Real Club Life Versus Virtual Club Life

Chiyodad brought up an interesting topic on his blog: Misconceptions about the decline of real-life Go clubs. This ties in with a friend telling me that his go club does NOT want a KGS room because 'Everyone will play on KGS and no one will come to club anymore.'

I will share my experience with our go club. A while ago, we decided to create a room on KGS as an extension of our club activities. At that time, we had only two members who were active on KGS, so we spent a lot of time staring at each other in our room. We got bored pretty fast, and started to invite friends. Slowly, the room started to fill up. Games were being played in the room. Pro games were being studied. Tsumego entertained us, and kept us out of trouble. New friendships were being formed.

During the same time, our real life club grew. When I started, there were only two members, so I boosted the membership by 50 % . A few months later, slowly more people started showing up at club meetings. I have seen the club grow from a tiny club, to a bigger and more active one. We used to play only one afternoon per week, now we play one day from 2pm to 8pm, and we often have Saturday afternoon study sessions. We still aren't a big club, but we now usually have six to ten players show up, which is a huge increase from two years ago.



Some of those new real life members have joined our KGS room, and others haven't. The KGS mostly has grown with 'virtual' members, we have a thriving room now, quite a difference from the two of us staring at each other two years ago :)

I have found the KGS room to be an enrichment to the real life club. I never felt the KGS room made people more likely to play online and less likely to come to club. Heck, we even have had some virtual members visit us in person, so it seems the other way around.

The virtual community we built in our KGS room is great, but none of us has contemplated not visiting the club anymore. There is a certain something to real life play with friends, which is very different from KGS play. The trash talking is easier, the body language can be read, the kibbitzers can join into the game talk. Not to mention that our game play often is being supported by excellent food.

I am thrilled with the way our KGS room has grown, and I am equally as thrilled with the way our real life go club has grown. It is beyond wonderful to have twice-weekly opportunity to get together with friends and play and study weiqi.

Happy Women's Day!

Happy Women's Day to all my female readers!

Today is International Women's Day. For the male readers, do something nice for the women in your life, maybe teach them how to play go ^^

We sure could use more women go players, I never have figured out why there are so many more males playing go than females. One of those mysteries of life. I am doing my share by teaching my four daughters how to play go, maybe one of them will take it seriously and increase the pool of women go players.

Calming the Mind

This time, the day before my tourney, I decided not to do my normal last-minute frantic preparation, but to focus on calmness instead. Any joseki I didn't know yet, didn't need to be learned that day. Any other knowledge I was still lacking, wouldn't magically happen that day.

Instead, I replayed some older memorized pro games, games like the ear-reddening game and the game of the century. Learning from the masters can never be bad, right?

I went to bed rather early (well, at least for me ^^) and just hoped for the best. The words I kept repeating to myself 'Focus, calmness, and good moves'

When we arrived at the tourney, I sat down and replayed a Lee Changho game, talking about it with someone who was watching. After that, had time to play through ear reddening game with friend, before my first game. I felt this replaying pro games really helped me to calm my mind, instead of going through the pre-tourney 'What if I lose ALL my games????' panic.

While playing, I spent quite some time just sitting, breathing, and looking at the board before I made my moves. I feel it helped my game. It did not totally get rid of the hasty moves, but I made a lot less of them. My first two games were very focused. My last game... Well, let's just say I still have room for improvement :p Looking back, I can clearly see that I was tired, oh well. Will do better next time.

Tourney Games

Wow, that was quite a fun day in Montreal. Had to get up early (4:30am) to be there in time for registration.

So many people, there were 54 players. Our New England tournaments tend to be 15 to 30 players, so this was quite a surprise. The tournament consisted of three slow games, one hour per player and 30 stones in 10 minutes byo yomi.

I entered as 1k, and did ok. First game was against 3k. He made some slow moves in the beginning, and I thought I would win easily now. Somehow got myself into messy fight anyway, but came out victorious. We both had been in byo yomi for a while when he resigned.

Second game was against 2k. I made some mistakes, but so did he, and I ended up killing too much. Another game won by resignation.

Last game was against 1k, and I messed up majorly. He overplayed, which I didn't punish correctly, and later I managed to lose my cutting stones in a frigging snapback. Still can't believe I missed the darned snapback, such a 30k moment! I was tired, but still doesn't feel like enough of an excuse, feh.

Still, was a fun day, and I feel mostly ok about my game. I got to meet some online friends, and got to play slow and thoughtful games. Lots of study material in them.

They could use some more female players there though, I was the ONLY female in the whole tournament. At least this time nobody asked 'Whose girlfriend are you?' , which has happened to me in Boston tournament once.

Montreal!

Woohoo, looks like I'll be playing in a Montreal go tournament tomorrow. A few days ago, a friend sent out an email about it. We pondered it a bit, talked to some other Vermont players, and and will drive up early in the morning.

There will be three slow games, one hour plus byo yomi, so I should be able to avoid hasty moves. Calmness, focus, and good moves. That will be my motto for the day. Wish me luck ^^.

Minue Quote

A good minue quote to remind myself how important it is to get out my board and actually play sequences on the board, instead of just clicking through them on the computer.

"Go is learned by your hands, not by your head. There is very weird myth of learning Go. ==> 'I watched tutor's review, and explanation, (private, or free or whatever,like kgs plus) and I understand what he explained . So I learned a LOT.'

It is completely wrong.

This is just like this ==> 'I am an aikido practioner, and today, in my dojo, I watched my master's demonstration, and I understand how his skills works. ok. I learned a lot!'

In fact, he has not learned anything yet. To learn it, he must practice the skills many times, by his body, not by his head. If not, he can not use the skill."

Go is learned by our hands, not by our head, just like aikido practice"

Wise words. So I am getting my goban out more often again to study, instead of sitting at the computer where I distract myself too much anyway.

