Two space low pincer after high approach to komoku

Last night, I played a quick game and met this pincer:



I don't see that one very often. After the game, I looked up the pincer to see what's up with it. Kogo's claimed "This is a rare move, undecided between the two intentions of putting pressure on White, or influencing the top left side." It went on to tell "White conitnues with A, B, C or D. White needs the ladder for B. The moves E, F, G and H are mistakes." Ah, that explains why playing E got me into trouble.

B is interesting. The ladder it needs shows up here:



Now the pincer stone is placed awkwardly. If it was placed at A, it would be a ladder breaker, but it's placed too low and Black ends up with a low position.



If B chooses this variation:



In contrast to the pincer stone being on A, White doesn't need the ladder for the triangled move, so pincer is badly positioned.

Interesting. Now I will hopefully do better next time I meet this pincer.

Hmmmm...

Today was listening to a KGS plus Guo Juan lecture. She said, to get strong, it is good to play many fast games and get killed many times. Just make strong shapes even if slow. You don't even need to attack, opponent will often just collapse on himself.

During the workshop, she told when she was training to become a pro, she often would play one hundred games a day, just very fast games. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and lots of them.

Interesting. I usually stay away from fast games because of the interruptions in my household. Wondering whether I should re-think that.

Midnight Madness

Everyone sane had long gone off to bed, but two of us decided to stay up and play a game. My big regret in this game was not invading his left side moyo when I could have. It was so obvious and easy when she reviewed it later. Still kicking myself over it.

This was the position.



As you see, W is quite open on the left and the correct way to play would be this.



Instead, I decided to make the invasion much harder on myself, and I played Black 1.



Now W has some ideal moves to convert the left from moyo into territory. Bad idea for Black. It is pretty easy to see that now it is way harder to invade the left.

Friday night lesson. "Do not help your opponent."

Back Home!

Back home from the workshop, I had a wonderful time. We arrived Friday night, and studied a pro game for a while. After dinner, she gave a lecture on that particular pro game, very interesting. When everyone went off to bed, I found myself an opponent and we played a game of midnight go. I got 3H and experimented with a new way of playing 3H games, I am still not sure whether I like it.

Saturday was playing, playing, playing and reviewing, reviewing, reviewing. I won one game and lost another one, mostly because I decided to suicide a 50 pts group in the center ("Oh, this group should be ok... Oh, it isn't...") Still lost by only 9pts, so not too bad considering the big blunder.





Sunday was more playing and reviewing. Again, lost one game and won one, so I am 2-2 for the weekend on my 'official' games. Played a bunch more 'just for fun' games.

Sunday night we played the traditional Survivor Go. The group gets divided into two teams and we play like rengo, taking turns making moves. When someone makes a bad move, he gets kicked out. This time one of the players managed to get himself kicked out twice... I got kicked out after a bunch of moves, I will post the game later.

Of course, I played even more go before going to bed, and then fell asleep while doing tsumego.

Monday morning, simul against all of us, 12 boards, and she won all of her games. I took 6H and did pretty well, it was a close game. In the end, she won by 4 points on the board. Not bad, considering she gave me 9H last time and I had lost very convincingly by late middle game back then.

My PDA acted up just now while downloading the game records, so they got lost for eternity, which I am not happy about. I am trying to recreate the game record from memory, but it turns out my memory isn't that good. Here is what I got. At least it gives some idea of the game, but I am very, very annoyed with my PDA just now.

Food for thought from this weekend (I made a list on my PDA and lost them, blech)

• When playing rengo, stronger player should follow the weaker player's lead, not the other way around. Interesting concept.
• One Chinese go teacher advises his students to just lose all their kos, giving a better overall result than fighting it and losing points that way. I have to think about that one.
• She stressed very much to play the open areas in fuseki, not make small local moves. And she had quite some opportunity this weekend to point out when yet another player didn't follow that advice.

The group was quite small, only 12 players. Strong field though, I was one of the three kyu players, all the others claimed dan rank. Players came from all over North America, farthest travel were from Georgia, Ottawa, and Oregon. It's a great group of people, we had so much fun.

Now back to real life and to studying the games I played.

Two Space High Approach to Komoku

Last night, I played a game against nugatory, where he approached my komoku three times with the two space high approach. He also played tengen as his first move (he was W) so it was a somewhat unconventional game.



The very first time someone played this approach against me, I wasn't sure what to play, and kind of automatically answered Black A, since that's what I often play with the low 2 space approach. Made sense that it should be the same, right? Wrong! I looked it up later, and found out that A is considered submissive. So much for that. Ishida shows B to E as corner replies for Black.

Ishida also goes into the history of the move "O16 is a light move. White is not concerned about corner influence but is satisfied if he can get Black to answer here, as this means preventing B from making a corner enclosure, while keeping sente. From B's point of view, there is nothing wrong with replying as W wants, while he can also try to make W answer him. This approach move was very popular in the 1910's and almost all variations have been completely explored."

