Shygost Lectures Video now Online!!!!

Happy to announce that we managed to get nine of the shygost videos available using bittorent. Here are the two bittorrent files for shygost's lectures.

1. Shygost lectures for Azureus
2. Shygost lectures for other bittorrent clients

There are two because azureus is incompatible with other bittorrent clients. So you must use the torrent labeled 'azureus only' if and only if you have azureus. All other clients should use the other torrent. If you don't know much about bittorrent, it's a rather painless process to get involved. We recommend the utorrent client http://www.utorrent.com .This client is lightweight and featureful. After you have downloaded it, you more or less just open the torrent file, and off you go!

Thanks to hlamonde for getting the lectures down to a reasonable size and to gryn for helping set up the bittorrent.

Enjoy!

Preserving the aji

I have been working on it for quite a while, but still manage to play aji keshi too frequently. Today I was looking back at some old teaching games, and found this quote by Minue, reinforcing what I should know already.

Minue: "To be sure, weakness at A and B is "potential trouble " for w. But, presently, not clear for b how to exploit these weaknesses of w, then just let them be weak state.. It's what u should do for opp;s "bad aji" (bad taste)...
As long as u let that aji to be weak, it smells bad for ur opp"

I have to keep reminding myself of this. It's so easy to play a harmful sente without thinking. This reminds me of one of the shygost lectures, where he was sharing this story. (paraphrased)

"When I was 5 or 6k, I discovered sente. I played sente all over the place. I felt so powerful. My whole game I played sente. And I lost all my games... "

Let that be my lesson for today.

Well, in addition to hoshi joseki and tesuji and how to be pounded into dogmeat pound opponent into dogmeat.

Phew, I passed

I can keep my username ^^

You scored as Gytha (Nanny) Ogg. You are Nanny Ogg! A talented witch, able to make yourself at home wherever you are, and insist that Greebo is just a big softie. You enjoy drinking, a lot, and singing about a hedgehog. You have a huge family, and get your daughters-in-law to do most of the housework. You are kind and gentle, and help put people at ease.

Gytha (Nanny) Ogg		75%
Esmerelda (Granny) Weatherwax		69%
Lord Havelock Vetinari		63%
Commander Samuel Vimes		50%
Carrot Ironfounderson		50%
Greebo		31%
Death		25%
Rincewind		25%
Cohen The Barbarian		19%
The Librarian		13%

Which Discworld Character are you like (with pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

Killing is Such a Commitment

I keep falling into the 'trying to kill' trap way too often. I have realized that killing is kind of crude. It is way more fun to torture and hassle and make him live with 40 stones and 2 points. Preferably in gote. But sometimes... my greed gets the best of me and I try to kill anyway.

While I am killing, and smelling blood, I forget to take care of my own weaknesses. I am sure I am invincible, and I am going to win big, because he is going to DIE! Naturally, my opponent does not always agree. Not only does he not die, he also manages to turn around and kill part of me!!! Very annoying.

Of course, there is only one person to blame for the weaknesses in my shape, and it's not my opponent.

Most of the time, I just surround and let live small. But once in a while, I still go for the unreasonable kill, often leading to a predictable loss for me. Such great learning opportunities :p I need to get rid of my blood lust and just stay strong and let them live in gote. One day I'll get it.

Still studying hoshi joseki and handicap go, it's fun. Even if I am still being pounded into tiny pieces of dogmeat by Minue. Also studying a recent pro game, I want to experiment with that fuseki. Bonus points if you recognize the game.

Shygost Public Lectures

Most people know about the Shygost public audio lectures. If not, they are a great thing to check out. He gives them every Friday night on KGS. They are aimed at kyu players and show you how to think during your go game, how to find the next move.

We have been recording most of those lectures, but the files are just too darned big to share easily. So volunteers have been transcribing the lessons to get them into a more accessible format. We are woefully behind doing it though. Having more volunteers would not be a bad thing.

I just finished transcribing the February 11th lecture on the Chinese Opening. Every time I transcribe one of those lessons, I realize how good of a teacher shy is. I always learn something from every single lesson. This Chinese Opening lecture is available here.

Links to all of the transcribed files so far are available on senseis. I recommend anyone to take a look at those, there is a lot of helpful information in them. And as always, if the lectures and/or the transcriptions are helpful to you, please consider donating some money towards keeping them going at http://tengen.bur.st/.

Strength and Good Moves

After discovering the simplicity secret, I now am slowly starting to realize that strength is not only about making good and simple moves. It seems to be even more about not making bad moves. Making simple moves isn't that hard, but refraining from bad moves is difficult.

Differences in strength is about playing good moves consistently. You can play a superb opening, but one bad move in middle game can throw away the whole game. I have lost so many games by playing a good game with one or two fatal mistakes. Stronger players just play calmly and wait for opponents mistake. The opponent will make them.

When I review my games, I usually have a few moves I HATE. Those are the moves I need to get rid of. The moves which lost me the game. Or even if I won, I don't feel good about the game because of those horrible moves.

A few days ago, I gave 9H and was behind most of the game. I didn't know how I would ever catch up, unless he made a mistake. Lo and behold, he did! A won game thrown away by one huge mistake.

To keep cosmic balance, I did the same when Minue gave me 9H today. I did ok most of the game, until I made a few fatal mistakes. Very fatal. And yet again, I got pounded into dogmeat.

