks, three Japanese Kisei title matches have been played on, Yamashita Keigo is challenging Hane Naoki. Yamashita is one of my favorite players, so I have been rooting for him. This title is a 'best out of seven' series of matches, and so far, Yamashita has won three of them. Very good chance that he will end up being the next Kisei.

The first game was played in Germany, Yamashita won by resignation. The second game is the game we will be studying at go club on Saturday, so it's on my list of games to look at today. Yamashita took W this time, and won by 6.5. The third game was finished yesterday and was another win (B+1.5) for Yamashita. Only one more win needed!

Those games take two days, so it's interesting to watch them live, lots of time for discussion and thinking about options. Of course, they often end up doing something totally different from what we were thinking ^^

Annoying Invasions

Just venting about a game I played last night, on one of my mess-up accounts. I played a 12k on KGS and things went ok until he started a bunch of unreasonable invasions in my corners. The first one, I thought he just had misread, even although it seemed far fetched. After that, it just got annoying. I felt that he was hoping for mistakes from my side, because there was no reasonable way that any of his invasions could work. Very annoying.

And of course, there are the times when an annoying invasion like that does work, because I do screw up. On the other hand, then I usually see it as a learning opportunity to play the whole game.

Last night wasn't one of them though, I ended up winning the game by almost 60 points, some of which he had given to me for free.

Good reminder for me to only invade when it is reasonable, since those senseless invasions are just rude.

Consistency

Consistency seems to be my biggest issues in games at the moment. I feel that I can play anywhere from 3k to 23k in one game, mostly good moves, but once in a while a really bad move to make up for the good ones. Half of the time I forget about my new playing style. Another half of the time I go for experimenting instead of for the win. And the last half of the time I just plunk instead of think, often too fast. Yes, I know those are three halves, just wanted to stress the frustrations I am feeling over all this.

One reason could be that I am experimenting with a more territory oriented style. I always have been more of an influence player, so this is quite new to me. I guess the only thing I can do is plodding on and hoping for the best. Once in a while I do have a good game which gives me hope, but they are still too rare.

I am really enjoying my new study plan though. I am studying pro games almost every day, and learning a lot from it. Which makes me experiment more too, so it might be a mixed blessing. Still doing problems too, but not as many as I used to do. Pro games is my focus for now.

I guess I should work on my consistency, but not sure how to work on it. Maybe it all comes back to focus yet again, and maybe I should just accept that experimenting might mess up my games in the short run, even if it makes me stronger in the long run.

2005 Statistics

Generated by the KGS statistics page.
Player 'nannyogg'. All games.

From 2005-01-01 to 2005-12-31 (365 days).

Number of games played: 650
Number of unfinished games: 6
Number of forfeited games: 0

Number of wins: 272
Number of losses: 378
Average number of games per day: 1.78
Win ratio: 41.85 %

Number of games played as white: 241 (win ratio: 54.36 %)
Number of games played as black: 409 (win ratio: 34.47 %)

Number of different opponents: 262

Random remarks:

1. I didn't play enough games, less than two per day!
2. I do a lot better as W than I do as B (ok, makes perfect sense anyway, but fun to see it in numbers)
3. More different opponents than I had realized.
4. The top five of people I have played most frequently are shygost, FlameBlade, hurkle, Kipawa, and GoChild.
5. I was too lazy to actually include my Rated accounts, but it's not like I have played a lot on those anyway, would add maybe 20 or 30 games at the most. Some day I might feel organized enough to include them, but not today.
6. Didn't include turn based either, but that is almost a different kind of game, I do both better and worse on turn based (better because I can think longer, worse because I sometimes forget about things like fighting a ko when making a move hastily.
7. Didn't include real life games either, so maybe that would add another fifty or so.

I wish I was at the MGA tournament or the OZA instead of stuck at home, cleaning things I didn't particularly want to clean, but which are staring me in the face now.

Pesky Weather

"... Winter Weather Advisory remains in effect from 1 am to 4 PM
EST Sunday...

A Winter Weather Advisory remains in effect from 1 am to 4 PM EST
Sunday.

Expect 3 to 6 inches of snow. Also strong northwest winds will
also cause any snow to drift and could suddenly reduce
visibilities for motorists. The quick cool down will also cause
any ponded water to freeze... making roads and walkways very
slippery late tonight and Sunday."

Since it's a two hours drive to the MGA tournament in good weather, and the weather doesn't seem to be particularly good today, I have decided not to go to the tournament. This sucks. But somehow it seems too much to drive five or six hours through weather like this, just to play a few games. Well, at least that is what I am trying to convince myself of.

Luo, King of Ko

He did it!! He did it!!! Luo Xihe defeated the nr 1 player in the world, Lee Changho. Heck, he also defeated nr 2, 3, and 4 before he beat Lee.

This was yet another spectacular game. Complicated ko fighting, in the end resulting in a 5.5 points win for Luo. His new nickname by the Chinese team is 'King of Ko'. The game lasted 360 moves, I wonder whether that's a record for a pro game.

Some pictures have been posted on go4go.net.

Luo rocks!!!

New Study Plan

Yet another change in the making. I have decided that I will focus more on reviewing pro games and less on doing problems. This is after Janice Kim's article on getting stronger in the Jan 2nd AGA Ejournal. She says that study time should be spent on game records and tsumego problems, in a time ratio of about 2 or 3 to 1. My current studying is more like 1:10, I do way more problems than studying pro games.

My new study plan will be to use about 2/3 of my time on pro games, and 1/3 on problems. The first pro I want to study is Yamashita Keigo, because I like his style, but the last few days I have been distracted by Luo Xihe games, because of the Samsung finals. He lost his game last night, by 3.5 :( Tonight will be the deciding game, he'd better beat Lee Changho!

Sunday will be the MGA tournament. We will go there with three members of our go club. Looking forward to a serious day of playing. I have decided to just enter at 5k and see whether I can get my rank up by playing. I have no idea what would be a good number otherwise anyway, so can as well use my official rating. Now I just need to win all my games :)

Go, Luo, Go!!!

Last night was the first game in the Samsung finals between Luo Xihe and Lee Changho. It was yet another amazing game for Luo. He seemed ahead from almost the start, but at some point things didn't seem too good for him. Lee managed to create a disadvantageous ko for Luo. Luo turned it all around with another ko and managed to win the game by resignation.

Amazing!

Only one more game to win!

Wings League King Tournament

Let's say that I still have room for improvement in my tournament play. I managed to play 0-3. Impressive, huh?

Actually, it wasn't that bad. I did lose all my games, but felt I mostly played well. I lost on a few big mistakes as opposed to lousy play throughout. Things like throwing away a won game and such. A friend desribed it very well. 'Your moves were like strong - strong - strong - strong - weak and the weak ones negated the strong ones.' So I just have to get rid of the weak moves and I'll be fine :p

Every single game I made one or two big mistakes to lose the game. Oh well, I had fun anyway. And as always, I learned a lot when we reviewed the games later.