Thank You, Phantom

Finally getting around to posting a pic of my new bumper sticker, bought at Phantom's Go Shop.



Of course, by now it is covered in New England winter crud and the van is snowed in, but hey, at least you can see how me and my kids have been kind of overdoing it on the bumper stickers ^^



Guess today will be more snow shoveling, and less go studying :p

Calmness

After reading a number of the questions in the Go Q&A room on Pandanet, I decided to do something different to prepare for my weekly teaching game with minue.



Instead of my usual mindless web surfing and hanging out on KGS, I shut down my computer and got out my goban. I played through Shusaku's ear reddening game and I played through most of the third Kisei final game. I took about 45 minutes to just sit calmly and put stones down, calming my mind, feeling the flow of the stones, and slowing down my breath.

It worked very well. I think go is just as much influenced by state of mind as it is by knowledge. Yes, I still lost, but I felt I was doing better than usual. I guess I'll make this a habit. Amazing how powerful state of mind can be.

Becky's Blog

For the last few weeks, I have been wanting to post about her blog. Finally getting around to it.

Last year, Becky and Walther went to study go in China and wrote an excellent blog about it. We all were sad to have it end when they came back into the States. I was very happy, when a few weeks later, Becky emailed me with a new blog addy. She moved to London, and is blogging about her London adventures and her continuing go journey.

Me being the unorganized person I am, I promptly lost the blog addy though. Was happy to rediscover it a few weeks ago and have been enjoying reading her posts and catching up with her. Have fun at Maths and Weiqi... with a British Accent.

Sorin's Blog

Just another go blog, but a very high quality one. Sorin has entered the world of go bloggers at http://www.361points.com/blog/

I really enjoyed his coverage of the 3rd Kisei game, lots of things to think about and study. Yesterday at go club, we spent a few hours going over it, just the kifu at first, later using Sorin's comments. Very interesting.

Check out the rest of his site too, it's excellent.

L+1 with two hanes

Giving the solution for this shape. Sorin found it when I posted this shape a few days ago.

Click here for sgf file if zgo doesn't work for you.

Update: The second solution I was showing was indeed not right. I fixed it in the sgf file. Thank you, Sorin!

Forty Two!

IGN Goama Newsletter sent out his 42nd issue today. I have been reading this since the start, and I always enjoy the interviews, the trick moves, the joseki explorations and the most exciting games of the week. It has a good coverage of international go news.

A few weeks ago, it gave a link to determine your strength at go.

I realized I had never posted about this newsletter, so time to rectify that and point people to it. Click here to subscribe to the newsletter, or click here, to find the archives.

Congrats to Goama on the 42nd issue of a wonderful go resource!

Go Cartoons

Someone sent me a link to Ko Fight Club, a fun series of go cartoons. (Thanks, Mike)



This Ings clock one really spoke to me, I sooooooooooooooo hate talking clocks!!! I have lost more than one game by losing focus because of the darned clock yelling at me ^^

The link has tons more cartoons, go and enjoy.

The Joys of Living

I played this game, in which I did reasonably well, till I forgot to live. Looking back, it think I had tagged that group as 'alive' when it was, and failed to update when it wasn't. Feh! Stupid mistake!

The game was reviewed by sendol.




















Click here for the sgf file if the applet doesn't work for you.

Only thing I can blame is focus. Will have to work on that.

MANY thanks to chiyodad, who helped me to get ZGo, this sgf replaying applet to work on my blog.

Especially for Snip

Showing that my priorities lay with studying go, not with folding clean laundry.
Showing that the baskets full of clean laundry actually HELP my studying by making a perfect surface to put up my goban.



And showing what happens if I step out of the room for five minutes.



I forgot to take a picture five minutes later when goban, toddler, go stones and laundry all ended up on the floor...

Persistence and Determination

Those words have been playing in my head a lot lately. I have been thinking about how to get stronger at go and how to keep on studying and improving.

Let's trackback to when I was a little girl. My father worked as a manager, and his company always seemed to be very big into using motivational quotes. Once in a while, he would bring some home and give a lecture on it to us kids, which was in a way always interesting.

One of those times, he brought home a stenciled paper about persistence and determination.



Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.

Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.

Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.



Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

(Calvin Coolidge)



He sat me down and we talked about it. He explained to me the meaning of the word omnipotent. He told me the story of how he started out repairing type writers at a small company and somehow made his way up, during the days of the first computers, to a management position at IBM. He gave me a lot of examples where persistence and determination were very important.

For some reason, this has been a quote which has guided my life since then. I recently realized that the same is true in go. Yes, you can have talent, but you still need hard work and a sense of direction. There have been go players who were said not to have much talent, but persistence and determination made them into top players anyway.

It is interesting how something I learned as a little girl is still making a major impact on me. It is what keeps me doing go problems day after day. It is what makes me take a deep breath and review a game seriously, even if I feel like never looking at it again because of the stupid mistakes. It is what makes me sit down to seriously study a joseki, after I screw it up yet again.

My father has passed away, but his teachings still influence me. To show my persistence and determination, I'd better go and study some games now, instead of just blogging about it ^^

L Groups Revisited

Have been studying L groups and variations again. (L+1, L+2, hanes, etc) Learned some new things and re-learned some things I had known before, but which I still sometimes messed up.



This one still is my favorite shape, the resulting double ko is uber cool.

Interesting Question and Answers Series

A friend forwarded those questions and answers to me, very interesting. It's a serie on pandanet, in which female professions answer questions about go. Some examples:

• Hello, Ms. Kobayashi. When there’s a game that you absolutely want to win, you tense up. My question is: what do top professionals, including yourself, do to calm yourselves. If there’s any special technique, please tell me.
  