My goal is to play simple and calm go, and to refrain from bad moves. The worst thing is that I often know when I am making a bad move, but I am compelled to do it by jealousy, greed, or panic. So much for playing calm go. Maybe my new go motto should be 'Don't panic!' Or I should just sit on my hands till the urge to make a bad move passes.

Middle Game Fighting

This week, Minue went deeper into middle game fighting techniques with me, which was very helpful. He verbalized a lot of things which make total sense, but which I never really applied consciously.

He was reviewing my game against him (yes, I got pounded into dogmeat at 9H), and this position came up.



He took this as an opportunity to teach me more about middle game fighting (which is one of my many weaknesses)

"Here, my point is simple. W cut black. Then, don't panic. Whenever you are in complex contact fight, where your opp tries unreasonable cut, don't play atari blindly. First thing to think are these questions.

1. Read if u can kill its cutting stone. Can i kill it by ladders or net? If u can kill it by ladders, kill it by "atari". If u can not kill it by ladders or net.
2. Don't panic, and dont play harmful atari.
   In this position, these are examples of harmful atari.
   
   
   
   
   
   Usually, atari move is bad when u can not kill white by atari play. See this is cross cut pos, in general, atari just hurts one of ur stones.
   
3. Check if ur stone is "important cutting stones". If so, u should not give it up. Here, both of black A and B is very important stones, so black should save both of them.
4. Next, find which one is "weaker stone". In this pos, black B is weaker than black A. Then, increase its libs. Since, black center stones are in danger, (with less libs) black jumps toward to center, to increase its liberties
   
   
   

If u keep this basic point, ( middle game fight as "liberty competion"), direction of stones in middle game is not so hard. Fundamentally, any move which increases ur libs, and reduces opp's libs effectively is good move in middle game, no matter what specific shape it is. If empty triangle is really best, to do it, then empty triangle is good middle game fight move. "

Amazing how simple it is when you look at it this way. Yet another example of how go is all about simplicity. I just will need to find this simplicity in my games.

Mini Chinese

I have been playing mini Chinese for a while, or at least, attempting to play it. Often, W will prevent me from playing it, so I haven't gotten as much practice with the mini Chinese formation as I would like.

Today, I noticed that the audio go lessons site has a lecture up about mini chinese. I was interested enough to spend some time listening to it and studying it. I learned a lot and now understand more of the history of this opening.

I had been playing the mini chinese with 2 komoku's, but after this lecture, I think I'll go back to the more traditional one with hoshi. Now just need the kids to go to sleep so that I can actually play and try it out.

Other studying today included pro game, handicap tactics, and some joseki. So much to study, so little time.

Lumpy, The Go Playing Travel Bug

In addition to playing go, I like to go geocaching. One of the fun elements of geocaching is finding, and sending out so called travel bugs, whimsical little items which travel from geocache to geocache. Last cache we did, we found this cool travelbug Lumpy the Plasticine Stoat. Lumpy is a very special travel bug, he is a weasel who likes to act on whatever people dare him to do. Naturally, I requested a go playing Lumpy and the owner did a wonderful job putting him on a go board.

There are a bunch of other fun things Lumpy has done on that page, but I have to admit that go playing Lumpy is my favorite. Thank you, AuntieWeasel!

My New License Plate

Yes, I do realize it's a bit over the top. But I still love it ^^



But how could I resist when I discovered that nobody had taken this license plate yet here in New Hampshire?



Now let's see how many people around here actually know what it means. So far, my neighbor has asked me why I put 'Bad duck!' on my car...



I guess I'll have to carry those trifold 'Go: an ancient game for the new millenium' leaflets around, to hand out to interested parties.

Study Day

Today, my van had to go into the garage for an inspection, and life finally calmed down enough that I could actually study go. As in, study most of the day, instead of five minutes here, ten minutes there. Well, at least when I wasn't dealing with kids interruptions :D

I got quite a lot done, but not even half of what I had hoped. Somehow studying always takes more time than I think it will take. I did half of my tesuji homework, reviewed some haengma, did problems, reviewed some handicap techniques, looked at a pro game. Only thing I didn't do yet is actually play. Guess I need to get on line and find myself a game.

I have been experimenting with my playing style. Trying to put less emphasis on territory, and more on attacking and surrounding stones. Let's just say that I still have a lot of room for improvement ^^ Minue pounded me into dogmeat at 8H, so I'd better try to get more handicap study in this week. Next game will be 9H, which sounds like a lot, but can evaporate amazingly fast against a strong player :D

Dogmeat

Minue has been working on how to use handicap stones to pound White into dogmeat. The goal is to get me to win at least 50 % of my 7H games against him by October. It's an interesting way of studying. I have studied some about how to use handi stones, but not much. This is good. My study material looks like this:



Naturally, I haven't been able to find perfection like that in my actual games. My last 7H game against Minue looked like this:



White is everywhere and the only one being pounded into dogmeat is Black ^^. I still have a lot of room for improvement, this is typical for my games against him. I will have to study a lot to be able to beat him at 7H occasionally.

Studying handicap go made me think back to the advice Kipawa gave me about a year ago. His handicap advice:

1. How can I split White?
2. How can I stop White from splitting me?
3. How can I attack White (preferably while protecting myself)

This fits in very well with Minue's statement that go isn't around surrounding empty space, but it is about surrounding opponents stones/groups. I still fall into the 'desperately trying to hang on to territory' trap too often, need to get over that.

It seems so simple on paper, but somehow amazingly hard in real game play.