I think part of the problem was that these were daytime games, so lack of focus was an issue. Hard to focus when baby has to go to the potty for the 54th time in 30 minutes. Or when fights had to be mediated. Or when some one wants yet another sandwich. I even missed an obvious atari, which is a bad sign. One of those 'where did my stones go???' ones :)

Still feel good about my games, since I mostly played well. Just have to get rid of those few weak moves. And it was just fun to play in this tournament, who cares about winning or losing anyway.

Next weekend is the Boston tournament. Let's see whether I can do better in a real life games setting, without my kids to distract me.

Utter Failure

After the good game against sarge, I managed to play a bad game against kongkaroo. It started out ok, but I focused way too much on territory, couldn't find a balance. Heck, didn't even try seriously for a balance. Got a bit hyperfocused on territory instead.

He got a massive moyo, which I helped him convert into territory. I did get a tengen stone in there in time, but then failed to connect to it, because I was too busy making territory. It's all about balance.

I got properly yelled at afterwards, and now see how my joseki choices and other factors lead to my demise. So I learned a lot and this will never again happen to me! (yes, you can stop laughing now)

Today is Wings League Kings Tournament, for the winners of the monthly leagues. Let's see whether I can play my new and improved style and not fail utterly this time.

New Playing Style

Writing the post on playing down to weaker players, and reading other people's thoughts on it has helped me to figure out the problem. At least I hope so. I just do too many overplays and silliness against weaker players, I am going to get rid of it. My new plan is to play any opponent as if he is firebolt (KGS 5d) or shygost (AGA 6d). They are the strongest players I play, and somehow they don't let me get away with anything. I should assume that everyone plays that way, even if they don't, so that I'll play the right move. And resist the temptation of pushing just a bit more than I should, or invading just a tad deeper than is reasonable.

Sounds good, right? Sounds very reasonable. The hard thing is to actually do it. Last night was the first game I seriously tried it. Since I was experimenting anyway, I decided to also go for territory instead of my normal influence based games.

The whole game I kept these three things in mind:

1. Territory
2. Strong moves
3. Calmness

I resisted playing so many more fun moves. I never jumped into places I would usually have jumped into. My play felt soooooooooooooo slow. But somehow, I managed to win anyway. I calmly took territory, split two groups, surrounded them, and killed them. Or maybe he killed them himself, since he was defending things he shouldn't have, while he was running. Whatever the case, I felt very good about my game, I hope I can keep this up.

Playing Down to Weaker Players

I have noticed an interesting phenomena in my games, when I play on my ranked accounts on KGS. Because I usually only play on them when tired, or dealing with a lot of interruptions, they tend to be a bit underranked. Sometimes the game goes just fine, but I have too many instances when I start playing weaker when I play a weaker opponent. Making bad moves and bad decisions. I have been thinking why this is the case, but haven't come up with the perfect explanation yet. If only I understand it, I can fix it, right?

I seem to try out more unreasonable things on weaker opponents, which is not a good way to play, playing the opponent instead of the board. I kind of count on them not being able to punish correctly, and get an ok result. Sometimes they do punish correctly anyway. So part of it might be underestimating my opponent.

The opposite is true too, they do things which I know shouldn't work, or are bad moves, but I am not always able to prove that to them, and they still get a good result.

Another thing which was brought up by a strong player 'When I play a game of go, I play with my opponent. When weak players play go, they play against their opponent' This was an interesting way of looking at it. I sometimes feel that I not only play against my opponent, but also against myself, losing the game all by myself, without my opponent having to do anything.

And of course, there is the obvious fact that I usually only play on these accounts when I am tired, so it could very well be a lack of focus. A few nights ago i played games in which i missed basic atari's. Very very bad.

Maybe I should stop playing when I am tired, but it is nice relaxation. And at that point, I am usually too tired to study too, so playing always seems attractive. But I also am interested in figuring out what I can do to start playing more strongly against weaker opponents, since some of my games have been ridiculous.

Favorite Player

Thanks to jwaytogo, I have been watching a lot of pro games live this year. Even although it sometimes seems slow (especially the two days matches) it is really interesting to see the game develop and to discuss variations and possibilities before they are played. Of course, often proven wrong by the pros, who play something totally unexpected instead.

For a while, my favorite player was Yamashita Keigo, after he played jabberwocks in the Oza challengers final against Nakaonoda Tomomi (Aug 2005). This was another game we watched live. I remember watching the start of the game, and going out for dinner, and there were only a few moves played during the whole time we took to eat our meals. Luckily there was an intermittent wireless connection in the restaurant, so we didn't have to totally miss out on the match while eating :)

I still like Yamashita, but after seeing the Samsung semi finals, Luo Xihe is at the top of my list of favorites. All three of his games against Choi Cheolhan were good, but the last one was just brilliant. Every single of those three games involved a dragon. Choi and Luo both had won one game, so the third game was going to be the deciding match. Luo ended up with yet another dragon, and things looked pretty bleak for a while. Suddenly, a triple ko appeared, very rare, but this would give him a draw instead of a loss, so we all were happy for him. Nobody expected him to just give up this triple ko and his huge dragon though, and find compensation elsewhere. Adequate compensation even. He ended up winning the match by 7.5 points. Amazing! Go4go.net posted a story about it.

I am definitely going to root for Luo Xihe in the Samsung finals. He will play Lee Changho, so it's not going to be easy.

Blast From the Past

A while ago, I found an old, handwritten kifu, from a game I played in 1991. It said that I was 12k, but looking at the game, I am not so sure. I played my husband, giving him 5H. We look more like 40k and 45k.

Fun to see though, and to realize that I did improve some since then. All my moves look clumsy. I am looking forward to reviewing my current games one or two years from now, and see the same relative clumsiness.

One thing about go, is that the more I play, the more I enjoy it. The game seems to get deeper and deeper, and there are always new things to be discovered. And the more I study, the more I want to know, and of course, the more I realize how totally ignorant I still am, and will stay.

I can give my husband 7H now and win, we will have to try 8 or 9 next time. He doesn't like losing, so one of my ultimate goals is to give him 9H and let him win by 0.5 points every single time. I guess I do need to improve my counting before I can do that.

Beware of Bad Yose

Time to focus somewhat more on yose. A few days ago, I played a game against a good friend, and beat him for the very first time ever. He was playing simul though, so I can't count it as a real win, but it does mean I am getting closer to his level. (At least, that's what I like to think it means) This game did make me realize it's time to work on yose though, especially when an observer started out with telling us, 'Both of you missed lots of chances in yose' and 'I think the lead changed hands in yose a few times' Later, he got less diplomatic about it 'Yose scared me to death. In a close game like this, bad yose always scares me...'

