My week in numbers (was "Tiny steps towards shodan")

RBerenguel · **#81**

On page 80 of The Direction of Play, clearing 3 chapters on the way. Way too fast, but I have found why I thought it was dry and boring: chapters 1 and 2 are so dense you either read them in one sitting (separately) or you just get lost from one moment to the other. Tomorrow more (and prepare to repeat chapters 2 and 3... they are full of things I need to understand)

RBerenguel · **#82**

Almost finished reading The Direction of Play, and I still think the reason I found it so boring before is that it needs to be read 1 chapter at the time. If you stop in the middle of a chapter it is too easy to lose track of what the chapter was about. Only the last chapter left.

I also have a nice shipment coming from YesAsia.com of several Japanese go books. Since my previous shipment came correctly and on time I'm getting a new one. Let's see this time.

I'm playing a slightly too relaxed go lately. Since I play mostly Advanced Study Room League games, either I play weaker players or stronger players, and with both I'm just playing more by sensations than by solid thinking. I only read when there is some clear tactical thing coming up... The results show, winning against weaker players and losing (big) against stronger players. A side result is that I've found a sign of what it means to improve at go. It's just that you can play more relaxed against weaker players (when playing without handicap). After all, it is highly likely they will make some small mistake and you will be able to take advantage of it. Some months ago I could not have played this way against people 8k-13k, and now I don't have to press too strongly. Which is nothing to be ashamed on their part (just in case this sounded harsh from me), in some sense is like playing myself from a few months back, I'm sure they'll be where I am pretty quickly (some quicker than others, but every weaker player I have played with and reviewed has a strong desire to improve, which I'm very happy about). Now I only need to focus my play and think all my moves (even if just a little). Any suggestions on how to stop the look-and-click?

RBerenguel · **#83**

I have played a few (heh, 6 which is one each day except for two rare day when I played 2) blitz games lately (KGS' automatch comes in handy for that). So far I'm 5-1 and my rating (which is still unstable) is... 4k (without question mark)! I got to 4k first in my blitz account, rather than in my slow account (although this rank is probably more unstable than my slow rank, I'm prone to quick mistakes). Of course it's been like 3 months without playing ranked in my "real" account...

RBerenguel · **#84**

I've been taking a break from playing. I got into the Gamma league in the Advanced Study Room, after placing something like 15th in Delta class. Since then I only have played my NGA games (played on Saturday.) I am also now one of the ASR admins (bow before me, simple mortals!) but April is a rough month and I've been offline most of the week. My usual KGS times are afternoons and evenings, and almost all evenings in April will be eaten by a shoemaking course, handmade moccasins (yeah, odd, but I've already made handmade shoes before).

I also had my third lesson with Lluís Oh, the Spanish-Korean 6d. In this class we played a 6 stones game (I lost badly by 30 something points after 2 big blunders,) then we did some tesuji-tsumego problems from that fun looking book I showed a few posts ago. To end the class we reviewed 3 games involving the Chinese pro player Xie He, two from the Nongshim Cup in 2010 (against Iyama Yuta and Hane Naoki) and one from the Chunlan cup against Lee Sedol. I don't know why Lluís chose Xie He (he knows I'm a Lee Ch'angHo fan and he is, too) but they were interesting games and he showed me several interesting joseki points I wasn't aware. All in all a very useful experience, I'm looking forward to next week's class!

RBerenguel · **#85**

Tuesday I had my 4th game against Lluís Oh. For the first time I won against him on 6 stones (by 9 points), then lost by 20 something points on 5 stones. Feeling slight improvements. And today I played Jeff Chang (Finnish8d and JeffChang in KGS) on 7 stones, played quite badly. The review by Namii compensed it, with a lot of insights on how to improve my game. Let's keep moving ahead!

RBerenguel · **#86**

Almost 2 months without writing! Whoah, this explains why stalkor is always nagging me about my lack of writing!