More on my Bad Move

Thanks for all the comments on D3, I still feel it was a very bad move. I will try to explain why I feel that way. First, showing you the game position a few moves later:

diagram 1

Notice how the triangle stones (one of them being D3) are totally useless. They are just sitting there, doing nothing at all. W has played ten moves so far, and two of them ended up being nonsense moves. Not very good. 20 % of my stones in the opening are lost for eternity. No future. I felt this was horrible result for W. Heck, I was sitting at my computer, crying. Just look at the board and find two other spots those stones could have been. Not hard to find better moves.

Yesterday, sendol reviewed my game and called D3 'too heavy'. He showed just tenuki, playing in the UL corner instead. This is the position he showed. Sure looks better than my game.

diagram 2

He also showed variations, making it even clearer to me that D3 just can't have been right. Let's backtrack a few moves from Diagram 1.

diagram 3

Here Edison actually was very nice to me by playing D2. The cut at A is very severe, much more than D2 is. If he had cut instead, I could have ended up with positions like this.

diagram 4

diagram 5

diagram 6

Pretty bad. He also showed how I could have done better even after D3. This is a playable continuation.

diagram 7

Still, after looking at all this, I fully believe that D3 was a bad mistake, even if I could have kind of recovered from it. You can check sendols review for all those variations and more, I just took the most striking ones to post here. I am going to work on eliminating moves like D3 from my games. Last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up screaming when it showed up in my dreams. I can't allow this to happen again.

Please share any feedback you have on this, I numbered the diagrams to make it easier to refer to them.

'Weekly' Slaughter

Yes, finally back at it. My father-in-law had passed away and I had not been able to focus on go as I usually do. There was nothing weekly anymore about our weekly slaughter sessions. This week, I finally was ready to play serious games again and we did our usual 'Who makes the most mistakes?' kind of game.

I am still extremely annoyed with my big mistake. This was the position and I played the triangle stone. Within seconds it was very clear to me that this just totally sucked.



The worst thing is, that I should know this, we have talked about this at club, and somehow I forgot in the heat of the game. Can you tell I am annoyed with myself? ^^ I am not sure where I should have played instead though. A looks ok? I think A is better choice than B. Just tenuki seems to be played in pro games too, but I am not sure about the follow-ups and where to tenuki to. I really need to study this position, this was just bad.

I managed to come back from this mistake, but still... Feels like it should not have happened.

Oh well, hope we will be able to get in weekly games again, it's nice to play serious games like this.

Go Outdoors

Today, our go club went outdoors to play. We hiked up to a lake, planning to play on the lake shore. To our amazement, half of the lake was gone, because they are doing maintenance on the dam. So we ended up playing on the bottom of the lake, which actually was ultra cool.



We played a bunch of games, it was nice and relaxed. Beautiful environment to play go.



Of course, I managed to get myself in big trouble, when I reduced a moyo and forgot my story. Let's say it was a good learning experience.



Fun afternoon, now back to studying go indoors. Still doing tons of problems and started on studying hoshi josekis. And trying to keep my games simple, but I still have a lot of room for improvement in that.

One Colour Go Revisited

Yesterday, we did study session at go, studying yose, and watching one of the online lectures. When it was time to play, we decided to try one colour go again.

Board looked really funny, this is how we ended up in the first game, when my opponent wanted to start a new and fresh game.



The lower corner is his hoshi, I approach (keima), and he chooses attach-and-extend joseki. He misses the last joseki move, so I push and cut. Hard to play fights like that in one colour, but good exercise.

Simplicity

The more I play, the more I am realizing that go is all about simplicity. You don't need fancy moves or brilliant tesujis, you don't need to kill everything in sight. If you play good and simple moves, and always take similar or bigger sized moves than your opponent, everything will work out just fine.

Of course, there is the problem of finding that simple and good move. It always seems to be totally obvious in hindsight. But I manage to find lots of bad moves during my games. I manage to make fatal mistakes and have my shape totally collapse on me.

But I can feel and see where simplicity is the answer. One reason I stopped playing jabberwocks, was that I felt I also should be able to play 'basic' go. It is easy to confuse opponent by playing mokuhazushi which he might not be familiar with. It still is my favorite opening, and I will go back to it for sure, but for the moment really working on improving my basic and simple go.

It's amazing how hard it can be to find the simplest move.

Go Club

A few weeks ago, we moved our go club day from Wednesday to Thursday, so that some VT go players would be able to make it too. This has worked out very well, we have had very good turnout. Yesterday, we had ten players and six non-players, not bad. I was late, so I only got to play one game, but it was a very enjoyable and good game. I killed something, it almost came back to life, but managed to kill it again. Fun game.

When I started playing at this go club (December 2004, when I rediscovered go), there were only two members. I boosted the membership by 50 % For the longest time it was just the three of us. Nice to have so many more people now. The japanese lady showed up again, she is 76yo and last week she came to club for the very first time. Her father used to play go, and she said it helped him a lot to keep his mind sharp. When she discovered our club in the local newspaper (we are in the calendar section), she decided she would love to learn to play too.

Still studying wangwi games, I haven't spent enough time on the third one yet. My husband is traveling this week, so things here are a bit crazier than normal, not to mention that we are rescuing the basement from eight years of neglect.

40th Wangwi

Last night, the final game in the 40th Korean Wangwi tournament was played. Lee Changho had been holding this title for ten years straight now, and defended it for the eleventh year. It is a best out of five tournament, but Lee only needed three games to defeat challenger Lee Yeongkyu.