Yes, I managed to get well ahead, only to give away most of it again in yose. Some of it were just cowardly and unneeded moves, and backing off where I should stood my ground. Others were pure laziness, playing too fast (in an untimed game, mind you), refusing to read too deeply, and loss of focus. I would like to blame the fact that it was a daytime game, and that the kids interrupted, but I will have to be honest and admit that it was me losing focus, and holding off too much, when I should have been pushing to win my won game. I ended up winning by a few points, but looking back, that was pure luck. My yose sucked.

The final stinger came when my teacher sendol reviewed the game. He showed correct endplay, and every variation he showed, Black ended up with a 20 or 30 points win. How embarrassing to win by only a few points instead... Heck, I should have lost the game, that would have been an even more convincing lesson.

Conclusion: my yose needs work. Or maybe it's more an issue of playing the whole game. It's not even that I not know what to play in yose, I just don't take the time and energy to figure it out. This will have to change, going to work on it.

Five Stones To Go!

The official AGA ratings are in. I managed to get myself to -5.06752 with a sigma of 0.8 so looks like I can call myself 5k now. Which I knew, but it's still nice to be official. Only five more stones to go, and then the fun can start.

I really wanted to be 5k anyway, because I wanted to enter in the official AGA shodan challenge again. Yes, again I say, since I entered in January this year, when I was around 16-18k and thought I could easily reach shodan by August... I was wrong :)

The closer I got to August, the more I realized what an impossible task I had set myself, at least impossible for me. I did get myself to 7k, which wasn't bad, but nowhere close to shodan. I can either see that as a failure, because I didn't reach shodan, or just be happy about having improved nine stones in seven months.

I decided to enter the shodan challenge again, and this time actually make it. This year, the AGA did split up the challenge though. The Challenge now has five Divisions: the 20-kyu Challenge, for beginners; the 10-kyu Challenge for 11-20k players; the 5-kyu Challenge for 6-10k players, the Shodan Challenge for 5-1k players and the 5d Challenge for 1-4d players. Since I was only 7k, this meant I would be trying to reach 5k by next August. Didn't seem like enough of a challenge to me. So I desperately tried to get to 5k before the sign up deadline. I did. I signed up November 30th (deadline was Dec 1st) and proved my 5k rank this weekend during the tournament.

Now the big question is "Will I be able to make shodan by next August?". I'd like to be confident about it, but who knows? Only one way to find out.

Tournament!

Yesterday, I played in the Western Massachusetts Go Tournament. The short story: I played 2-1. The long story:

The day started early. I had to leave the house at 7am to be able to make it to the tournament in time. When I got up, I was greeted by snow. Let's just say that I was not happy to have to drive for two hours in a snow storm, before the roads were plowed. Lots of sliding cars, no accidents, just sliding. Still scary. I was glad when I made it to Amherst. After taking the scenic route that is, because I wasn't reading the directions correctly.

The tournament was on the 16th floor of an ugly concrete tower. Seeing the tower brought me back to my student days. Delft University of Technology had similar ugly towers, the Electrical Engineering one being the one this reminded me of.

After all the stress of the snow and the getting lost, it was nice to be greeted in a nice and calm atmosphere. People were just sitting around and chatting, catching up with old friends, playing games. It was so relaxed that the tournament didn't actually start till close to 11, instead of 10am.

My official AGA rank is 9k, but I didn't want to sandbag, so entered as 5k. On Saturday, I was a nervous wreck about the whole thing, wondering whether I could pull this off. It didn't help that a bunch of people tried to talk me out of it, and proposed 6k or 7k instead. I was convinced that 5k was right for me though, so took a deep breath, closed my eyes and said a decisive '5k' when the tournament director asked me what rank I was.

The first game had me paired against another 5k. And not just any 5k, but the 5k from my own club. I knew I could take him down. I got black, he got white. We played and we played and we played. I spotted some glaring mistakes I was making, still not sure what I was doing. I like to blame the tournament stress, I sure don't think I always play this horribly. The game went on, he was ahead by a bit, so I needed to kill something. I split one big dragon into two groups. One was too strong to kill, although I forced him to make his second eye in gote. I turned my attention towards the other part of the dragon. I slowly and methodically removed secondary eyes and eye space, and then reduced the main part to a bulky five. Put down the killing move and then he suddenly realized what had happened. That was fun! I did make so many mistakes though, I entered the game into my computer at night and was not impressed by my play. Oh well, at least I have lots of things to learn from this game. But I feel I only won because he made even more mistakes than I did. Maybe that's just normal at my level anyway :)

Time for lunch. For an extra $5, they provided pizza. Worked out well, not having to go anywhere, just nicely staying inside with all the snow and yuckiness outside. I played a game against a beginner, gave him nine stones. Always looks overwhelming, but this was enough of a beginner that I could actually do it.

Second game got me paired against another 5k. Fights broke out soon, and I lost a bunch of stones. So much for cutting and fighting :) It wasn't bad though, I squeezed every last drop of use out of those stones. Got profit by reaching in to them, and I even got him to semedori them. The rest of the game wasn't so good though. I thought I had him in a nice low position on the top, but then allowed him to grow. Not a good decision. He also grew another bigger group, but that one was undercut, so that wasn't a problem, I easily reduced it. But the game was his, I was the one making more mistakes. Oh well, more to learn from it.

Third game was against a 4k. Yet again, fights broke out, cuts were applied liberally, stones bit the dust, and muttered curses flew over the goban. When the dust did settle, I had won the game by 14.5. Nothing big died, it was a pretty even game. We both made mistakes, I just ended up making smaller ones.

The tournament was only three rounds, because they ran out of time for a fourth one. When all was said and done, I ended up fourth place in the kyu division, so that was sweet. I chose a book The Art of Capturing Stones: Sacrifice Techniques.

I was happy about playing only even games in this tournament. Last tournament I ended up giving high handicap three out of my four games, which was hard. I still made too many mistakes in my play though, quite some avoidable ones too. Will have to work on that. I guess it's all about focus again, although this seemed different from my normal lack of focus. I was focused on the game, and still made wrong moves, the kind of moves I immediately knew were wrong. I could blame the tournament stress maybe. Sigh. At least I recorded all my games, so I can figure out where and how I went wrong. And I still won two out of three games, so I must have done something right :)

Go Club

Yesterday was yet another good go club meeting. I am still getting one handi from the 5k, and won my second game in a row. Both games would be won too with 6.5 komi though, so I feel that I am at least 5k now. Two weeks ago, I gave 3H to an 8k for the very first time and won that game too. I am just going to enter as 5k in the go tournament this weekend and we'll see what happens.