  
• I’ve been playing go for 50 years. My level at present on PandaNet is 3-dan, but I find myself unable to improve. I have ups and downs and about once every month I find myself losing ten games in a row, so I get demoted. Please tell me what one should do at times like this.
  
  
• I’ve been playing on PandaNet recently, and I’m really convinced that go is an artistic mind sport. The creative and intuitive side of go is what creates your go style and your individuality as a player. I’m convinced that go is an art.
  I’ve heard that you are knowledgeable about pottery. Do you believe that it has something in common with the artistic side of go? Please tell me if pottery has been a plus for you in your go playing.
  
  
• I’m a beginner who became a subscriber to PandaNet three months ago. Since it’s so easy to play on the Net, I sometimes play more than ten games a day, but if I play too much, my go gets careless and sloppy. Do you think it’s important to play a lot of games to get better? Which is the shortcut for a beginner: to play only games in which you really concentrate hard or to play as many games as you can? I would be grateful for your opinion.
  
  
• Hello, Ms. Nakajima. On weekdays I play on PandaNet, at weekends I go to go clubs, and on Sunday I watch the NHK games. I really enjoy go, but as I grow older my memory gets worse, and I feel that my go has declined. I’m worried that if things go on like this I won’t be able to play go anymore. Do you have any advice for older players like myself as to what to do on a daily basis? I would be grateful for any help you can give me.
  
  
• Hello. At present I play as a 1-kyu. My games are rarely counted – usually either my opponent or I resign. I myself realize that I have a tendency to make overplays, but I can’t do anything about this when I’m actually playing. I really want to play long games. Do you have any advice for me?
  
  
• When my opponent plays a good move during a game, I get upset and go to pieces. I want to change this bad habit, but am having no success. How can one cope with this kind of situation?
  
  
• I am 63 years old. I play as a 5-dan at go clubs. When I joined PandaNet, I hoped that I would get a little stronger, but it’s just not turning out that way. When I review my games later, I find I’m playing really poor moves. If I noticed during the game, I’d be a stone stronger. Is there any way to ensure that one plays one’s best? And is there any way to cut out one’s outright blunders?

Good questions and answers, giving food for thought. There is lots more, here is the top page. Enjoy!

Go Club

Today, we had study session, just sharing some pictures. I was late, so didn't participate as much in the studying. But I played one game and later, we played rengo. Rengo is always interesting, it was a very active game.

This is the building in which we have our regular go club meetings:



Studying joseki:



Rengo:





Our kibbitzers:



After club, illustrating why it always takes us at least half an hour to actually leave the building.

2006 in Numbers

Just like last year, I used the kgs stats page for this. It is not totally correct though, since it doesn't include teaching games. This means that about forty of my minue games must be missing and any other teaching games I played. But at least it gives some idea of how many games I played and how I did. Also, it doesn't seem to make a distinction between 19x19 and other sizes. But still interesting to see the statistics.

Player 'nannyogg'. All games.

From 2006-01-01 to 2006-12-31 (365 days).

Number of games played: 285
Number of unfinished games: 0
Number of forfeited games: 0

Number of wins: 95
Number of losses: 190
Average number of games per day: 0.78
Win ratio: 33.33 %

Number of games played as white: 122 (win ratio: 43.44 %)
Number of games played as black: 163 (win ratio: 25.77 %)

Number of different opponents: 84

Random remarks:

1. I played less games than I expected, even if you take into account the inaccuracies in this counting. Last year, I played 650, this year is about half of that.
   
2. Looks like average is less than a game per day, which means that they must be more serious than when I played more of them, right?
   
3. Most frequently played people in non-teaching games: shygost, Stormer, KittyKat (= my daughter Kate ^^), FlameBlade, and wutu.
   
4. Less different opponents than last year, showing I play friends more often than 'strangers'. I have made a lot of go friends on KGS. I guess I still play more strangers on my mess-up accounts. Not that I have played them often after I gave up insane blitz.
   
5. Funny thing is that last year, I thought I should play more (when I played almost two games every day. This year, I think my game frequency is just fine. My games have gotten more focused.
   

Haengma, tesuji, and studying pro games have been most helpful to me in my studying this year. They have helped me gain a bunch of stones. Haengma Tutorial for Beginners by Minue is a great introduction page. I recommend you read through it, even if you are not a beginner.

Time to start studying for the day, maybe I should have kept statistics of studying time. Seems too much work to keep track of it, though.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2007 to all my blog readers. May sente be with you, and may your year be filled with many magnificent tesujis. May all your cuts work, and may all your joseki be well-chosen.



I don't make resolutions for the new year, but of course, one of my ongoing goals is to get stronger. So I'll just continue to study and play my games.

Intensity of Study

Was going over some old minue lessons today and found this interesting quote.

"When I was a kyu, I studied this basic joseki variations over and over again (maybe 10~15 times). Other joseki? I just ignored. This applies to other Go study topic. Talking about L&D, it's good to solve new problems. Much better than doing nothing. But, it's even better to solve again several times which we solved in past. So, in summary, for efficiency of Go study, we have to simplfy our study span, and focus on them. I dont mean, u should stop reviews with ur Go friends and many other enjoyable Go studies. What i mean is.. we have to give a priority to some specifid Go study plan, and focus on them. About all other Go study, we just regard as "fun"

So, when we can finish some specific topic? --> when we can find Correct responses on all expected opp's moves without any difficulty, but instantly. All these variations.. So, quantity is not so important. Quality (or intensity) matters more. For example, to study about this just one basic hoshi joseki is much better than to study 100 basic hoshi josekis superficially (for improving)"

I have been doing that over the last few months, and I think it is helping. It took me a while to figure out which study plan works for me, and to get rid of the nasty blitz habit (which was taking away from study time). I used to think that I had to know 'all those joseki' and was feeling kind of overwhelmed. Now I just choose one basic joseki / variation which I study more deeply for a while, and don't worry about the other 29,999 I am not studying right then.