I have been studying the first two games over the last weeks, will have to spend some time with the third game.

Today, we had a power outage. Too bad. I had to go outdoors with my goban and study wangwi games, as opposed to cleaning my basement ^^

Link to wangwi final games: Game 1; Game 2; Game 3.

I Love Go!

Just wanted to share that ^^ The more I play, the more I love this game. The way it is totally simple and utterly complex at the exact same time. The way games and players can have a very distinct character. The way the stones flow on the board, like water making its way down a mountain towards the sea. Meandering on the way, but getting bigger and stronger all the time.

Yesterday, attended a good shygost lecture, had a minue lesson, and played a fun game against a friend. Quote of the day for the shygost lecture 'When I have a weak group, I chant to myself "I will not go away till this group is settled". Even if I want to take big points somewhere else, do whatever I want, I keep telling myself to settle that group first.' Sounds so simple, right. More proof of simplicity in my minue lesson, somehow things get a lot clearer when he puts stones down on the board, opposed to my clumsy kyu stones.

So much to study, so little time ^^

Overplay

Indeed, that pincer was overplay. The best punishment is the triangled move, and this is one of the expected ways the game can develop now.



The exact situation came up the European Goe Women Championship last year. Thanks to arnoud for the link. In this game minue describes the pincer move as "G3 move is like putting her stone into white's tiger mouth" Of course, in my game, the tiger suicided herself when this happened, but in the linked game the tiger punished appropriately. Interesting stuff.

Joseki Ponderings

Last week at club, I played this game, I am W.



I felt move 17 for B, the pincer was overplayish, but I sure did a very good job of making it a wonderful move. I have been thinking back to this position and trying to figure out what I could have done differently.

I could have chosen a different joseki variant, A and B were the ones which came to mind.



The counter pincer at B isn't joseki, but feels somehow more right on this board.

Or maybe I should have approached differently.



Will have to ponder this more, I know the result I got in my game was horrible. Although I have to admit that that was not only the joseki choice, but also the fact that I cut when I shouldn't have cut yet.

So much to study, so little time ^^

Problems Insight

It's amazing how some problems totally stump me, for a long long time. Even if I know this can't be too hard of a problem, but somehow I still am not finding the answer.

I have found the solution often is to let it be for a few hours, go do something else. Other problems, or even something non-go related.

I come back to the problem, and suddenly the solution is there. Totally obvious too. The human mind works in fascinating ways.

Off to go club!

UVGC Tourney

Last week, we had a tourney at our local go club. It was tiny, but lots of fun. We had 12 players, ranging from 4d to 20k. It was the very first tournament ever for three of our club members. They all did well, I hope this will motivate them to come to the Boston tournament in 1.5 weeks.

I didn't do so well, managed to lose all four of my games. Impressive huh? It actually wasn't that bad, I had two good even games which I lost on komi. The other two games were giving high handi, and I always have a hard time doing that. Guess I now know what to work on. I didn't even keep track of my handi games, but here are the links to my first game and second game.

The funny thing is that one of my 'day before tourney' stresses usually is 'What if I lose all four of my games????' Now I did, and I lived, got that out of the way. Less things to stress about ^^.

Been doing tons of problems and more problems. My reading still sucks ^^ I guess I'll have to keep pushing till it doesn't anymore.

Problems Revisited

Notable quotes from my last miserable Weekly Slaughter Game:

NoSide [7k]: minue, give her 10 millions reading problem this week :)
minue622 [7d]: noside made poor misreading, i would have to assign 100 millions reading problems to him in this week if he were my pupil
FlameBlade [-]: in fact
FlameBlade [-]: I think both of players here should be condemned to hell of eternal reading problems
FlameBlade [-]: if I had my way
FlameBlade [-]: and this shouldn't work.
Barrauss [-]: But that's just because you're spiteful.

Summary: My reading sucks.
Solution? Problems, problems, and more problems.

I increased my number of daily problems, mostly working on tesuji, some life/death, and some haengma. I have gotten back to the Many Faces of Go problems, because it's easy to do a lot of them in a row and have the level self-adjust. I also dug up some of my chinese problem books, including a great tesuji collection with tons of simple capturing races. Yesterday, I took that book to our local science museum, so I could do about 80 problems, while the kids were entertaining themselves with the exhibitions. Last but not least, I have been doing some of my uligo problem collections, like the l-group one. So much to study, so little time!

NoSide [7k]: nanny... you know how much i love you?
NannyOgg [-]: you haven't mentioned it lately ^^
NoSide [7k]: but i've to say that you're crazy to let this happen
NannyOgg [-]: I never have claimed to be sane
NoSide [7k]: and we're going to miss you...
NoSide [7k]: all this coming week where you'll be gone, doing your 1 billion reading problems
NannyOgg [-]: ...

Annoyed

... with myself, I have been messing up more games than usual. Some days it feels like I'll never be able to play go. Yeah, yeah, I know, welcome to the club ^^.

I have been at this point before, it seems to happen when I am experimenting too much. I am learning so many new things, and use them totally inappropriately, just for the fun of it. You know the classical 'When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.'

I also still have focus problems, not only when the kids are awake. At least then I can blame them and they definitely make me lose seven stones at least. But with all on line play, it is so easy to websurf in one window, chat in another, catch up on email, and oh yeah, I was playing a game of go too... Bad habit. Should get over it. I do a lot better at over the board games.