After this game, I played an even game with our dan player. He found a lot of aji which I hadn't seen, good learning experience :)

I am still working on Get Strong at Attacking, this seems to be the exact thing I need right now. Of course, I still mess up my attacks, but at least I am attacking more now. I am a lot more aware of weak groups, and I work harder on separating groups, so they will have to fend for themselves. I am sure I might over-attack for a while, but that should be ok. I actually did over-attack yesterday in my game against the 5k, but still won, so can't be too upset about it. Especially since he replied to my attack, when it would have been bigger to just run away.

Tournament countdown: three more days!

Get Strong at Attacking

I have been dissatisfied with my play lately. Yes, I know, so what's new? :) My teacher Sendol has told me I need to be more aggressive. Other strong players have pointed out that I need more kiai. When playing Shygost, he often can show me at least one weak group and how I should have attacked it.

I talked it over with Kipawa, and he mentioned that my attacking didn't seem to be as effective as it could be. He recommended Getting Strong at Attacking.

Yesterday, I took it down from my book shelf and did the first 50 problems. Oh boy, did I need them! I made so many mistakes, playing exactly the way I should not, or just not knowing the most effective way to attack. What a wonderful book! I played a game at night, and at least two situation from the book came up. This will be my daily studying for a while. Today, I did the first 50 problems again, and added another 10 just for good measure. I still suck at them! But if I keep going at it, I am sure I might get a tiny bit better at attacking.

Tournament countdown: five days till The 3rd Massuchusetts Go Tournament I am excited to play in a real life tournament again!

Iron Man!

Tournament is over! I am an iron man now. Wait...

I made it to all 20 games! Better than last time when I made it to only 19 of them. I feel very good about that. I ended up at sixteenth place in open division, which is an ok result. I enjoyed playing stronger opponents, and often managed to mess up against weaker opponents. Funny how that works. My SOS (Sum of Opponents Scores) was the second highest from all participants, so I did play a lot / tough opponents.

I got more byes than I really wanted to. When there is an odd number of players in a round, the system assigns a bye to the player who played the most games. I guess most other players didn't make it to as many games, since I and one other player divided all the byes between us. Oh well, sometimes a 3am bye was kind of welcome, so that I actually could get some sleep before my 9am game :)

These were five days of games at 3am, 9am, 3pm and 9pm, phew! Fun to participate, but also glad it is over. Now I can just play normal games again. Which I have been doing a lot, and as usual, messing up against patzers, sigh.

Almost There...

Yeah!!! Played nineteen out of twenty games. Or at least was present at the pairings... This morning I almost overslept! The horror! Woke up like 15 minutes before the game, so stumbled out of bed, ran downstairs and told my computers to start up fast!!! I made it. Would have been sad to miss game #19...

I am 11th place at the moment, but I can't really attribute that to my superb play. A lot of my points are from getting forced byes, which give me a whole point without ever playing in that round. I am not too impressed with the system for assigning byes. It looks like they are assigned based on the number of played games. The more games you play, the more likely you will get a bye. I have had a total of six byes in my nineteen games, which seems a bit excessive. Oh well, at least I could go to bed at 3:15am last night, and I still almost overslept!

I have played great opponents, and a lot of them offered to review after the game too. Very helpful! I love the friendly atmosphere on KGS.

Playing stronger players has made me even more intent on becoming stronger myself. I want to be able to play like that! And I will.

Off to do my daily 50 go problems now! The tournament has made me slack off on those, not a good thing. Getting back on track today.

Note to Self

"Remember when dead stones are dead. Don't use them to surround an enemy group and feel all smug about enclosing it. This is a bad thing. "

Yes, I managed to do just that. Yesterday, in a tournament game even. I was happily playing, fighting, and cutting off his stones. Suddenly, reality hit. Wait! Those stones to the left. They don't look particularly alive. Heck, they even look deadish... Yet another lost game :)

It wasn't like they died during the fighting even, they were dead to start with. I really need to pay better attention to tiny details like that. Does it all come back to focus yet again?

The tournament is going well, I play mostly good games, even if I don't win that many. At the moment I am 49th out of 66 participants, but I have been as low as 62nd. I think a few things are causing that. One, this is open division, so some of my opponents are just too strong to beat in an even game. Two, I managed to mess up a few times, even against weaker players. Like when I forgot that my stones were dead. Three, people who haven't played at all yet have 5.5 points now (11 byes), so all are higher ranked than me and others with only five or less points. They will drop off in a few games if they don't start playing. But in this case, you can actually be higher rated by not playing, than by playing and losing some.

I am tremendously enjoying the games though, and the challenge of playing all twenty of them. Eleven down, nine to go, so more than halfway there. The timing of the tournament could be better though, turkey day is not the easiest time for most american people to play. How lucky that I am not American :)

Question of the Day

What is the technical term for when you know the right move but still don't play it? You know, when you look at the board, see the best / biggest move and then play a gote move somewhere else...

Background of course is the tourney game I played today. Started off well, I killed his LL group. He had two weak B stones on the left, I was strong all around, so I knew I should invade. Instead, I played a nonsense turn at the top... First mistake.

Decided to just let him live on the side and build a big wall on top of him. Went well, had a beautiful wall, which I could develop nicely, I knew exactly how. I was a tiny bit worried about some stones in the UL though, so wanted to connect for sure, which I hoped was sente. My opponent correctly ignored it and played a big move to neutralize my wall... That was my second mistake.

Still doing ok, got into some fighting on the bottom, and I gave atari in the wrong direction... Now my position fell apart. Game losing mistake. I resigned.

In all three of those cases, I knew exactly what the right move was, but didn't play it. There must be a technical term for that!

Here is my conversation about it

NannyOgg [-]: yes, looks better
Kipawa [6k?]: w still behind
Kipawa [6k?]: but now can resign w/honor
NannyOgg [-]: that's true
NannyOgg [-]: i even looked at this
NannyOgg [-]: i guess this game i looked at all the right moves, but didn't play them
NannyOgg [-]: need to get over that :)
Kipawa [6k?]: I wonder if there's a technical term for that
NannyOgg [-]: preferably japanese?
Kipawa [6k?]: hontephobia?
NannyOgg [-]: LOL, maybe
NannyOgg [-]: although it's not technically honte I think?
Kipawa [6k?]: poetic license
NannyOgg [-]: uh huh
NannyOgg [-]: i'll think about it
NannyOgg [-]: might pose it on my blog as question of the day
Kipawa [6k?]: have the courage to play the right move
NannyOgg [-]: yes
NannyOgg [-]: but hey, it's an improvement to at least
consider the right move, right?
Kipawa [6k?]: ...
NannyOgg [-]: as opposed to having no clue as I used to do :)
...
NannyOgg [-]: i'll just see my wall and my kill as good points this game
NannyOgg [-]: and H17, F13 and N5 as bad moves
NannyOgg [-]: there needs to be a balance, right?
Kipawa [6k?]: yes, your good moves balance his bad ones
NannyOgg [-]: can't have good moves without screwing up some too...