The interesting thing is that the shapes I am studying, suddenly start coming up in other situations too, and my study proves to be useful outside this one joseki variation.

A friend just studied l-groups very deeply and it has definitely helped his game too. They are on my long list of 'subjects to study soon'.

Just finished the first semeai book of the Korean Problem Academy books. All pretty easy, but good reading practice. Today, I'll start on the second one. That is, after I finish my joseki study ^^.

Studying

Vincent asked to share more about my studying, so here goes.

I would like to say that I am a very organized person, and have a wonderful study plan, but I have to admit I am not. Just like in playing, focus and discipline are the main issues in my studying. I will study for a bit, check some email, study a few minutes, surf some links, study a bit, make some tea, remember that I was studying, and so on. I often end up not studying as much as I wanted.

As a very concrete example, just played through some recently studied pro games and now am writing this blog entry. Could have played through more games instead. It is something I'll need to work on, have to find what works for me.

But even with all the distractions (including the seven handicap stones I have running around ^^), I still get quite a lot of studying in most days. I always start with replaying some pro games, usually a few recently memorized ones, and I will take one older one and look at it again. Yesterday, I looked at the Yuzo - Shusaku game. I often see new things in old games when I look at them again a few weeks / months after studying.

I do go problems every day, a lot of easier ones, and usually some harder ones (but don't always get to the harder ones). My goal used to be 50 a day, but I don't really keep track anymore. I think I do at least 20 on a typical day, and often still reach 50 or more. It depends on how much car I spend in the car, waiting for my kids. Those problems are easy ones though, working through volume 1 of the semeai book of the Korean Problem Academy now, and whatever else I have laying around.

I have wondered whether it would be better to do a lot of easy problems, or a few harder problems when studying. I have read conflicting opinions on this. Last week, I asked sendol about this, and he said both are good.

I go through game reviews and recent lessons, to see again where I went wrong and where I consistently missed a big move. (still ^^) I also am slowly working my way through the lectures on the audiogolessons web site, it's a wonderful resource.

I have no idea how much time I would spend on an average day, since my study time is interrupted often by real life. But I hope this gives some idea of the things I study. I enjoy all of those, replaying pro games has a meditative aspect to it. And there is a thrill when I finally find the correct answer to a more difficult problem.

Yuzo - Shusaku

Today, I spent some time studying game eight from the Yuzo - Shusaku sanjubango, played on March 7th, 1853. I finally got the book Invincible, and realized this game must be in it. I have studied it before, and it was interesting to get new insights from reading the commentary in Invincible. It also gave me some more historical background on this sanbujango (30 games match)



From Invincible "Shusaku's greatest achievement was his flawless record in the castle games, but the real climax of his career was the sanjubango with Ota Yuzo in 1853. Aged 23, Shusaku was approaching his peak; he had already scored eight of those wins in the castle games and had also bested all the top players of the day in individual encounters. The only player to hold his own against Shusaku was Ota Yuzo, 22 years his senior."

"The sanjubango between Yuzo and Shusaku is the most famous bango of the classical period and it represents a fitting climax to Edo period go."

Game eight of this series always has been one of my favorite games, it is fascinating to see how Black relentlessly attacks White. This three-way splitting attack is bloody awesome:



This is a great game to study and enjoy. It is the shortest of the series, but one of the most spectacular ones.

Playing Less

And studying more. I have been annoyed by my lack of reading ability, so dived into volume one of the Korean Problem Academy semeai book. Easy problems, but I hope doing lots of them will help me increase my reading power.

Also been doing more basic reading problems and l/d problems, and focusing more on pro games. I haven't played blitz in ages, which frees up time for other things. I have been playing less, but the games I played were more serious. Which can only be a good thing, right?

Tournament Tales III: The Games

My first game was againt a 1k. We both made mistakes, but I was leading till late yose when I missed some aji and lost too many points. End result 'W + 1.5' (This was a no komi game). I blame the stupid talking clocks, I have a hard time focusing once they start yelling at me. But it was a good game to study, so I didn't care.

The second game was against a shodan. I got 2H and did ok, he ended up resigning.

Last game was against a 2d. This was a 3H game. My opening was ok, but I totally screwed up the middle game fighting. Very very badly. I resigned.

I feel I played three good games, with mistakes, but also with some good moves. My time management is getting better, but the byo yomi still gets to me. I have considered playing faster, but I realized it was more important to fix my go first, and work on time management later. Time issues seem easier to fix. Tournament experience will help with it.

I enjoyed all the games and actually felt very calm while playing, so I guess some of my preparation did pay off. I also felt that watching the 'Winning a Won Game' lecture was very helpful, even if I ended up losing my won game :) I played reasonable games, with lots of study material in them. What really helped me mentally, was playing through pro games just before the tourney. It was very calming.

I kept my focus well during the games, so that was good. I now realize that my mental preparation was way more important than my go preparation. I wasn't going to increase much of my go skills in just a few days, but finding calmness and focus was a big help for accessing my existing go skills.

After the game, four of us went out for a nice dinner to rehash the day's games and happenings. Great day, filled with go and fun. Long drive back home, but it was worth it. I left the house at 7am , and came back after 11pm. Would do it again in a heartbeat. Just wish we had more tournaments in New England.

Tournament Tales II: Early Morning

When you live in the middle of nowhere, you can not just take the bus or metro to a go tournament. No, you need to drive through snow covered mountains for hours, and hours. Which also means you have to get up at some ungodly hour to arrive there in time.

We had it all set up perfectly. I left my house at 7am, to pick up a friend and we would meet two other friends at 8:45am in Vermont to car pool from there. I arrived at my friend's house and waited for him, but nothing happened. I rang the bell, knocked the door, nothing happened. Time was passing.