On the upside, usually when every game seems to go wrong, it isn't long before things fall into place and I emerge at the other side of frustration, a tiny bit stronger. So I should just stop whining, do more tesuji problems and get rid of the multitasking habit. Sounds easy, right?

Beware the Taisha!

Today, someone hit me with the taisha, so I was all excited about playing it. But strangely enough, instead of the wedge, he played this move:



I thought this was totally wrong, but wasn't sure what the right move was. I played E15 and got a good result locally as far as I could tell.



Later, when I reviewed the game, I was curious whether kogo mentioned this move. And indeed it did! It says: 'A *' is joseki, If Black regrets what he has done so far and fears the consequence of the many variations of the taisha after 'A', he compromises on 'B'.(A being the normal wedge, B the move my opponent played. In kogo, the variation ends at this position



Compared to that, I think my result was ok. I just regretted that I didn't make the R11 extension from this. Interesting.

New Go Blog

Two of the MGA players are going to spend two months on China to go to go school there. They are keeping a blog of their experiences. Sounds wonderful, I am secretly hoping I can do something similar when my kids are somewhat older. At this point in time, I don't think my husband would appreciate being stuck at home with the kids for two months ^^ Oh well, luckily I can get a lot of good go studying done right at my own home with the help of the internet and my local go club. But still...

Studying haengma today. It's very interesting, minue has been teaching me a lot of it. Now I just need to internalize all this haengma, and I'll be a tiny bit stronger ^^

FlameBlade

Yesterday, FlameBlade came to visit us at the Upper Valley Go Club. I have known him for ages on line on KGS, but had never met him in person yet. It was a treat to finally play him on a real board.

He played quite a lot of games at our go club meeting at Borders, two of which were against me. For both of those games, he wiped me off the board.

After the meeting, Flame and his wife came to spend the night at my house. I invited him for another game after most of the kids were upstairs, so that I could actually focus on the game. I played mini chinese, and it was a pretty balanced game. In review I saw a few chances I missed, but I was not unhappy with my game. I ended up with one more point on the board, but of course, komi made the score into W+5.5. What fun!

This morning, they had to leave, so no time for another game. On the other hand, it would have been a game with lots of interruptions, so better not to bother at all.

Moyo Madness

Last night, we played game six of our Weekly Slaughter Series. It was my turn to be black, and I couldn't resist playing jabberwocks just for the heck of it. So I ended up with a decent moyo, only to have it broken and reduced by horrible reading mistakes. Sigh ^^

At least I had fun :D But edison won, and now is leading 4-2. Feh!

Notable quotes:
shygost [-]: an exciting game!

FlameBlade [-]: I'll say it
FlameBlade [-]: Nanny is insane :)

FlameBlade [-]: oh crap
FlameBlade [-]: Nanny collapse
FlameBlade [-]: game pretty much over now
Battousai [-]: passive unorthodox opening, collapse was simply a matter of time

Nikkentobi [?]: hopefully there won't be "misread ladder part deux"
NannyOgg [-]: i was considering calling this Moyo Madness ^^
Nikkentobi [?]: what moyo? :)
NannyOgg [-]: indeed

And I lost a $5 bet too :p Time to do even more problems, my reading sucked. I'd better play sanely next time. Hmmmm, I think I have said that before ^^ On the other hand: Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting. (John Russell)

The Return of Edison

He is back! With a vengeance too. We had to stop our weekly slaughter for a bit, because he was sick, but this week we finally got to play again. Such fun. Such insanity. We seem to bring out the worst in each other, somehow my games against him always are messy. I like to think that that is all his fault ^^.

He won! He is leading by (edison-nanny)3-2 now, I had been hoping for 2-3. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to win the next two games. I haven't had much time yet to sit and review this game, I have been into a go problems hyperfocusing mood. Still should take time to review this and a few other games, and contemplate my bad moves.

So much to study, so little time

Fun!

Friday night, we took the four hours trip to the workshop location, and what else would you do in the car but talk about go and play. J played blind go, while I played against him on a magnetic board. Don't worry, neither of us was driving. I made a bad joseki mistake, and then did not play aggressively enough when he invaded my moyo. I ended up resigning, he was way ahead by then.

At the workshop location, I found myself a 1k and a 2d to play, much fun. We also had a lecture on mini chinese, very interesting.

Saturday was a play and review game. I played two 4k's , won one, lost one, and made tons of mistakes in both games. It's amazing how I have mastered the skill of making bad moves. At night I played some friendly games.

Sunday, I played against 9H and tried to play correctly instead of my usual bullying and overplay.My teacher's handicap advice is

1. Play fast, but play correct moves. Don't make moves which you know are bad in the hope your opponent will reply incorrectly. You will not learn anything if you play that way.
2. Don't make your opponent strong, don't resolve anything.
3. Don't make low moves, try to control the center.

Let's just say that I still have a lot to learn before I can play handicap games like that.

Sunday was also the day when I got myself suckered into this 'easy hike' which ended up being six hours over a mountain ridge. Amazing views, but too much of the trail was vertical. Did I mention I was wearing flipflops? I soon took them off and just hiked barefoot most of the way. Was nice to get some physical exercise to balance all the sitting on my butt and eating good food though.

Sunday night we played Survivor Go. We got divided into two teams, and played team against team (like rengo but with more players) If your move was bad, you got kicked out. I got kicked out on my second move.