Iron Man Tournament

Just played my first game in the KGS November Iron Man tournament. Since I played open division, I had no idea how strong of an opponent I would get. I ended up with a 17k. He helped me to build a super moyo and then tried to invade, but too little and too late. Still, I was paranoid and replied to his moves, I wanted to be 100 % sure he stayed dead. Kipawa helpfully pointed out that this was a moral victory for my opponent, since I did reply to his moves, no matter how silly... I have to admit that he was right, it seemed easier to reply than to actually read. I should get over that.

Winning my first game means that I am at a tied first place now, together with the six other people who won their first game. I know that won't last, so enjoying it for the next hour or so, before my next game starts :)

Still working on the shape game, I have a hard time finding a winning strategy. This is clearly something I need more practice in, I will play it more till I figure out how to win.

Too Much Tenuki

Since my goal is to play more, I have decided to revive my mess-up R account and have been playing with it during the day. During the day means that I get interrupted all the time by fighting or crying kids, kids who need a diaper changed, requests for bandaids, demands for food, phone calls, visits, and escaping pets. This makes it a bit harder to find my focus, and I can't play as well as I can do in the middle of the night, when the house actually is quiet. But hey, at least I am still playing.

Today, I decided to start the day with a game. The distractions actually weren't too bad, maybe only seven or so, and the game went pretty well. I was nicely ahead, I had killed one of her groups. She even died in gote. I happily played on, knowing I had a won game now. Decide to try to get as much as possible in yose, while she tried to kill the group which is partly surrounding her dead group. I counted and decided I am fine, so ignored the moves I could ignore, while raking up points.

Suddenly, disaster struck. She made another move, this time in her dead group, and all my earlier reading had told me what I had to do then. The group was still dead, just needed a move. Of course, you can tell already where this story is going... Yup, I played tenuki from that move and put a stone somewhere else... So she lived and I cried.

Too much tenuki. Just as bad as too little tenuki. Some day I'll find the balance. Although maybe it's all about focus again. I knew what the right move was here, but just forgot to make it. Great learning opportunity.

The bad thing was that I wasn't even getting interrupted while this happened. Only one person to blame :)

At least I have a solid rank now. Will be easier to get games. It just is a bit sandbaggy rank, but that should clear up when I actually win some games again, right?

The Killing Game

Recently, I have rediscovered the killing game (or sometimes called The Shape Game) where one color has stones all around the board on the first line (skipping the corners) and the other color tries to live in the center. It's not easy to kill, but it's even harder to live. With perfect play, life shouldn't be possible. I haven't reached perfect playing level yet.

I remember playing this game way, way back in the Netherlands. I don't remember having so much fun with it though.

I played it with a dan friend, did pretty well the first night. Second night he had remembered his killing skills and I did not do as well (as in I couldn't live and I couldn't kill in either of the two rounds we played). Played it with another strong player, and missed an obvious living move. How shameful. He missed it too for 18 moves, when he came to his senses before I did. Will have to do 50 tesuji problems tomorrow, to repent :-p

This game is great for developing sense of shape, and thinking about sente and gote in attacking. It will make me better at killing, reading, complicated fights, harrassing weak groups, and at making sabaki. Some one commented 'Good grief, I shouldn't have brought it up. Now you'll just get strong faster. Just what we need - a Nanny who's even better at killing' ... It also helps with learning how to use walls for fighting. What a great exercise.

Not only is it useful, but it is very enjoyable too. Skipping the whole fuseki and yose part of the game, it's just fight, fight, fight, fight. My kind of game. I will be playing this a lot till I get better at it.

I decided to join the KGS November Iron Man Tournament. I participated in April and it was a lot of fun. This tournament runs five days and there are games every six hours, so a total of 20 rounds. You have to play in at least five rounds, can get byes for the other rounds if you want. I managed to play in 19 games last time, don't think I can do as well this time. Too many daytime commitments. I'll just play as many as I can.

There are two divisions, a handicap division and an open division (all even games). I entered in open, because I don't have a solidly or accurately ranked account at the moment. It seems too much work to get one, I don't care about rank on KGS anyway. I will turn the rank on my NannyOgg account back on once I have reached 1d there, and that will be a bit. Till then, I'll just have fun with my R accounts when I feel like it, and not worry about rank. Better to concentrate on playing, studying, and getting stronger. An advantage of the open division is that I will play a wider variety of players. Looking forward to this tournament!

Link To Newspaper Story

Thanks Kipawa, I hadn't realized they finally are modern enough to actually have some stories on line :) Here is the story on the paper's web site.

Today was problems day, did problems all day. Still can't do all the basic ones from the DieorLive program. I worked on a bunch of L-group (and L+1) problems too. Even there I don't get all of them right yet. So much to learn, so little time!

The Way To Go

Our local newspaper ran an article on us today!

Cult hobby, huh? My friend said to be glad that they didn't call it an occult hobby instead... I think it was a good article though, and I got my first phone call about the club already! We had a few people show up today at Borders thanks to the article, some newbie players and some more experienced ones. Nice!

Good Things Come in Threes

1. A local reporter came to our go club, to write an article about us. It was fun to chat with him, we'll see how badly we get misquoted :) He stayed for quite a while, and had brought a photographer. She climbed on the tables to make good pictures of the go board, almost dropping her memory card on a game in progress...
   
   Publicity! Now let's just hope that this will get us more players, it would be nice to grow the club a bit. We now tend to have six to eight players show up every week, so still pretty small.
   
2. We had a new player. He is KGS 3d, so pretty darn strong. He played our dan player. Our dan player (AGA 4d or 5d) was saying that he wasn't sure he could win this game. We told him that he was defending the honour of our club, so he'd better win. And he did :) Two games, one as W, and one as B, he won both. Both were tough games, they are pretty close in strength. We are thrilled to have a new strong player!
   
3. I played an even game against our AGA 5k and I won!!! One handicap (so 0.5 komi) but I won by 23 moku on the board, so even with 6.5 komi, it was still a respectable win. I was annoyed at myself though for missing an obvious kill (well, obvious in hindsight), and for missing a 'cutting off the tail' later in the game. Oh well. This was the first time I beat him even at club, so I feel good about that (I had beaten him once before on dragon, but that feels different, since there is way more time to think.) He used to give me seven handicap for quite a while when I started at this go club, December last year. So maybe I have made a tiny bit of progress.