Well, what's new? I had a confidence slump from the beginning of April until a few weeks ago, around a month. All my games crumbled without any kind of spirit whatsoever, I just made stupid mistakes I was the only to blame. I did nothing special to get over it, I just played another game. I made a quite stupid corner approach that got easily pincered, the pincer was also an extension from another corner. I thought I had thrown my fuseki there, and thought "why bother"? And just played freely. I got some neat thickness, but didn't use it correctly, then I exploited some weaknesses from my opponent... And lost by 0.5 points. Quite relieving, after all, I had played pretty well. Namii's review was quite helpful, too. He had just returned from placing 7th in the WAGC (congrats sensei

!) by the way. In the afternoon after that game I checked the last game I have of Honinbo Shuei. I had just finished reading John Fairbairn's Kindle book, The Life of Honinbo Shuei and then thought reviewing Shuei's game wasn't a bad idea. I only have around 200 game records from him, and after all his "ability explosion" wasn't until late in his life, so I can get away with having a look at the latest 50-100 games. Far better than the huge amount of Lee Ch'ang-Ho's games!

Today I played another game, lost by 15 after making a stupid endgame blunder, without it it would have been a 1.5-2.5 loss. Overall I'm happy about how I played overall, but of course, I still have a lot to improve.

Next month I may enroll the ASR again, starting from delta (of course) to get some field training. I've been neglecting play a lot lately. I have to consider also moving to 3 NGA games a week, I have to think about it. Quality of play is far, far higher, and the reviews are of course better than what I can get. You bet: the reviewers are Antti Tormanen (best Finnish player in the EGD, former insei in Japan) Jeff Yang (second best Finnish player in the EGD) and Juri Kuronen (7th placed in the WAGC 2012, 6th best in the EGD... odd, he should be higher!).

EDIT: Uh, sorted by rank instead of by GoR in the EGD site: Jeff is the best Finnish player, closely followed by Antti (just 4 GoR points) and Juri is getting close as 3rd, trailing by around 90 points.

Clearly my path to 1 dan is being far slower than what I expected, but not playing rated games is also stopping my rank growth. In any case, I don't think I'm any better than 4k in my best days currently, meaning that when I got my 5k rank I was more like a lucky 6k.

Dokuganryu · **#87**

I'm going to join NGA in June and wonder if we're going to play games with each other? Really looking forward to participating, I was in Korean Style Insei League for two months but failed in using the available content in a satisfactory degree, so hope it will turn better here:P

RBerenguel · **#88**

Hey you're the 4k Namii toldme about

Yes, I'm sure we'll play a lot next month

RBerenguel · **#89**

Played two games today. One in the NGA... lost again against sanniti. He has won our last 3 games (I think in 2 I had black) meaning I need to up my play to catch him. After this I decided it was a good moment for a rated game, after almost 3 months. I won a game I should have lost against a 6k, pumping my rank from 5k? to 3k?. Which is completely unreal, since sanniti is moving up and down around 4-5k and he is beating me with relative ease lately.

Well, time to do some tsumego and tesuji training.

RBerenguel · **#90**

Aah Long time no see!

I've played little lately (NGA holidays,) losing to a 2k (or was it 3?) by 16 points. Duh.

As suggested by a fellow NGA player I've played a little against bots giving high handicap. Mostly getting medals in medal challenge in Crazy Stone for iPad (i.e. Giving 2,3,4 and 5 stones.) It's fun in its own way. Also played twice against Igowin HD today, forced resignation in levels 6k (W+50 moku) and 5k (B+35 moku.) Felt good.

Edit: 5k with more komi (auto-mode does odd things), resign when +30
Edit2: WTF? Igowin HD at level 4k, score estimate after computer resigns -> white wins by 97.5 points

RBerenguel · **#91**

Been replaying 2-3 games by Honinbo Dosaku each week as of late. This popped in my mind today:

Quote:

Honinbo Dosaku didn't have weak groups. He had strong groups without eyes

It's amazing how he keeps playing and playing all over the board.