Decided to check his fraternity to see whether he was there, but no luck. Back to his house, where I finally managed to wake up his room mate who woke up my friend. Time was passing.

By now it was so much past the original time to meet, that we knew we would have to drive to the tournament ourselves. So we bought a map of Vermont, and desperately called around to people, finding out that Vermont doesn't have much cell phone reception. Eventually managed to reach the Tournament Director, to tell him that we were late, but would be there in time for the second round.

We relaxed and talked about go, and arrived there while the first round was still going on, all was good.



I found that I still was stressed though, so decided to play through some memorized games to calm myself. I started with the ear reddening game, and managed to screw up the taisha like four times before I got it right. Not a good sign. I guess I wasn't as calm as I had envisioned myself.

Moved on to Go Seigen's Game of the Century, and it didn't take long before my friend joined me and he played W, I played B. We were fuzzy on a few details, but managed most of it. After playing through most of it once, went through it again, this time straightening out the details we missed before. I found that playing out a pro game on a board really helped to ground me and get me ready for my games.

Almost time for the second round, the pairings were being decided. I had entered as a 2k, and my first game was against a 1k. Good time to measure whether the 2k rank was a reasonable guess.

Tournament Tales I: The Preparation

So much to tell about the tourney. It was a wonderful day. I will have to do it in installments, as to also get some studying in. Especially for Ash, I'll start with how I prepared for this tourney.

First step was my familiar pre-tourney 'I will lose all my games!' stress-out. I talked about this with a friend and he helpfully told me that he still HATES playing tournament games (after soooo many years of playing them). He did tell me that it would help to play in a lot of tournaments, so that will be one of the steps of my recovery program :) I wallowed in my negative state of self-pity, till Flameblade slapped me out of it and told me to get over it already (paraphrased). He gave me helpful tips, and I replaced my whining with visions of Calmness, Focus, and Good Moves. Not to say that the fear of losing all my games was totally gone, but it was just a tiny bit of self doubt instead of an almost all-consuming worry.



I wanted to do extra tsumego before the tourney, but ended up doing my normal amount. I avoided 'non-thinking' games on mess-up accounts, only played serious games for the days leading up to the tourney. I spent a lot of time replaying pro games, feeling that the spirit of those games would help me in my tournament.

I did some joseki review, but not much. I figured that if a particular joseki wasn't in my head by now, would be hard to study it in a hurry just to not use it in the tournament anyway.

At go club, we played a serious simul instead of normal relaxed club games, which also helped me to get into the tournament mood. The night before the tourney, I watched one of Guo Juan's 'How to Win a Won Game' lectures, and attended the shygost lecture. I even went to bed before midnight!

Stay tuned for Episode II.

Tourney Training

I am in my normal pre-tourney 'I can't play go, I will lose all my games, and this will prove how worthless I am!' phase. Gotta love that pre-tourney stress I can talk myself into.



Last night, I whined about it to a good KGS friend, and told her I wasn't too worried about playing stronger players, but I was wondering about my handicap giving skills. She said 'Why don't you try giving me handi?', so we played at 8H. I wasn't too impressed with my handi skills but managed to kill a big group. Still a close game though. At least it made me feel better about giving handi.



Today at go club, we worked on tourney training also. Our 4d gave a simul, playing five people (well, one was Kate on 9x9 :). I took 4H and had a reasonable game. I got all four corners and reduced enough of his huge center to win. Still made too many mistakes though. Will have to work on that :)



Drove home in our first snow storm, it'd better not snow on Saturday! The tourney is at the other side of Vermont, will have to cross the Green Mountains.



Before the simul, Kate played her 2 years-old sister Sylvia. Sylvia loves playing with Kate, even has learned how to hold the stones correctly. And Kate enjoys teaching Sylvia. It will be a while before she gets the game, but they are having fun together.



They played seriously for a while, but then it evolved into this ^^

The Most Complicated Joseki of All

Talking about the large avalanche. Usually when people start the avalanche, I take the easy way out, but last week I decided differently. Figured the only way to learn to play it is by actually experimenting with it and get killed many times over :)

I played this game at club in which W started an avalanche pattern:



Usually I take the easiest way out and play like this:



Seems too good for W on this board though. According to sendol, the correct way to play would have been this way:



This looks a lot better for B. I hadn't seen that solution though, so decided to take a deep breath and start the large avalanche. Worst thing I could do was screw it up, right?

It wasn't too bad, just didn't punish when W played wrong order of moves. At least thanks to sendol, I now know the proper punishment :) Of course, 'not too bad' was talking about locally, globally the result feels good for W.



But at this point, I didn't care, was just happy to actually have played the large avalanche in a game and not mess it up too badly. The rest of the game was very interesting, but I missed fatal chances and ended up getting myself killed. Oh well, I enjoyed it anyway. And I learned quite a lot, will have to spend more time studying this. So much to study, so little time ^^

Yilun Yang's Workshop Lectures, Volume 2

My leg has been acting up, so I figured that would be a good opportunity to lay down and read volume 2 of Yang's Workshop Lectures. I had been looking forward to reading this volume, and yet again, I did not get disappointed. I always wanted to attend one of the Yang workshops, but couldn't pull it off logistically, and this seems like it's the next best thing.

The first lecture is on How to Invade. It gives rules of when invading is possible, and shows how to decide where to invade and how to follow up. In the process of invading, it also gives a lot of information on life and death. Yang has a multi step process on how to live and how to kill. I had heard about his killing process, but it was nice to see the rules on paper and explained more. It made more sense with the examples he gave as opposed to when I just heard the steps listed.