Understanding How to Play Go

I just finished reading Understanding How to Play Go by Yuan Zhou, an AGA 7d. It's an excellent book. He goes over a bunch of his games, with very very detailed commentary. In the beginning I kept falling asleep over it, but that might have been because I would start reading at 4:30am or so, when I went to bed after a night of playing on KGS. After a few days I couldn't stand the suspense anymore, I wanted to know what else happened in that game, and I started reading it during the day.

Wow! He goes over seven games, and gives very clear explanations for all the moves, and which moves would have been better. He also often shows why the player chose a certain move and not another one. It reads like an adventure novel. Some games, the lead keeps changing between the players, until the final mistake decides the winner.

There is a nice variety of games. High chinese, sanrensei, and even two games with jabberwocks, but played as W. Interesting, I have always considered it an opening for Black. Now I will have to experiment with jabberwocks when I play W. Fun!

Today, I got a phone call from a reporter at our local newspaper. Turns out he saw one of the many flyers we have been hanging around town, and wants to do a story on us!!!! He asked a lot of questions, and will be at go club tomorrow, together with a photographer. Publicity!!! We might get some new members out of this! I am excited.

My resolution to play more is working out well. I have been playing three to five games per day since I made it. More opportunities to mess up and learn :) I played three blitz games against a dan player last night, and managed to mess up two of them, but make a huge capture on the other one. This was with four handicap, so not too bad. Blitz is hard!

Go Club

Today was real life go club, always fun. There is something satisfying about playing on a real goban, and seeing the reactions of your opponent to your moves. The sound and feel of the stones. The concentration visible on the players faces. The 'Oh, I think I messed up, didn't I?'

I played a 5k, I got 2H. This was a game with mistakes on both sides, in which a cute 'under the stones' popped up. Our 4d had seen it coming, but it came as a total surprise to both the 5k and me. It's so hard to see those things in advance. There seems to be an 'under the stones' blind spot in my reading. I ended up winning this game by resignation, I was about 30 points ahead by then. This was the third game in a row I won, so next time will be down to 1H against him!

Second game was against a 4d, who always gives me 9H. I haven't been able to consistently win even with that much handicap. Today was a good game, although I did get a bit carried away attacking one of his groups. Could just have kept harrassing it, but tried to kill it instead. This ended in a big semeai, and my reading ability was too limited to figure out the outcome. So I did the best I could, in the end just closed my eyes, filled outside liberties and prayed. It worked! Finally a semeai where my opponent was one liberty short! Usually it's me :p And why is it always just one liberty anyway? Oh well, that was another win for the day. Maybe there is hope :)

We decided that we'll play reverse komi next time instead of high handicap. High handicap games are so different from real games, I think reverse komi is going to work out better for us. I have been playing reverse komi with Kipawa (AGA shodan) and it's a lot of fun. Of course, it makes him play very viciously, using the excuse 'The komi is heavy!' Good for developing my fighting skills.

Playing More

I think I played an average of about two games every day (not counting turn based), but I have decided that I want to play more. I have made a concentered effort to play more when I am at KGS at night. So far so good. Managed to play six games, four games, and four games over the last three days. Who needs sleep anyway? As usual, those were a mixture of good games and bad games, some really bad, some reasonably good. But even in my good games, I still make way too many mistakes. Nice to have a lot of room for improvement!

Some one asked about the taisha. Kogo's joseki dictionary has quite some variations, and there is a lot about the taisha in Yoshio Ishida's 'Dictionary of Basic Joseki, Vol 2'. Not that I have studied much of it yet, but I tend to look up variations after my games, to figure out where I messed up this time. I am still studying Breakthrough to Shodan, which mentions 'Know the taisha, but don't play it'. I wonder why? :)

I have been wanting to experiment with mini chinese, maybe I'll use that for my next fuseki experimentation. I am not really done with jabberwocks though, so many fuseki, so little time! Another fun one I have been trying is the four pillars, which means to take the four side star points (before the corners) in the opening as Black. Confuses the heck out of your opponent :) My record so far is 2 wins and 1 loss. Fun to experiment!

I had a 'serious' student at homeschool club last week. Usually kids come in, play for a bit and disappear again, or start making patterns with the stones or such (we are talking young kids here) But this one actually is really interested, stays interested, and now has progressed to real go at 9x9. I gave her 5H this week and she has beaten me twice already, and I wasn't even holding back. Maybe she will stick with it. And maybe not, but she can always pick it up again 20 years from now.

Focus, Focus, Focus, Focus!

It's all about focus. I would be doing so much better if I would be able to focus on every single move of the whole game. Often I either play with too many distractions (that's why I have a special mess up account) or I lose focus anyway, because I chat and read email and web surf while playing a game. Kipawa helpfully has told me 'You have to play the whole game.' So true!

The solution seems pretty simple, but I have found it harder than it should be. For now, I leave every KGS room while I am playing, so as not to be distracted by the chatter. Helps a bit, but not enough yet. And although this is part of it, it's not the only problem. Often, I just plunk down a likely move, and think about it after the fact. Of course realizing that this was not the best move after all, actually, it was a very bad move...

I guess it's not all about focus, it's also about playing too fast. Last time I talked about this on my blog, Tristen recommended to not hold any stones in my hand. The slowing yourself down to reach down into the bowl and get a stone, often adds enough time to do at least some thinking and considering. But on line, it's just too darned easy to click that mouse button. Flameblade gave me a brilliant solution. He said to hold go stones while playing on line, so I'll have to put them down before I can click. Interesting idea. I haven't tried it yet, but I might do it tonight. Slowing down and focusing will really improve my game, I am sure. Going to focus on focus, focus, and focus.

Last night, I played two Wings Monthly League games. Lost one, and won one. The fun thing is that the last game got me into the list of '20 most active league players' with 32 league games so far. I never had noticed that list until a few weeks ago, and I was within 5 games or so to be able to reach spot #20. Now I am in :-) All the other players have played in at least 10 leagues, while I have played in only 7 leagues so far. When I told a friend about this, she happily exclaimed 'That's fabulous!!! Shows how little life you actually have!'

The Breakthrough to Shodan

The Breakthrough to Shodan. This book had been recommended to me by two people, and it just arrived in my mailbox a few days ago. One of those books where you want real life to stop, and to be able to just sit down and browse and read. Of course, real life didn't stop, but I still have been able to study some of the book.

Very interesting. I have worked through the first 1.5 chapters now, and one sentence that really jumped out at me was 'Don't dodge fights. The closer you come to playing on even terms, the more you have to fight'. One of my problems in handicap games is that I often do play way too defensively. Trying to protect territory, and not attacking enough. Yes, I do know that handicap stones are for attacking, but it doesn't show in my games. Need to get over that. This book will help me a lot, I can tell already.