In my game, I chose C, which is "a territory-oriented move which forestalls the W attachment in the corner. W finds it a little submissive to respond to this move, so nowadays B most often plays like this."

W did respond and we ended up with the standard joseki:



Today, I spent some time with Ishida on this approach, and saw I could have gone for the large avalanche, but wouldn't have been good in my game. I just hadn't even realized I had that option.

Interesting.

Atari Abuse

Over my last few games, I have had too many cases of atari abuse, so reiterating what I should know already, but obviously still screw up.

Best recent example was in a recent minue lesson. This position evolves from the R4 invasion into the Black moyo.


Black overplayed here and W wants to punish. One of my attempts at punishment was this:



I was feeling all smug and satisfied with myself, until minue pointed out to me that the White 3, Black 4 move trade is a big damage to W. Feh! I keep falling into the atari trap. And of course, it made total sense when he explained it.



minue622 [7d]: here, white has 2 options to play atari.
minue622 [7d]: each of them can help white , depending on B's later plays.
minue622 [7d]: if u decide ur atari too early, it means that u lost ur choice
minue622 [7d]: since u has fewer choice to exploit B's weakness,
minue622 [7d]: opponent can fight more easily
minue622 [7d]: so, we save our atari until we know which atari is really helpful for our contact fight

This would be normal followup if we skip the harmful atari



minue622 [7d]: now..
minue622 [7d]: black A is fine
minue622 [7d]: this is good for w



Here W would never ever play move A, so would have been bad if he had played this earlier in the sequence.
minue622 [7d]: Q5 is a nonsense
minue622 [7d]: in contact fight, save playing atari.

If we had saved playing atari, and Black plays this way...



We now have perfect followup play and know which atari is useful to us.



minue622 [7d]: black will capture Q3, and W breaks side

This all is so reasonable and logical, but I still too often mess it up in my play. And of course, I mess it up the other way too. When I rightfully should atari, I avoid it because I don't want to play a crude move. Some day, I'll figure it all out, right?

Me? Competitive? Not at all!

I was working my way through 'Get Strong at Tesuji', when I discovered that a friend was doing the same book and very close to where I was.

Naturally, we both decided we should get through this book faster than the other one. Best part about it was the taunting and gloating. Oh, and I guess it was good to do all those tesuji problems too ^^

Today, we both finished the book, and have started on 1001 Life-and-Death Problems. I am at problem nr 88, he is at problem nr 62, so I'd better get off the computer and maintain my lead.

Somehow it's more fun to make a competition out of those things.

Shodan Goal

When I started this blog, I had just entered the AGA shodan challenge, and was very, very rank obsessed. I was only 16k, and not a strong 16k at that, but felt it would be easy to reach shodan in a few months. I was wrong ^^

I remember being extremely focused on my KGS rank, since that seemed to be an external measuring-stick to measure my abilities. I soooo badly wanted that number to go down, I could almost taste it.

Rated games got more and more stressful for me, I often would even avoid playing just so that I wouldn't have to lose a rated game. It was turning into A Big Deal, and somehow that felt wrong. The stress definitely was influencing my game.

By that time, I had been on KGS long enough to get to know people and I played more free games than ranked games. I looked at myself, I looked at the stress the stupid ranking number was causing me, and I decided to turn off my rank. That felt good!

I realized that rank is only one way to measure go ability and not a perfect one at that. I was able to focus on improving and not on rank, and I could see progress anyway. It turns out I can measure progress quite well just in my play, I start beating stronger and stronger people, and the flow of my stones is a little less sucky.

A friend told me a few weeks ago 'You certainly fight much better. Before, I could just steam roll over you :) Now, you punish/fight back appropriately.' I can feel this in my games, I don't need a number to tell me that.

The funny thing is that reaching shodan isn't a big deal anymore either. Heck, I don't even care about it, like I did at the start. Sure, it will be nice to 'officially' reach it, but it feels like such a small and unimportant thing. What I really want is to get strong and to get a better flow to my stones. To find the right direction of play. To know when to attack, and when to draw back. To find beautiful and simple moves.

Over time, shodan has gotten a lot weaker in my perception. It used to be almost god-like, now it feels like almost nothing. Interesting how perceptions can change. Of course, it doesn't help to hear a 4d say (paraphrased) 'When I got to shodan, I realized it was just a certificate stating "Yes, you indeed still do suck at go."' And Tristan's blog post 'Since getting the sacred 1-Dan rank, my play has devolved to the point where I can only win because my opponent happens to commit suicide. I can only surmise that in those rare occasions, my moves must have sent my opponent spiralling into a state of utter horror and total loss of faith in human logic after witnessing a succession of blunders, bad shape, and opening sequences that mock joseki.'

