I Still Hate Talking Clocks

I had a great tourney, but talking clocks STILL are the bane of my existence.

The short story: I went 1-3, playing as shodan.



The longer story

The tournament was very small, only 14 players. Not unusual for Middlebury , but means there were a lot of handicap games.

My first game, I played against the only other shodan in the field, and tried to do my darndest best to attack his weak groups. I wasn't as successful as I wanted to be, but I managed to kill a big group. Thanks to the stupid talking clocks, it came back to life again in byo yomi... I was not happy. Luckily, my opponent wasn't happy either, because he unexpectedly ran out of time. I have no idea whether I would have won the game with the group back to life, at that point I didn't have enough time to count. I won the game on time.

My second game, I gave 2H to a 2k. I started out well, and had great thickness. I feel I wasn't using it enough though, will have to look at the game and figure out what I could have done differently. I screwed up a corner invasion, and by that time, I felt the board wasn't wide enough anymore to take compensation somewhere else, so I resigned. I will study that corner invasion.

Third game was challenging at first. I had to give 5H to a 5k, and I had serious doubts whether I would be able to do so. But lo and behold, I managed to do just fine and made a furikawari, and was ahead by about 15 points.

I was all happy, but he kept trying to live with his dead group, which ate up a lot of time and thinking, but eventually even he was convinced he was dead. By then, we were in endgame, and I was in the last 25 seconds of my byo yomi. This was not good. My Ing clock kept yelling at me. I glared at it, but it didn't help. I tried to ignore it, but was only half successful. I got hasty and made stupid endgame error. By that time we were the only ones left playing, so at least we gave the public some amusement. There was an audible, collective gasp when I gave away 15 points for no good reason at all.

I knew this was the game, but we were so close to the end that I finished it anyway. The counting revealed that B won by 0.5 points. Funny ^^ I made his day :)

In a way, I didn't really care, since I had proven to myself that I could give a 5k 5H after all. I had a very won game. I just needed to throw those Ing clocks out of the window.

By the time the last game came around, I was kind of tired and the best way to describe the game would be "a mess". After a while, I resigned in disgust at my own moves.

All in all, I had a great time. I have four games, all of which contain lots of learning opportunities. And I am happy I didn't lose all my games, but only three of them ^^.

Few observations:

• Yet again, I was the only female, but then the field wasn't very big I guess;
• I was the only one recording my games;
• I was the first in the list of players in this tourney (from strong to weak) which was a very weird feeling. I am too weak to be the strongest;
• Totally unrelated to go: I saw a river otter on the way back home, which was a nice bonus to the day;
• Listening to Queen in the car convinced me yet again that "Another One Bites the Dust" would be on my go music play list if I actually would want to listen to music while playing;
• I am happy I decided to go to this tourney after all. Last week I had myself convinced that I shouldn't go, but a few days ago, I unconvinced myself of that.

Tournament Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, I will drive up to Middlebury, VT, to play in a go tournament. Unlike usual, I don't seem to be suffering from much pre-tournament stress. Interesting. I think it helps that this usually is a very small tournament and I tend to know most of the people there. Not to mention that it will be a nice day off from other stuff going on in my life.



I am just going to regard it as a day to play three or four good games, and not care about losing or winning. Yesterday, I had good preparation at go club, where I played a small simul. I gave 3H to KGS 3k and 4H to AGA 5k. Won the 3k game, lost the 5k game. But I felt ok about my game in both instances and it gave me much more self confidence to play handicap games tomorrow.

Don't Panic!

Last week, I played a game which really taught me yet again not to panic. Yes, I know I have realized that before, but I am a slow learner.



The game progressed normally up to here.



As you can see, W is making a nice moyo, but B has good cash, so B can play calmly and win easily (I am Black). For a few moves, B did just that.

But suddenly, W's moyo grew and grew, and B's cash was getting smaller and smaller. I convinced myself that I was headed towards horrible doom. So I did what I do best. Panic!



I 'knew' I had to jump in, so I chose a likely spot, and did just that (F12). When sendol reviewed, this move got a dry 'looks deep' comment. Yeah, maybe it was just a tad deep indeed ^^.

The game went on and I did eventually win, but on my opponent's mistakes, not on my good play. Let's see what would have happened if I had really played calmly. Or as sendol said, the easy way for B. He showed me that it is hard for W to build the center.



sendol [-]: left side w is not big
NannyOgg [-]: i could just have stayed calm, i see
NannyOgg [-]: it felt HUGE :)
sendol [-]: not that huge^^
NannyOgg [-]: ok :)
sendol [-]: w cant make big area any more
sendol [-]: now yose

This game made me realize yet again that one should not panic, but count and play calmly. It sounds so easy in theory. But it definitely is an area in which I have tons of room for improvement.