RBerenguel · **#92**

Playing again. Played 3 games so far... Not specially good. Also I don't know how to take the final comment from my opponent... It wasn't a great game, but I don't think it was that bad.

mitsun · **#93**

In the last game, you played much too timidly, all defensive moves, hardly ever challenging your opponent, and you fell way behind by the end. Maybe W thought you put up too little resistance.

However, the fight you started with 109-111 was interesting, more complicated than perhaps either you or your opponent realized, and you had some upset chances.

In the upper left corner, B is dead, but with quite a few liberties. (Can you count how many liberties?) If B ever gets to attack the W group on either side, it could be a close capturing race.

W126 is a careless overplay; after B127 W is dead.
B129 is also careless and unnecessary, letting W escape.
W158 is another careless play, ignoring the danger in the center.
B159 at J13 looks like a probable kill.
B161 at H14 looks like another probable kill.

RBerenguel · **#94**

Thanks for the pointers mitsun. Being too defensive has been my bane during all my playing time: whenever I played with 9 stones against some friends they had to push me attack. True story.

Actually killing races are one of my weak points, and even worse when there are eyes involved. Actually, my idea in the zone was to use the corner to kill top or right... But wasn't able to read it out at all after Ws response. Oh, and the "misskills" of that group! I was completely oblivios wrt J13. I just mentally skimmed over J14 and J12 and didn't even care about other moves. Even though I knew cutting that knight didn't look well... But didn't think it was so bad as that shortage of liberties.

Well, today I played again, so I put my previous bad play behind and made some brand new bad play. Of the cool kind, making my own groups die and the like. You know.

RBerenguel · **#95**

Why can't I concentrate in KGS games? Even though I won my last game (rival resigned because he could not concentrate, and told me he thought the game was still open, which I think is quite "hmm"), it was such a silly mess I'm ashamed anyway. I played far better games in real life last week in the tournament...

RBerenguel · **#96**

I'm having some trouble with problem 94 in Lee ChangHo Jingjiang Weiqi Sihuo Vol 1. Black to play and kill... Maybe I'm being too obtuse with my variation, but I even played it over the board... Can't kill.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$ Black to play $$ | . . . . . . $$ | X X X . . . $$ | . O X . . . $$ | . O X . . . $$ | . . O X . . $$ | . X O X . . $$ | O O O . . . $$ | X O X X . . $$ | . O X . . . $$ +-------------[/go]

moyoaji · **#97**

Doesn't this work?

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$ at $$ | . . . . . . $$ | X X X . . . $$ | . O X . . . $$ | 3 O X . . . $$ | 2 1 O X . . $$ | 4 X O X . . $$ | O O O . . . $$ | X O X X . . $$ | . O X . . . $$ +-------------[/go]

Now it's a false eye. I don't see how white can stop this.

RBerenguel · **#98**

I had a minor typo in the diagram, but doesn't affect the result.

Your answer is the answer given in the book, but I don't see how black stops this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$ $$ | . . . . . | $$ | X X X . . | $$ | 3 O X . . | $$ | 2 O X . . | $$ | 4 1 O X . | $$ | . X O X . | $$ | O O O X . | $$ | X O X X . | $$ | . O X . . | $$ +-----------+[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$ $$ | . . . . . | $$ | X X X . . | $$ | 3 . X . . | $$ | . 6 X . . | $$ | . 1 O X . | $$ | 5 X O X . | $$ | O O O X . | $$ | X O X X . | $$ | . O X . . | $$ +-----------+[/go]

moyoaji · **#99**

You are gonna kick yourself for this one. ;-)

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$ $$ | . . . . . | $$ | X X X . . | $$ | 3 . X . . | $$ | . 6 X . . | $$ | . 1 C X . | $$ | 5 X C X . | $$ | C C C X . | $$ | X C X X . | $$ | 7 C X . . | $$ +-----------+[/go]

It's okay, I've done that before too. And yes, that extra stone did matter (although I didn't notice it was missing, so we both messed up).

RBerenguel · **#100**

Classic mistake by my part, I always miss shortages (for killing or for living)

My week in numbers (was "Tiny steps towards shodan")

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