Lecture nr 2 was about Choosing the Right Pincer. This is similar to one of the chapters in his 'Fundamental Principles of Go'. This lecture seemed to go deeper (I don't have the fundamental book with me to compare, this is just from memory). He also talks about how to think and find the right move when your opponent plays a non-standard reply to the pincer. Interesting stuff and it explained why I got a bad result in a few recent games. It is nice to see so many things which are immediately applicable in one's games.



The third lecture is about side extensions in the opening. This lecture gave me a lot of new information. New tidbits to ponder about the opening. Over time, I have spent so many hours staring at board positions, trying to figure out what would be the best extension in that situation. This book will help me make better choices. This chapter, like all the others, is full of practical examples.

Fourth lecture is 'Playing a Territorial Game'. I know I am raving, but I am just amazed at the amount of information packed in a relatively small book. I have played territorial games where my opponent ended up with the whole center and I wasn't able to destroy it. This book gives me new tools and new ways to play territorial games, I can't wait to experiment with it.

Last lecture is the opposite subject with 'Playing a Moyo Game'. It gives a lot of guidelines for moyo games, how to play, how not to play. It shows a generous number of examples of how to deal with invasions in your moyo, and about correct and wrong direction of play. In both of these chapters, he stresses how important it is to be consistent, and not to switch back and forth between different styles of play. A good lesson to learn.

This book has so much information, it will take me a while to study and digest it all. I feel I only touched the tip of the knowledge in here during my first reading. It warrants sitting down with a goban and playing out the different variations. Over and over. I will take the book to go club with me today, will be good to complement our study session.

One Month of Go

Kate has played for about a month now and seems to be getting more addicted. I can only approve. Yesterday was the first time she could come to go club again after I broke my leg. She was very happy about it. 'It feels so good, it feels like going to a friend's house!' Glad she likes the atmosphere at club.



She has been playing some games on KGS. Today, I looked through them and she is up to 39 of them now. Most of those were 9x9 though, she is still hesitant to play 19x19. She does play 19x19 on her own goban but it seems scary to her on KGS. I told her she could try playing a 37x37 game and then 19x19 would seem small, but she didn't fall for it.

She is improving fast, I love watching her figuring out things and starting to read more. She still leaves cuts, but more and more she is looking at them and actually reading out before protecting. Showing me 'See, if he plays here, I can play here, and he will play there, and I will play here, and he will be dead'. Fascinating process.

Interesting

You know when you are staring at a problem, reading and reading and not finding the right answer? Lately, I just stop reading and skip it, coming back to it the next day. And surprisingly enough, the answer will suddenly be there and totally obvious. Amazing how the human mind works.

After a short stint of getting too addicted, I again have totally given up on blitz games now. (Last time a friend was my downfall, but not going to happen again) I do not play unless I know I can actually think and have some time. If not, I do problems or any other studying. Or hang out on KGS and be social ^^.

Both sendol and minue told me blitz was not good for me, I am trusting their judgement, even if the blitz period was fun while it lasted. Some day I'll play a lot of blitz again, but first need to get myself strong.

There is a Dec 9th tournament coming up in Vermont, will have to decide at what level to enter. Ranks are such a pain, I'd rather just play and not think about rank at all.

Yilun Yang's Workshop Lectures

Just read the new Yilun Yang book, his Workshop Lectures, Volume 1. I had read his Fundamental Principles of Go before, and was very impressed with that one. So I was looking forward to seeing his workshop lectures.

Last night, I took this book up with me as bedtime reading. It didn't take me long to get totally caught in the book, but sadly I fell asleep. First thing this morning, before even taking a shower or eating breakfast, I picked up the book again and read the rest of it. Best word to describe it: 'Wow!'

It is divided in three chapters. The first one talks about 'When to tenuki in the opening'. It gives excellent general guidelines for when you can tenuki and when you cannot. It did clear up a bunch of things for me, some of which I kind of knew but never saw verbalized so well, some which gave new and exciting insights. I will have to read it a few more times to really internalize all the information he is giving in a very concise manner.

The second one is about 'Choosing the direction of attack'. Again, very eye-opening, very enlightening, very clear. I think this is the chapter I am most excited about. I do like attacking, but I don't always think clearly about best direction or best way. This will help me better to figure out direction of play during attacking. He gives a lot of examples, will have to sit down with my goban and play them out to get a better feel for this all.

The third and final chapter talks about 'Playing complicated joseki'. He states that memorizing sequences is not important, what is important is to know the rules for contact fighting and how to apply them in messy situations. In that case, if your opponent plays a non-joseki move, you won't be lost, but you will have tools to deal with it. He uses the taisha as an example. He shows a typical sequence and what to do when opponent diverges from it. How to think to find the best play. This is another chapter I will have to study more closely.

I can only give this book a big thumbs-up, it is excellently written and full of valuable information. I also bought his Workshop Lectures, Volume 2, and very much looking forward to reading that one. But I'd better first have breakfast and a shower ^^

Using Thickness

Episode 42 in the saga 'Things I should know, but still mess up'. It's amazing how hard it can be to actually use the knowledge I have in the right way. Today's episode is about thickness, how to use it , how not to use it. My last teaching game against minue was a perfect example of how not to use it.

This was the position:



W just played the marked stone. Pretty clearcut, B has lots of thickness and needs to use it. My kyu mind immediately came to the conclusion that I should use this thickness for fighting, and I'd better split the two W stones and get them into trouble. I sometimes get carried away by my natural aggression.



I totally and utterly missed the bigger picture of driving W towards my wall. The obvious direction of play. The only direction of play.



minue622 [7d?]: so here,
minue622 [7d?]: A is better, (to drive white toward wall)
minue622 [7d?]: also, A is (pincer + corner enclosure)
minue622 [7d?]: very efficient move

This is one of the possible continuations.