Here is link to full review by Sendol.

Chinese Opening

This week is Chinese Opening week at our go club. We decided to study the Chinese opening by all listening to the first lecture at Guo Juan's audiogolessons, and study it together at go club.

The studying by ourselves went well, but we got kicked out of club early today. So we only studied for a bit together. Still, it was useful to have study buddies and motivation, and all look at the same lecture. I made an SGF file from the lesson, to help me look up details more easily. I knew most of the things in the first lecture, but it was a good refresher.

Today's go club was sad because of missing J, who had to go back to Singapore. It just isn't the same without him. But the good thing was that we had a visitor from London / Japan, who actually hiked six hours on the Appalachican trail to reach us (he was visiting his sister in a neighboring town). So he got to hike the Appalachian trail AND he got to play go at our club. Very nice gentleman, I enjoyed meeting him.

He was 6k, so I gave him 6H. I still am not good at giving handicap. I made big mistake when I took the corner at some point instead of jumping out. I was behind enough that I had to kill something, and luckily black obliged by not leaving a weak group. B flailed for a while, but eventually resigned. Not easy to play handicap as W, but I am getting better at it.

Next I played a 4k friend, at 4H. The game was pretty even (after he donated one of his corners in middle game) and I felt mostly ok about that game. I resigned because we wanted to get some studying in, but I feel that W was hopeful by then.

I will try to play a bunch of KGS games with Chinese opening, since I haven't used it seriously for quite a while. Will be interesting.

Pondering

Playing my three year old. I love the way how she is seriously pondering the board.

Avalanche Madness

Minue has been teaching me several contemporary variations of the large avalanche joseki. It has been utterly fascinating to me, seeing all the half dead groups, learning interesting tesuji and new shapes.



I don't expect to use it in games much, but studying it is giving me a new sense of power. Of course, next time I play it in a game, I am just as likely to mess it up as to get it right, but I will be able to learn from that too, right?

And for now, it gives me something to do when I take the Oggettes to the playground.

Game Record of Mirror Handi Game

I uploaded the game record of the mirror handicap game. I still have no idea how I should have resisted his strategy. I did consider mirroring him after I played tengen, like someone suggested, but that somehow felt wrong. I didn't want to stoop down to his lows.

It is an interesting problem. He ended up winning the game by 10.5 points, so I guess his strategy was successful this game. I don't think he is learning much about go though.

Mirror Go in Handicap Game

Last week, I was playing on one of my bogus accounts when I ran into this situation. I always play Chinese rules, so that means free handicap placement. This was a 4H game and he placed his handicap stones like this.



I thought 'Great! This is going to be an interesting game!' I wasn't too worried. I figured he might not know how to use this power. And if he did, we would have some good fighting, which is always fun.

Well... It didn't take long for me to realize what he was doing.



He was mirroring my moves... I know there are ways of breaking mirror go, involving ladders and such. But in this case, his four center handicap stones were interfering with that. I took a long break to ponder what to do and came up empty.

So I played a bit more and then decided to stop the mirroring. I played 29 as a probe to see what he would do, he replied at 30.



I tried to set up things so that if he would mirror more, it would go bad for him, but not for me. I wasn't very succesful at it though. He stopped mirroring anyway.

I have been pondering what to do next time this happens. Play the tengen move sooner and take it from there? Are there other strategies I can use? It's an interesting question, I welcome any input people have on it.

The Sorry State of My Social Life

Oh noes! KGS is down again! Let's hope it's not going to be another three days.

The recent and current KGS problems have shown me something I hadn't noticed before. I hadn't realized that almost every single one of my gtalk contacts is a go player. During the Long KGS Outage, almost everyone's first message would be about kgs being down.

And if I hadn't lost misplaced my cell phone, you would notice that 95 % of my contacts on there are go players too.

I guess today will be go study day instead of chatting playing. Or maybe I should try having a life! OK, maybe not ^^ Time to work on haengma problems.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Yes, I know, I haven't been posting much. I have been playing and studying, but not as much as usual because of some family stress. In between all the stress, we still manage to get baduk in though, at interesting locations.



Click here for more photos at this Vermont lake.

Baduk in Vermont

Playing go outdoors is addictive. This time, we got ourselves to the top of a local mountain.



Many more pictures can be found on my flickr site. Who wants to play indoors when the weather is this nice?

Last iwamoto game 4-4

Last week, I played my last iwamoto game. I yet again didn't feel very focused during the game and overplayed too much, ended up losing by a few points. Oh well. Sendol reviewed the game. I learned a lot of interesting things during the review, so happy about the game anyway ^^. If only that I made too many greedy moves :p

This was the last game in the tournament. I can't say that I played very well, but I guess 4-4 is a reasonable result. Next year, I'll have to enter again and do better.