Last night, I played a 9H game and had fun applying some of the principles in the book. Still got wiped off the board, but at least I went down fighting. Now just need to learn how to actually win by fighting. Will be so much fun to figure it out :D

My teacher Sendol has told me that I need to play more aggressively, so it fits well with that advice. It all sounds so simple in theory, but it's harder on the board. To find the balance between unreasonable aggression and the one which actually works. I guess only one way to find out, by trying it. Or if I am really desperate, I could read out my moves before I actually play them.

Homeschool club has started again, and I offered the kids to learn how to play go. This week I had eight interested kids, including two of mine. They had fun playing capture go and some even were advanced enough (I had given them a lesson before) to teach the real beginners. It's interesting to see how they all have their own style, right from the beginning. Some play very solidly, just connecting stones. Others kind of scatter stones around the board, including putting themselves into atari. It will be interesting to see whether any stick with the game. But even if they don't, they at least have been exposed to the game now and know more about it.

Go Fun

We did lots of playing, and lots of reviewing. It's amazing how she could move just a few stones, and suddenly the whole board situation was different. 'Don't let the river come out!' 'The only move!' 'Don't push from behind' It was great to learn new things, although i am sure I have forgotten at least half of them already. I think the big thing I got out of this, is a kind of whole board thinking, of figuring out what's important and what's not, and thinking about direction of play. Learned some nice, new, nifty invasions. And just generally had fun playing, eating, drinking, and breathing go for four days.

I was the weakest player at 7k, there was one other 7k, and 4k and a 2k, the other 10 people were all at least shodan. Strong group. I vow that some day I am not going to be the weakest player in this workshop. Last time I was 11k and there were at least an 8 and 9k. So I was sure I wouldn't be the weakest this time. Tough luck! Need to improve!!!

My teacher recommends at least 400 tsumego per month, at least I am doing that. Still working on at least 50 a day, and most days I succeed. It was nice to meet other problem and go book obsessed people, and compare books and stories. Gave me some more idea of books I still want :-) I browsed through some one's Get Strong at Attacking, i really liked that book. It's on my list of 'Books to get' now.

Most of the weekend was rain, but it didn't matter much, since we could stay inside and play. We did get watch some fireworks on Sunday night, which was very neat. Over a pond, next to a cemetery. I wish I had been organized enough to take my camera to it. Oh well.

Now back home, back to boring studying and playing instead of fun.

Feng Yun

Last night, I drove up to Middlebury, VT, with another go club member, to attend an event with Feng Yun. First a lecture and a demonstration, and then the highlight of the evening, she would play a simul.

I knew the simul was just for Middlebury players and strong visitors, so there was no way I would play in it. But miracles do happen and she ended up playing more players than had previously been announced. Both me and the other player of my go club were able to play, what joy! To play the second strongest woman player in the world! Who would have thought that would ever happen!

She was amazing. She played twelve of us, most of us got 9H. The few strong players, like the 4d and 5d, only got 2H. She did not have any problems with any of us, the only one who made her think a few times was the 5d. For all the others, we would put down our stone, and she would reply instantaneously, seemingly without thinking. And yes, she beat all of us. Easily too.

What a great experience! I learned a lot too, just watching her play. When I play in a handicap game, I tend to overplay a lot, hoping that my opponent won't punish correctly. But she didn't overplay at all. She just plays slow, thick moves, building up a strong position, and patiently waiting for mistakes. Then she pounces. Very effective. Showed me how much I still have to learn. Like I didn't know that yet, but it was even clearer while playing her.

Now I am even more committed to studying more and more, so I will get stronger. I might get addicted to this game! Wait, I am addicted already. Well, then I can be even more addicted. Here is the final position of the game. I had 9H and nothing died, but she had a lot more anyway. Amazing!

Time to do some problems!

Jabberwocks

Beware the jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

My favorite opening the last few months has been mokuhazushi (3-5 point). It can lead to some interesting variations, of which the Taisha definitely is the best. I still remember the first time some one hit me with the Taisha. He totally crushed me and then in review told me 'Beware the Taisha! The joseki of a thousand variations.' That got my attention and soon I started looking into the taisha. And playing it of course, with varying degrees of success. I have to modestly admit that I am getting better and better at messing up the taisha, so I am making progress there.

When browsing through Sensei's Library some day, I discovered that my favorite opening had a name. Well, kind of. A fun name too, some one named it Jabberwocks!

This inspired me to see whether the Jabberwock user id had been taken on KGS. To my utter surprise, nobody had grabbed it yet. I couldn't resist the chance to become a Jabberwock, so that's me now. Decided to use it as my very own wacky openings account. Mostly jabberwocks, but I might experiment with others too.

I wanted to experiment anyway, having heard from people that it's hard to get games with a question mark rank. It was unexpectedly easier than I thought it would be. I just put up a game offer and waited to see what would happen. My first ranked game was against a 5k, who utterly destroyed me. Rank was still a question mark after that. Second game was against a 19k, who couldn't quite crush me, and this got me my first rank, a [12k?] Still a question mark, but at least a rank attached to it. (the average of 5k and 19k, which made sense). And yes, I know I could have played ranking bots, but I wanted to see how hard it was to find real people to play. Not to mention that bots are just boring.

I have played a few more games, bouncing up and down in rank, it seems not too hard to find an opponent. I tend to get an offer within 5 or 10 minutes of putting up a new game, even with a question mark rank.

And to illustrate the success of the jabberwocks opening strategy, it was recently played in the last match for Oza challenger decision match, by Yamashita Keigo against Nakaonoda Tomomi. What a great game that was! Jabberwocks won Yamashita the priviledge of challening Cho U for the Oza title. I am looking forwards to their matches.

Tomorrow, Feng Yun will be at the Middlebury, VT go club. It will be wonderful to see her in person. Who would have thought that one of the only two female 9p's in the world would come to Middlebury, of all places.

Yay for Self Atari!

It has been one of those weeks. Somehow I have managed to put myself in atari not one time, not two times, but three times!!! Pretty amazing.

First time was a brilliant sequence I had worked out. I had totally read out how it would utterly destroy his position. The only tiny oversight was a self atari somewhere on the way... So instead I ended up utterly destroying my own position... Sad.

Second time was in a game where I was behind anyway, and I made it even worse by playing a rather big self atari in early yose. At least it wasn't the game. I still resigned in disgust at my own play.

Third time was a funny game. His group seemed to be weak, so I decided to try to kill it, cleverly disguising my eye stealing moves as normal yose moves. And yet again, I totally missed an obvious self atari. This wasn't even one in a brilliant sequence of moves, it was a totally obvious and direct self atari... He took, and I was 30 points behind. Bad, bad, bad!