Black allows White to break the bottom area, so that she can build on the left.

The game continuation was a lot uglier:



Black got a few points of overconcentrated territory and was not happy. Let's see again what went wrong.



minue622 [7d?]: in this game,
minue622 [7d?]: main focus is B's left side,
minue622 [7d?]: not b's bottom right territory
minue622 [7d?]: this stone is strong?
minue622 [7d?]: i mean, these black wall is thick?
NannyOgg [-]: yes, it seems very obvious now
NannyOgg [-]: i was just thinking SPLIT him , and not thinking whole board
minue622 [7d?]: fundamental reason is that u have this wrong "fixed concept"
minue622 [7d?]: ==>
minue622 [7d?]: i spent alot of stones to make wall,
minue622 [7d?]: so, i have to defend this area as my territory always
minue622 [7d?]: correct way of thinking is --> I spent many stones to make influence. and i can use these wall Either to make my territory efficiently , but, depending on situation, I can use them in a different way, (to attack white ,driving it toward my wall)

Yes, all sounds perfectly reasonable, now I just have to make sure to use it correctly in my games. Taking this as today's main lesson to ponder.

Even a Moron...

Remember the famous Kageyama quote 'Even a moron connects against a peep.'?

Last night, I was playing a game where I decided to go creative. Should just have played the simple connection. But nope, I wondered 'What happens if I play there instead?' I'll tell you what happened. I died. A totally miserable and unnecessary death. Painful. Good reminder to go back to basics.

Minue: 'Basics moves are "Basic" becuz they are usually best or better (most of time) than the other moves in Go. Basics doesn't mean something "low level" , but "Usually pro-ish move". Those moves are the first things to consider. We reject basic moves, when we have "Strong reasons" for it.'

In hindsight, naturally my reasons cannot be considered strong, even if they seemed like a good idea at the time. Yet another episode of 'Die and learn!'

Off to go club now, study session time! During our Thursday meetings we play, on our Saturday meetings we focus on studying.

Back To Studying

OK, I spent enough time wallowing in self pity. Today, I actually went back to serious studying, or at least, as much as I could with constant kids interruptions. First studied a bunch of positions from Cho Chikun's Life and Death Dictionary to cover some l/d. The rest of the day, I spent reviewing pro games, mostly to get the bad effects of the mindless blitz out of my head. No idea whether it works that way, but I enjoyed going through them.

The best thing, I didn't play any mindless blitz. Will log on to KGS now and might play a game, but will try to actually think while playing. Unlike last night, when my focus was non-existing, even in my slow game. Heck, I might even do more go problems, now that I am back into studying.

Didn't use any painkillers again today, which sure does help. I just ignore the pain now, seems effective enough :)

Stupid Leg

I am still majorly annoyed by the way the pain killers and visitors interfered with my go playing last week. Today, I didn't take any pain killers, but my go still sucked. Solved it by playing mindless blitz games, not a good habit.

Tomorrow, will have to study for real. A friend told me reassuringly: 'Soon all your friends will stop visiting and the pain will go down and then you can study tons of Go and get STRONG!!'
Looking forward to it!

Kate's Very Own Goban

A go friend had this set, and gave it to Kate. It has the required 'tiny stones'.



She is thrilled.

This week, friends have been driving me to go club, since I haven't dared climbing into my monster van yet. Having only one usable leg is a pain. I also have discovered that go study isn't that effective if you use pain killers and get lots of visitors ^^. This weekend, I finally have been getting in some real games. I will have to sit with my leg elevated for weeks more, so I hope to get more go study in over the next weeks.

Go...

I was looking for a goban with tiny stones for Kate, and came across this editorial quote about the game 'Go is probably one of the world's most intimidating games, one which conjures up images of players gleefully setting out for blood as they devise militaristic board moves.'

Interesting way of putting it :)

More Shodan Musings

Yesterday, I talked to a friend about similarities between go and martial arts. He had an interesting observation. I told him 'I am getting closer to the once coveted shodan. Although now that I am getting close, shodan seems pretty weak and no big deal anymore, i still have soooooooooooooooo much to learn!. He replied: 'WOW That's really awesome. And yes that's exactly how i feel about the shodan issue in budo too. In Japan no-one cares about shodan....all it means is that you're actually a student of whatever art you study rather than just someone checking it out. People only say things like "i have sandan" or "I have godan". If they're only shodan they say that they are "studying jujitsu" and if they're under shodan they don't talk about it. Pretty different from here where everyone just quits after shodan.'



Looking at the AGA ranking histogram, many people seem to quit after reaching shodan in go too. Is it because they reached the goal they set themselves? Do they lose interest and quit go? Or they stop studying, or maybe the stones are so far apart at that level that many people don't want to go through all the work to get stronger? The thread about 'Shodan... and then?' on godiscussions.com has been interesting to read. I like the way Chiyodad expressed himself: 'Shodan is nothing more than a beacon to guide the first leg of your journey. After you get there, you find a farther destination and carry on. You had better be enjoying the trip because I suspect that every destination will really turn out to be nothing more than a road-sign that says "You are here". '

Lots of Study Time

Good news and bad news. The good news is that I will have lots of time to sit around and study go. The bad news is that I broke my leg ^^

It's not a bad break, mostly a big annoyance. I have a splint and crutches now, and am supposed to sit around and rest a lot, keeping it elevated. Perfect opportunity to get more studying in then I usually can do.

Will have to spend some time making up good stories on how I broke my leg, since I am sure lots of people will ask. Would be nice to have some variety :) Last night on the server:

NannyOgg: I broke my leg!
friend: How did you manage to do that?
NannyOgg: Well, I was hiking through the woods, and met this bear...
NannyOgg: But you should see what he looked like after this!
friend: Really?
NannyOgg: No, but it does make for a pretty good story, doesn't it?
friend: Yes, it sure does.