Go in the Gorge

Last week, our go club took the gobans to a local gorge to play. There is something wonderful about playing on the rocks, in between water and nature.



We had a gorgeous day, sun, water, friends, and go. What more can one ask for in life?



I uploaded many more pictures to flickr.

Cookies!

Last week at go club, J brought those home baked 'goban cookies'



Everyone tremendously enjoyed them.



And no, those are not ing stones, those are black and white M&M's.

Thank you, j!

Iwamoto tourney 4-3

Last weekend, I played my seventh iwamoto game. It was 11pm, so my handicap stones were mostly asleep, which is always good. I won the game, but do not feel particularly good about it. I managed to pull ahead, but then made too many stupid mistakes. Still won by a few points, but I have many things I need to work on.

One more iwamoto game to go. I don't know yet when I will play.

Due to some family stress, I haven't played and studied as much as I would like. I hope things will calm down soon, and I can go back to studying more.

Kids Go

For months, I had been telling myself 'I really should take Kate to Kids Go at the MGA, it would be good for her to see other go playing kids.' Our own go club only has teenagers and adults, and it is not always easy to relate to those when you are eight years old.



Life kept getting in the way, but last week, we finally managed to drive down. Kate prepared herself by putting tattoos all over her body... Those were the temporary ones, in case anyone is wondering about us now.



It was the start of summer vacation, so there were only a few kids. Still, it was nice for her to play one of them. She also did a bunch of problems and had a good time. It didn't hurt at all that there were cupcakes and chocolate chip cookies ^^



After Kids Go, we went to a friend's house and had a great time. Such a great time, that Kate kept asking 'Can we go back tomorrow? Can we? Can we????' Although frankly I think this was more thanks to the video game she played at my friend's house, and not as much because of the kids go. But I'll pretend that it was the go drawing her back to the MGA ^^



We will definitely have to do this again.

Iwamoto tourney 3-2

My fourth game of iwamoto tourney, I missed an extremely simple net. I still can't believe I missed that, feh!

Jing: I looked over your game. How did you miss the net? You know you will never hear the end of it now
me: The net... What net? Oh, THAT net!
Jing: Under basic stone catching
me: I will have to do stone capturing problems till i NEVER miss a net again.
I know. It's horrible.
Jing: Usually on page two on introduction to go. After ladders
me: ...
Jing: well, nice driving tesuji
me: right ^^ Just wrong application :p
Jing: pity the advanced technique is worse than the 30k technique here
me: when you just studied hammers, everything looks like a nail

B to play

Jing: It's focus during the game?
me: Oh, good point. Since this was a very interrupted game. You have NO idea how often i said 'If it is not blood or fire, I do NOT want to know about it' to yet another kid.
Jing: I mean if it was presented as a go problem, you would solve it instantaneously. So I do not think it has to do with knowledge
me: True. So back to focus
Jing: I dunno. This is one of the hardest things in go. You can work very hard, and study very hard. But at the end of the day, still have to use the knowledge on goban

This mistake put me far behind, but luckily I was not the only one making mistakes. I slowly could pull back till he resigned. Sendol reviewed this game.

My fifth game was just bad, not much interesting happened in it. Ended up in a massive capturing race, where I was exactly one lib short. Yes, it's always just one ^^

Kate

Today, Kate played us at go club, 13x13, 9H. She did reasonably well, I still love the way she thinks out loud. She will put down bad move and then start thinking about it. I want her to do it the other way around ^^ I mean, think first, play later.

The Joys of Suiciding

Last week was my third iwamoto game. After two wins, it felt like it was more important to win again, or at least try my utter best to play good moves.

Well, that lasted a few moves until my handicap stones started running around, and interfering. Still , I was mostly ok about the game till around here.



I mean White A and B groups both are weak, I felt I should be able to profit nicely from attacking them. So in a moment of utter stupidity, I decided to suicide my cutting group when he invaded at R3. Sigh.



A is losing move here. I looked at all the right moves, and then clicked the wrong one in a moment of hastiness.

From then on it was just flailing and I eventually resigned. Oh well ^^ This made me 2-1 in Iwamoto, resulting in a 17th place out of 92 in my group for current standings.

I uploaded review of this game by minue.

Quote of the Day

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Replace day with game and this is very applicable to go.

Today, I played my first iwamoto game. I wasn't sure how well I would do, since I had some personal stress going on, but I managed to focus on the game enough to win. Feels good to start the series with a win, but there still are seven more rounds to go, so who knows what will happen.