I guess I could change the title of my blog, but I am kind of used to it now. So the blog might be called Go Shodan Challenge indefinitely, even after I pass that milestone. I'll have to think about it.

Pro Pro Handicap Go

I have been studying pro versus pro handicap games, and it is helping my handicap play. Both when I am playing White and when I am playing Black. Still making tons of mistakes, but at least I can see improvement.

Last week, I finally managed to beat minue at 9H (plus -30 neg komi ^^) and have been promoted to 8H. We'll see how that goes. I seem to be very good at being pounded into dogmeat.

All the handi games have helped me study more hoshi joseki, which is helping my even game too. Still know too little, but again, seeing some improvement is nice.

Today is a rainy day, so forced to stay home and study go, too bad ^^ I am replaying a bunch of pro games I have memorized over time, seeing how many have stuck in my memory and which ones need refreshing.

^

When to Submit?

Interesting quote from shygost review. 'I like that feeling you have about 'hating to submit' From 4d to 6d, I hated to submit. But then at 6d, I was like 'when it's reasonable, it's fine to submit. And you start learning this and when it's time to step back, you step back and you're happy.'

This was after I ignored an endgame move I shouldn't have ignored. I just hate to follow my opponent around in endgame and try to find 'See if I care!' and 'My sente is bigger than yours!' moves. This time it wasn't very successful, should just have replied to the darned move. Oh well ^^

At least it helps me to figure out which move I can ignore and which ones I can't. Lose and learn :)

Learn to Lean

Lately, I have more and more discovered the joys of leaning attacks. Sadly, most of those times it was in review. It is definitely something to work on. Here is a position from my last game with shygost.



The last move I played was A, which (in hindsight) clearly is what Guo juan in her audio lessons calls an empty move. The corner is still open and it doesn't quite attack the W group.

This is where the leaning attack comes in. Look at this alternate sequence.



Simple leaning attack and suddenly B can play a way more severe move against the W group. Too bad I didn't find this in the game. Maybe next time ^^

Group Tax

On Wednesday, I played a game against a friend, which turned out to be an exercise in itty-bitty black lives. Black ended up with seven groups on the board, most of them small. Five of them had a total of 17 points, not a terribly good stone efficiency.

Later, someone mentioned: "with 7 groups, if one isn't dead you need to do more tsumego." I have thought about that and decided that I didn't need to kill to win, so why bother going through the whole killing thing. Like I said before, killing always seems like such a commitment. I enjoyed seeing tiny group after tiny group find yet another miserable life.

Someone else said that Black suffered heavily from group tax, and I have to agree on that. It just takes a lot more stones to make seven groups live, than if you have less of them. Interesting. I knew the principle, but never had seen noticed it so clearly in one of my games.

New Study Organization

This is not as much a new study plan, since I am studying the same things, but a new way of organizing my studies. Yes, I have been doing problems every day and other studying, but somehow I still felt like I suffered from a lack of direction.

Last night, I talked to a friend about studying, and this morning I woke up, knowing just what to do. Thank you, Rob ^^.

I created a week's worth of study plan, showing exactly what I want to cover on a day, and providing me with space to check off and add remarks. ('Review some haengma, check; Review pro game, check; etc) It is very simple, but the visual helps me to see what I have done already and what I still should do on a single day. The same way it's easier to get things done when I make a list and cross off things.

We'll see how this works out, but somehow it feels right. I think I will be able to study more effectively with help of this study plan.

Rengo

With the new KGS beta has come the ability to play rengo with time settings. Very good interface, the days of five-hours rengo games are over!



This week, I played two games of rengo already. Very enjoyable! I like how the rengo records are kept in your user profile instead of at the rengobot's profile.

First rengo was fun, opponents decided to lose the game at move 4. Second rengo it took them longer to lose. One of our opponents did censor us though, which feels like it should be reported as a bug. I mean, how can you play proper rengo without trash talking?

Still studying handicap games, still being pounded into dogmeat by minue. My reading is very slowly improving, but still a long way to go. But more and more often I find myself reading sequences out almost automatically, which is new. Naturally, it is not often enough yet, but hey, I'll take what I can get ^^

Territorial or Cosmic Play?

For a while I tried playing more territorially oriented, but somehow I still end up with huge center moyos way too often. It just is a lot of fun, but it seems harder to play that way than just to grab territory everywhere. Sometimes I can pull it off, sometimes I can't. But always enjoyable to try.

I am going to try to play more territorial for a while, just will need to remember during my games. For example, had to decide between the two lines of play during this game.



And yes, I knew the prudent decision would have been to play at B and take the inside. I am sure you can guess what I did instead. Indeed, I played at A and took the outside. Peanut gallery commented:

Stormer [7k?]: nanny can never resist the joseki that give power.

Yes, will have to work on it, I am getting too predictable.

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.