Monday arrived too fast and brought us a simul. My teacher and Jean Michel took turns making moves against the sixteen of us. Pretty wild. I took 5H, but they easily wiped me off the board anyway. It must be so hard to play simul with two people playing, can't follow through on your own plans. Simul kibbitz included remarks like 'The hunted becomes the hunter' and 'What once was a moyo is now desperately trying to make two eyes.'

Too bad that it was time to go home, but we did get another game of go in in the car (again, blind go for j, normal for me)

Study Advice

Every day:

1. Tsumego. Do five of them. If you don't have enough time, do just one of them. This is supposed to be easy tsumego, if it takes more than five minutes for a problem, it is too hard.
2. Play. After playing, review your game and find the turning point in the game. Where did you start to lose? What could you have done differently?
3. Study pro games. Look at the first 50 moves. Find good moves and interesting moves. If you have more time, write down the good moves.
4. Amateur games. If you have even more time, look at amateur games and find mistakes.

Done!

It's over! I played 19 out of 20 games and ended up 10th place out of 59 players. Phew, such insanity. But also such fun. I wish I could say that I will never do this again, but I'd better not make promises like that.

This tournament has shown me clearly that I shouldn't play go during the daytime though. My playing quality goes way down with the continuous interruptions. I'll go back to my normal schedule of studying during the day, and playing at night. Much better.

Spending some time studying all the mistakes I made during this tournament. After I get some sleep, that is ^^

Variety

The iron man insanity is still going on, and I have to say that I have played a nice variety of opponents. Yesterday included a 24k and a 5d, today I played a 2d and a 30k so far. Nothing like getting wiped off the board first thing in the morning ^^

Last night at 1am, I decided to take a short nap before my 2am game. I put my alarm clock on 1:45, so that I would not miss my game. I check the settings about three times, just to be sure I wouldn't oversleep. Next thing I know, I wake up and it is 2:10am. So I missed that game, I was annoyed with myself and checked my alarm clock again to figure out why it didn't wake me up. Very simple. I had set it for 1:45 PM. I wish americans would use 24-hours time, like civilized countries do.

That was the only game I missed so far though, I am now at 18 out of 19 games, not too bad. Still annoyed though ^^

One more game to go, I hope I can make it. I have something going on tonight, but could be back in time to play. And otherwise, oh well. I am not going to have perfect attendance anyway ^^

One Colour Go

Today, at club, I played my very first game of one colour go. I had heard it wasn't that hard, and I have to agree. It was amazingly easy to remember which stone was which colour. It was made even easier by the fact that I stayed away from complicated fighting situations ^^ It also was made easier by the fact that I eventually resigned.

What I found hard was seeing the health of groups at a glance (which got me into trouble) and reading out aji around groups. I guess I will have to practice it more.

After the game, my opponent made me change all the W stones to real W stones, just to test whether i recalled correctly. I missed one W stone somewhere, but everything else was fine. Interesting experience.

Bad, Bad, Bad Mistake

Last night, I finally had a focused tournament game. I played against a 5k. He opened high chinese, I played one of the Chinese counter strategies.



When I played D7, I expected him to take E4, but he decided to split the top instead. I happily took E4 myself, and this position felt good for W. Although I have to admit that I my positional judgement is not strong enough to say that for sure.

He replied E5, and of course, I should have played the outside hane at F5, for which this result is to be expected.



This seems an ok result for W. But instead of that outside hane at F5, I made a bad mistake and played the inside hane at D5. Bad, bad, bad mistake! Very hasty. This was one of those moves where you click, stop, and stare in horror at the board. Where you get that sinking feeling of 'OMG, why the heck did I play that move???' in your stomach. This is the result I got. Bad for W. Sigh. I still can't believe I did that. Not like I didn't know it should be the outside hane. I end up with this sucky result (12 @ 7 )



I was very annoyed with myself. I had only one person to blame for this position, and that was me. I sighed and went on with the game, expecting to lose, but wanting to fight back and play good moves the rest of the game.

We played and we played, and we played. He got a huge moyo, I got a somewhat smaller moyo. I tried to grab points where I could and play actively. Still, I counted myself behind. Not by a huge amount anymore, but behind nonetheless. We were so far in the game already that I decided to just play it out, it seemed a shame to resign when there were only 20 or 30 moves left. I tried to catch up as much as I could in end game.

We played one of those manhood ko's, which I thought wasn't going to make much difference in the outcome. Still, this being an iron man tournament after all, I was committed to winning it. We found ko threat after ko threat, until he played away from the ko, even although he still had a ko threat left. I filled the ko, we both passed and I watched the counting. OMG!!! W+1.5 !!! That was quite a surprise. I clearly need to work on my counting. I tend to overestimate my opponent, while I under-estimate myself. Which doesn't impact games with a somewhat bigger margin, but in this case, it clearly did impact the result I counted.

I must have gained in yose, I will have to sit down and look at this game today. I was tempted to resign a few times during this game, but I am happy that I managed to get back into the game instead.

This morning, things didn't go so well. I managed to turn my stones into an earth worm which was just pathetically thrashing around. After a while I resigned in disgust, I had made too much of a mess. Yes, I could have lived, but with a horrible stone efficiency and I had really hurt two of my other groups. It was too painful to continue the game.

We are halfway there, ten games down, ten to go. Yes, this tournament is insanity, but I have to admit that I enjoy playing in it and trying to beat the challenge of playing as many games as I can. Not to mention the fact that I have played a nice variety of opponents.

Now I Remember...