The $2.41 9x9 Go Set

Ash asked about the 9x9 board I am using for Kate, and I thought the answer would be useful enough to spend a post, instead of burying it in the comments.

A KGS friend made a 9x9 board for us. It is made out of plywood, has the lines drawn on it and has varnish applied to it. Simple, cheap and practical.



I am showing it here next to my normal goban, to give you an idea of the size.

I know iceman has done something similar for his go club at school. But if you don't want to go through all that, there is an even easier and cheaper solution.

When I was researching what to put in my Ancient Game of Go II Geocache, I was in contact with Anton Ninno of the Syracuse Go Club. He told me about the $2.41 go set he had developed. He sent me a pdf file of a 9x9 board, which you can print and use to play. For 'stones', you can use nickles and pennies. Forty nickles and forty-one pennies give you a cost of $2.41 for the whole set. Of course, can use anything else for stones too. For my cache, I went to Staples, and had the goban copied on cardstock, so it would be a bit more durable.

Yutopian has a somewhat nicer version of a 9x9 board. It is laminated, 9x9 on one side, 13x13 on the other. I haven't seen it, so don't know the quality, but I did see that the corresponding 13x13/19x19 one got good reviews.

Hope this helps.

9x9 as Teaching Tool

We have been playing 9x9 high handicap games with Kate. Today we added the challenge: Try to kill every single W stone. This is after a discussion with minue. He said: 'L&D is the conceptual basis of Go, and concept of territory is just a derived one from it. So mastering L&D of stones is first thing to do. I want to let her practice basic Atari and killing problems in 9H game. Go is a game about "how to ensure survival of my present and future stones and prevent survival of opponent's present and future stones." If we do that job well, more territory is gained just automatically as a side effect. Sacrificing to gain more territory, giving up my weak stones is a sort of trade between death of my present stones and survival of my futher stones'

Interesting, makes a lot of sense. I never had thought about using 9H on a 9x9 board that way. It is fun to set up ways for her to kill stones :) She even often figures out the vital point of a group. And one game, she saw a W group had miai for life and she decided 'If I play here, he can play there and he will live. But if I play there, he will play here and live. So he will live anyway. OK, I will resign.' ^^ And she did. And went off to play a computer game :) Nice to see how she didn't get upset about losing, she was very matter-of-fact about it. I have been telling her how she is supposed to lose half of her games, and looks like she understands and accepts that.



Here she is setting up go problems for her 5 years-old brother, who is utterly uninterested in go. Fun to see how she made up her own problems, and made sure to keep them simple for him. He never wanted to do them, but she got her father to solve them instead ^^.

I hope sharing the way we teach Kate, will help other people who are teaching beginners. And I have to say that I am utterly fascinated by the way she is picking up the game and is figuring out things. It is cool to watch her alternate making amazingly good moves, and nonsense ones.

Teaching Kate

Finally! The day arrived that one of my kids actually is interested in go. Kate is still very enthousiastic about playing, let's hope that it will last.

Interesting concepts are popping up while teaching her. She knows about ladders, but I never had shown her geta (net) yet.



I put this on the board for her, and asked her to capture the W stone. She immediately made a ladder and captured it that way.

Next question I posed to her, 'What if I play a ladder breaker?' We first checked whether and how the ladder breaker broke the ladder.



Then I asked her whether she could find a move to capture the W stone, even if there was a ladder breaker. She came up with those two.



and



Not bad, Kate, not bad. And fascinating to see what she came up with. Both her moves worked great. I showed her the basic netting move in addition to those, and she immediately grasped why it worked. So cool!

She has her own KGS id now and is enjoying playing me and some friends on line. When she plays me a lot of her kibbitz consists of 'DIE DIE DIE DIE!'. She sure has the trash talking down, I wonder where she got that ^^

She was playing a friend on line and it was funny to hear her talk while playing. Some quotes:

• I must take my territory!
• Uh oh! He has more territory, and I can't solve that! Wait! With my handicap I can! Here i can make one eye and here another one! He made me TWO eyes!!!!!!!! (after generous non-killing play by W :)
• Uhoh, mommy! He is invading again! Oh no you won't! I shall kill you before you even live!
• Oops , I played a bad move, oh well!
• See! I just sacrificed a stone!'
• Wait , I'll do the same trick, sacrifice! (while trying to kill)

She figured out a snapback (W set it up for her) 'Hmmm, if i play here he can take me, but he would only have one liberty left' This impressed me, until the next game she missed a 15 stones capture of W stones in atari ^^.

She started against him in a 9H game on a 9x9 board. She was very impressed. 'WOW! I didn't know you could do something like that! I got EVERY single bit, grass, silver, gold!!!' (I have told her that the Chinese have proverb saying corner is gold, side is silver, center is grass.

Can you tell I am excited about her playing go? I realize it might not last more than a few weeks, but I am enjoying it as long as it will last. She told me 'I learned a lot about go by playing capture go. I never wanted to play real go, because I thought it was boring. But now I see how much fun it is to grab lots of territory!!!'

About Winning

Shygost had an interesting viewpoint in one of his reviews. He was talking about attacking a group and said: 'Not only do you not have to kill, you don't have to win! In chess , you have to win, but not so in go. If you win more than half of your games, they increase or decrease the handicap, and you are back to losing. You are not supposed to win your games. You are supposed to just enjoy, get some good thinking in there.'

Interesting, makes a lot of sense. Not that I thought go was all about winning anyway, but I never had looked at it in exactly this way.

My 7 years-old daughter has started to play more go, she desperately wants her own goban with tiny stones. She plays 9x9 games at club now,and is mostly out of the self-atari phase ^^ I hope she will stick to it. Two more weeks of club play and she will get her very own goban.