I still finished the game, it was only 30 points after all. I managed to steal some points here and there, and ended up winning by half a point! Pretty amazing. The ironic thing was that he played a dame as his last move, instead of the one-point move that was still on the board. That cost him the game. Oh, and in review I realized that that black group I was targeting wasn't even weak enough, so I should just have let it alone. Sigh.

I have been thinking about why I manage to play self atari so often, and I realize that it is purely a matter of focus. If I am focusing on my game, and paying attention, I almost never make stupid mistakes like that. I just make normal mistakes :-p But when I am chatting, and web surfing, and reading email, and dealing with kid interruptions, then I suddenly get hit by self atari's. I wonder whether there is a lesson to be learned from that. A lesson about actually focusing on my games, even if they are on line ones...

My current study still mainly considers of replaying / memorizing pro games and doing problems. And problems. And problems. And more problems. We studied the family of L groups (L, L+1, etc) at go club last week, so I am entering a bunch of L group problems to use with Uligo. I want to practice them over and over, so that some one could wake me up in the middle of the night, hand me an L group related problem, and I will sleepily and automatically know the right move. At the moment I know just enough to be able to mess them up nicely. Even more so after studying them.

Learning from the Masters

I have been replaying and memorizing some pro games, but I felt that I wasn't doing enough yet. Most of my pro games I have gotten from GoBase, this Go News Page and from GoGameWorld for commented games.

A few days ago, I suddenly realized that I have lots of paper sources with pro games too, which I have conveniently been ignoring. Mostly because it's so much easier to just sit and click instead of actually getting out my goban and my stones. I decided that this maybe wasn't the right attitude and that digging up those paper sources would not be a bad idea.

I looked at my go book shelf and first thing I found was Learning from the Masters: Kyu Level Commentaries on Professional Games Volume 2. This looked as good as any to start with, so I put my goban somewhere where baby couldn't reach it and started replaying the games, while reading the commentaries, and exploring variations.

Very different from just clicking. There seems to be a certain feel and flow to the stones, which I miss when I just point and click. I am kind of hoping that doing this on a real board will help me to internalize good play more easily, but even if it doesn't, there just is a lot of enjoyment to be found in this exercise. The touch of the stones, the sound of putting them down on the board.

I like the level of comments on the games, they have helped me seeing all kinds of things which I would not have noticed by myself. I think this is going to be very helpful. I managed to memorize the first 56 moves of this game without putting much effort in it, I am not going to work on memorizing the rest of the game, but will get new games to play through and memorize at least the first 50 moves.

Of course, i am also still doing problems, slowly working my way through my new Chinese books. I am now halfway volume 4 in this collection of tesuji problems which means they are not as easy anymore. Still very do-able though, I think I'll do fine with this intermediate level. We'll see what happens when I reach the volumes with the hard problems.

I finally managed to beat my husband with 6 handicap! For the longest time, I would give him 5H and I would easily win, or I would give him 6H and he would always win. But over the last few days, I have played him twice with 6H and won! He doesn't like losing, so we'll have to increase the handi to 7 now. My ultimate goal is to be able to let him win by 0.5 every single time I give him 9H. Then he doesn't have to complain about losing his games with me anymore. Let's just hope that he won't get as obsessed with go as I am and would start to work seriously on improving :-D

Chinese Go Books

I had visitors, so couldn't be on line as much. Luckily I just got a shipment of go books from China. Thus I could put a problem book open on my lap while pretending to be socializing :-) I have worked through the first two volumes of this problem collection, and am really good at recognizing 'B to play' and 'W to play' in Chinese now. I can do one of those books per day, but I am sure my problem solving speed will slow down in the next few volumes.

I also worked through the first volume of Lee Changho's Life and Death Collection which took me a lot more time. It will be a while before I have done all those volumes.

Made a start in 800 Quick Tesuji Problems but I can tell already that this is going to take quite some time too. Great problems though.

Can you tell I am very happy with my new Chinese books?

Some one asked about the Korean Problem Academy books, wondering how useful they are because of not having answer diagrams. I have found that the problems do take longer because of not knowing the answers for sure. But I think that that is a good think. It forces me to really read out the problem, as opposed to dropping a stone at a vital looking point, hoping for the best, and checking the answers. Now I read out most variations, and I also read out a lot of other moves, to prove to myself that none of them works. Sometimes I find a second move which seems to work, and I have to look more into both 'correct' moves, to figure out which is the real correct one. The lack of answers forces me to read deeper and more carefully, which in my opinion is a good thing. I would recommend those books to any one.

Just out of curiosity, I used joncol to look at how many games I have played on KGS so far. I am up to 544 games now on my NannyOgg account, of which I have lost more than half. I seem to have a much easier time winning as W, my winning perc as B is only 40 %. Makes sense of course, I just thought it was interesting. I have played 248 different opponents, which is quite amazing. Just think back 10 or 15 years, and it would have been almost impossible to play that many opponents in less than a year. I play 1.37 games per day, but that's only counting KGS, the number would be higher if I included all my KGS accts and my dragon and little golem accounts.

Little Golem

December last year, I dusted off my go board and played a few times. I thought I would really want to start playing more regularly again. Life kept getting in the way though, so I knew it wouldn't happen. I decided to check out the AGA web site, to see whether there was a club any where close by. No, there wasn't but lo and behold, there were go servers! Places where people were night and day, willing to play go. I had no idea that such a thing existed!

It took me a few weeks to get one of those go servers working with our firewall, and I was thrilled when we finally got it done. The one I managed to get working was KGS, so that's how I ended up primarily on there, although I do have an unused IGS account now too. Later, I found out that KGS most likely was a better fit for me anyway, so many people there willing to help weaker players and to review games. I had seen turn based servers mentioned, but I felt they wouldn't satisfy my immediate cravings for playing as much go as possible.

Fast forward a few weeks, when I played in my first real life tournament. I met another go player, who invited me to play on Dragon Go Server I checked it out, and suddenly I realized that this would enable me to play even more games, especially when I didn't have time to play a full game, I could always fire off a few moves on Dragon. I played for a while and found Dragon to be a perfect complement to KGS.

I had heard people talk about Little Golem but I had never checked it out myself. Till a go friend gently nudged me in the direction of that server, and I found another turn based server, but this one is based on tournaments. There are always tournaments going on, you just join and wait for the next one to start, usually within a day. So it is like dragon, but more competitive. I have been playing there for about a week now, and have been having a lot of fun. I have found that I shouldn't sign up for too many tournaments, I now have more than 50 simultaneous games going, although a bunch of those are fast 9x9 ones. I even *gasp* ended up joining in two small chess tournaments. Don't tell any one! I suck at chess anyway, but thought it would be fun to play a few games.

Today I finished my first Little Golem tournament. Came in second place out of four, with same number of points as first place, but he had played tougher opponents, so he won. Yes, I do like Little Golem!