Why I usually don't play day time games on line. Just too many distractions, I have managed to lose every single iron man game so far. On the upside, I did make it to all seven of the rounds. Of course, this means that I am now more committed to play as many games as I can, if only to remind myself that day time is for go studying, and night time is for playing :) I always joke I lose seven stones when all the kids are awake, and that seems pretty close to the truth.

I am sure each one of those games will have lessons to teach me, so I'll sit down later and calmly go through today's games. For now I just want to have some tea and study on my goban.

The ironic thing is that during my last game, I had 12 kids running around, a plugged toilet, and general chaos. And now that the game is over, almost all the kids are on a walk, back to their own home, asleep, or just doing something quietly. They have a good sense of timing ^^

I have been working on tesuji study, trying to do it in a more organized way. I want to improve both my speed and my reading depth. Lots of room for improvement.

Someone asked about the PDA I use. It's a Palm M105, which I picked up for maybe $40 on ebay last year. Even then, it was old technology already. It is perfect for my purpose though, I use it for go and geocaching. I use PilotGOne for my go studying, and am mostly happy with the program.

Ah, kids are back home with some animal bone, zombies and other assorted goodies. I'll go find a quiet corner and hide with my goban.

Temporary Insanity

Argh, I did it again! I wasn't going to sign up for the KGS Iron Man Tournament. Twenty games in five days, every 6 hours, is insanity. Last year, I managed to play all 20, so I feel that I have been there, done that and could try to behave more sane this time around.

It didn't work. I was strong till about 15 minutes before the tournament. When the announcement came up about the tournament starting in fifteen minutes, I was inevitably drawn to registering. And I can't even play all the games this week I think, I have some other commitments. But that won't keep me from trying anyway ^^

I played one game so far, against a 6k, I did mostly ok till he outread me in the end. Clearly shows I should work more on my tesuji problems. Was a fun game though. This morning, I was supposed to play a game, but my opponent never showed up. He had registered for both the open and the handicap division, and chose to play his handicap game. I had to wait for 45 mins for him to time out, what a pain. So I won on time, but I'd rather lost by playing a good game. Oh well, it is within the rules, but I wish KGS would make it impossible to enter both divisions at the same time.

Problems, problems, problems, problems

Have been doing tons of them, I guess that's an advantage of traveling. It turns out I brought way too many books though, I could easily stay another few weeks / months / years and be ok on the go books. Most of the time, I have been using my PDA, it is working out well. It is small and it is totally filled with go problems. My only regret is that I don't have a way to get new games / problem collections on there. But that is not really a big issue.

I have been playing a few games on KGS, but I was not really in a very focused mood, so they were not the best games I have ever played. It was nice as a distraction though. Gotta love the internet, where you can play go with your friends, wherever you are, whenever you want to.

Still don't feel very good at them, I just am way too slow, I will have to do more and more and more till my speed improves.

So much to study, so little time ^^

You Know The Days Are Getting Longer...

... when dawn is breaking, and the birds are singing when you finally log off from KGS.

This means that there are more hours in the day to study go, right?

I will be traveling next week, so I won't be playing much, will be a good time to focus on problems. I will be stuck in bus, train, airplane for way too much time. The good thing is that I can do go problems without any interruptions. I am putting together a collection to put on my PDA, and I will take some books too, just in case something happens to my PDA collection.

Yes, I do realize that normal people usually don't spend more time on packing their go stuff as opposed to things like clothes. Or shoes. I have friends who have to take just the right shoes everywhere. I guess they have weird priorities. Glad I am not them ^^

For your entertainment, Morsus just added this poem to his user info.

Nanny Ogg has got a knack
At writing blogs she is no hack
But on the board her moves were slack
'Til Minue the whip did crack
And got Nanny back on track
Now she's got a new attack!
Burma Shave

MGA Spring Tourney

Last Sunday, three players from our go club drove down to Somerville to play in the MGA Spring tourney. It was a good tournament and one of our club members even managed to play a perfect 4-0 and win the tourney.

I didn't do as well, played 1-3, but one of the losses was yet again due to time.

My first game was even, and I got behind, but managed to pull back in an endgame exchange (mutual destruction). This was when byo-yomi madness got to me. I panicked and made a few bad moves, so I resigned.

The second game was another even game, and this time I managed to make enough bad decisions to get myself behind without coming back in end game. Another resignation.

Third game was more of the same, but the fourth game was better. The first three games, I didn't really care about winning or losing, but with the fourth game I did.

You see, the fourth game was against an opponent who I had played before. The last time I played him, I had killed a huge group of him. He continued playing and complicating in the hope of making me run out of time, and he succeeded. Yes, it is within the rules, but the way he did it felt kind of iffy. Especially when he later told me proudly 'The only hope for winning was to make you run out of time' Whatever.

This made me very determined to win my game this time. This was my only handicap game this tournament, I got 3H. I started out badly with a mistake in the corner, I was so annoyed with myself. I had some more doubtful moves, but I managed to pull off a solid win, even after I got into byo yomi. The MGA has a lot friendlier byo yomi than last week though. This was canadian, 25 stones in 5 mins. Much easier than the 4 times 15 secs we had last week.

I enjoyed all my tournament games, and did ok. Not as well as I had wanted to do, but good enough for now. I met a fellow KGSer, snip, which was very sweet. Only that was worth driving up to Boston already. The games were a nice bonus :)

So much to study...

... so little time. The last few days, I have been swamped with real life, very annoying, less time to study go. Luckily, today is better, and I have played through the ear reddening game already, will do some go problems next.

Last Sunday, I went to the MGA tournament with two friends from club and met a bunch of other friends there. It was fun, even if my performance could have been better. I played 1-3 as 3k and one of the losses was yet again due to time. I want to dedicate a seperate post to the tourney, but today is reserved for studying and go club.



I have been replaying the first 180 moves of the ear reddening game and the Game of the Century every day. It is interesting to see that there seem to be new insights every day. I had never stayed that long with the same game, it's very different and it feels like the games are starting to become more part of me. I am sure it will be even more be ingrained once I have played them 10,000 times.

Today is a yucky and rainy day, perfect to stay indoors and study and play go. Off to do my problems!

PDA

With my new study method, I have rediscovered my PDA as a way to store reviews and problem collections to take with me on the road. I have a very old PDA, which was out-of-date already when I bought it last year. I did not want to spend much money on it.

I have used it for geocaching, and some for go, but I have to admit that the heavy users were my kids, who like playing the games on it. Until I started more goban studying this week, that is.

Yesterday, we had a homeschool meeting at a playground, so the kids were all playing, while the parents were socializing in the sun (Yay for homeschooling!). I had gotten my PDA from the car and was working through some tesuji problems. One of my friends was watching me and looking more and more puzzled.

Finally she asked 'What are you doing on that PDA?'
'Go problems'
'You are NOT playing GO on it, are you?????'
'Yup ^^'.
'I thought that was one heck of a long calendar you must be updating'...

Ha! Whoever would want to use a PDA for calendar and memo functions? Way more perfect to take sgf files to wherever I want to study go. Silly people.

New Study Method

This week, I have been trying out a new way of studying, recommended by my teacher minue. I have been playing all my lessons / reviews on a real goban instead of just on the computer. I had been doing some replaying pro games on goban and a tiny bit of studying, but not that much. My usual studying is either from books, or at the computer. Click, click, click, click. He told me how important it was to replay all those lesson sequences with my own hand.

I got out my beautiful new goban, and have been using it all week long, almost all day (well, in between life). It is interesting. Going through a lesson or review takes me a lot longer, but it feels like the learning is deeper. Maybe because all senses are involved? I don't know what it is, but I feel that I am retaining more.

Not to mention that it is an enjoyable activity to sit outdoors, at my picnic table, and play go. The feel of the stones, the sun in the sky, the daffodills blooming, the chickadees singing, the kids screaming... I am sold.

It does take a lot more time to study this way, but I believe it's worth it. I have been staring at my tournament games so many times now, that my mistakes have been etched into my permanent memory, as never to be made again.

I talked to a dan player at club about this, and he said that he always reviews all his games on a real goban, even his on line games. Interesting. I think it does beat the 'click click click' of computer reviews for sure.

You Know You Play Too Much Go...

... if your toddler's first colour words are 'black' and 'white'.

Well, at least she sorts the stones into the right bowls now. Who cares about any other colours anyway?

Did I ever mention that one of her first words was 'go book'? ^^

Western Massachusetts Spring Tournament

On Sunday, I made the drive down to Massachussets to play in their spring tournament. Last time I had a snow storm while driving down, this time it was just a gloomy and rainy day. Perfect for being nice and snugly indoors and playing go.

It was a pretty small tourney, about 16 people maybe? I decided to enter as 3k AGA again, I felt that I should be able to do that pretty easily. I ended up playing 2-2, so looks like 3k is fine for now. My first game, I gave 4.5 reverse komi to a 5k. The game went pretty well, apart from two BIG mistakes (all the other mistakes were not as big ^^) The first one was the upper right corner.



After playing out that corner, I decided to tenuki to the upper left (C15). Bad decision. My teacher Minue made that very clear to me in his review. "C15 is big, but just territorial move. A is surronding black "stones", putting pressure on it." Yes, he is totally right, and the lack of this move is one of my big regrets for this tournament. Not to mention how horrible things get for White, when Black cuts at C and then later plays at B. W gets very much sealed in, painfully so. I guess this was a good learning opportunity to remind myself about the urgency of move A. I mean, hane at the head of two, how hard can it be to see the urgency of that? I was kind of worried about the cut at C, but I could have actually read that out after the hane and seen that I was fine.

My second big mistake was a hasty invasion of the right, resulting in a group which was a pain to take care of. I still managed to win the game, even when the clock started yelling at me. I discovered that I still HATE talking clocks. And the byo yomi was 4 times 15s, which is not very generous. For the longest time I had 15s SD left, and I just closed my eyes and threw stones at the board, losing like 10 or 15 points in yose that way. Won by 1.5, phew.

My second game was giving 2H to a 5k, although I suspect that she was somewhat weaker. I won pretty easily by 33.5.

Time for pizza and on to round 3. This was the game I enjoyed most this tournament. I turned one of his groups into a nice dumpling, and had fun attacking another of his groups. Of course, I over-attacked and exploded, losing myself left and right, but at least I had fun before I resigned ^^.



I did make yet another huge mistake this game, the lack of move A in this position, I omitted it for the longest time. W finally had enough of it, and got move B... Painful. This position is still giving me nightmares. Why didn't I just play the darned move??? I have spent quite a lot of time looking at this game yesterday and today and this is the move (or lack thereof) I regret the most. Lots of other mistakes, but this one just seems worst.

My last game had a 30k moment early in the game. Still can't believe I did that, it has to do with misreading a ladder. It's a mistake I should not have been making. Oh well.

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'.