This journal has been relatively quiet, but I might find time to post here a bit more now.

I may not be doing a Go demonstration, but I thought that the least I could do was to distribute an a4 page about Go with links to sites that give more information about Go. In response to Paul Smiths text about the problem with baduk in the UK, I decided to give a list of sites that would give a more wholistic view of the art. But I'm not sure weather I'm forgetting some good recourses:

I'm looking for 7 main types of links (the "seven seeds", I call them), and the percentage they will probably take compared to all links:

1: Martial Art 20%
Sites that portray Go as an ancient martial art, so that the unwitting recipient sees the link with Karate, Tai Chi, and so on.

2: Educational Go 20%
Sites the peer into the educational and health-related benefits of Go, as well as social aspects of Go.

3: Sport Go 20%
Sites that highlight the sporting side of Go, even as a spectator sport, and information world tournaments, and famous pros (or VIP's ). This may be especially effective in drawing even quite young children in, something which is vital in both improving the level of Go in britain and maximising the benefits Go has on people, at the very least setting up a future "baby boomer" generation.

4: Skill in Weiqi 10%
Links that try to show the true depth of Baduk, how people improve, and also the professional system and what it takes to become a pro or even insei, and a little about how ranks and ratings (do you know that every single Japanese martial art that uses a Kyu/Dan or belt colouring system probably owes a thanks to a Master Go player who invented the system? Type information) and the logarithmic nature of the kyu/dan system compared to ELO ratings.

5: World Go situation 10%
4 naturally leads to 5, the world weiqi situation. Anyone wouldn't mind knowing where their country stands, right? The history of Go in all the continents, and the current skill level of Go in Europe, North and south America, Asia, Oceania and Africa

6: How to play Go 10%
I'm sure you've read those words a thousand times. a combination of sites with straight-to-the-point teaching style, magnifying the simplicity of the rules, and sites which make it very interesting to learn Go, making sure that once they're on the Go train, it moves to fast for them to hop off

7: VEI and others 10%

Very Eye-opening Information and others. If two people can find common interests, they are more likely to be ready to be introduced to other disciplines by that person. Probably the single most important aspect in promoting anything is first impressions, and how the PEOPLE are like (sorry for the all caps ) I once read that in business, BRANDING is the most important thing. At the time I didn't understand-- how can stuff like Strategy, Ruthlessness Accounting, Mathematics, Office Location, and every other aspect in setting up products be second to... branding? Like on TV Ads?

Branding could be called the ONLY thing. In modern life, so many things call for peoples precious attention, and unfortunately using your brain in every aspect of your life is sometimes impossible. The subconscious comes into play, and looks and impressions about things that guide the day to day life of most people.

People aren't that interested in a bunch of 361 stones (as of yet, unless maybe you’re an antique specialist), they're interested in people. Sites that look into this aspect may be quite useful.

Some may understandably believe that the "Sport" section holds too high a percentage. Well, the reason for this is that the respect for board games/mind sports in Europe and North America is far lower than in Africa and Asia, Especially Asia. So if you want to make Igo popular without losing the spirit of Igo, you have to be somewhat revolutionary: Increasing the popularity of ALL Mind sports, changing the social perception in the country (in my case, UK). So we have to work with all the mind sport organisations in the country, including chess, rather than taking a "go is better than chess" attitude. Making Igo look as similar to a sport as possible will completely overhaul the western perception of board games— especially among children, and seems to be the best way to draw people in, and once they're hooked, we can pull out the other 6 Aces up our sleeve.

I could exonerate even more on the subject using my little knowledge, but I'll stop here. Hopefully it might give one person food for thought to improving his/her go-spreading abilities. One person is enough for me

PS: I used Igo, Baduk and Weiqi interchangeably because I believe that while Japan primarily spread Go to the west, and while Japan founded modern competitive Go, Our knowledge of go history is unfairly skewed towards Japan. Most people do not know much about the history of Go/Baduk/Weqi/CoVay in Korea, China and Taiwan, and certainly other Asian countries. Hmm, yet again this post outgrew my expectations

Please Learn Go! Learn Go Week.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

A small while ago, I had a little accident when impatiently looking for a game on IGS--





It was quite strange, playing simultaneously against two 1 Dans, and both games ended in an accident too but at least I wasn't completely outclassed.

Also, do you mind it when you play a beginner, and they really, really don't want a handicap? You might be thinking to yourself, "how arrogant, just learned to play yesterday and doesn't get my point about handicaps".

Hmm, but why are you so eager to give a handicap? Is it not better for them to practice playing on even games? In any case, next time put 9 stones on the board and take BLACK against the beginner. You may be surprised.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

When I was 30k-10k, I couldn't replay pro games. Why? Well I could. I could take Hng games and play out a crucial game in the plot, but as for learning? In the back of my mind, I felt that I shouldn't bother, because I am so far below they're level and I'm so useless on a Goban that I should just give up. So I could never replay pro games above "level 1". It would have been nice, however, if I hadn't been so demeaning of myself, because for even the most basic openings that I could learn from, my mind would overlook, as "I'm incapable of learning from pro games without commentary". So now I plan to put commentary for all of the games of the Samsung cup on this Journal, a series about studying pro games. It is intended for beginners, and I don't comment the games saying that I could understand much of it, but to say that the >20%-10% I can see on the surface, I at least try to understand. I also hope that by following the tournament, it would encourage more people to take up Go. So I put information that most Go players already know, just for people who might not know a lot about the Go world, like beginners.

I planned to comment all of the group stage games at level 2, but because I was writing them for beginners, They ended up taking longer than originally planned and being closer to level 3.

Here are 4 out of 36. Group A, round one:





Group B, round one:




Hopefully I would comment all of the games before the main draw starts.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Your variation on mv68 in the last game doesn't make sense as there are some black stones in atari in the middle of it that white should have captured. About l18 that is a tesuji to take sente to play the r13 hane like you said, but black can also choose to answer in the corner and that way later he can attack the top group (l18 helps it live). Move 50 white makes those exchanges to cut black first. Also 1 is quite important shape point for white's liberties.

No i don't mind it because i behaved and still do exactly the same way. It's not arrogance, it's pride at worst and desire to test one's strength at best. When i refuse to take handicap -or take reduced- it's mainly the latter. When a beginner refuses to take handicap against me i try to show him the difference in our levels by trying to kill everything. I don't do it because i'm a prick, i'm a fan of realism and sometimes it's more educational to be brutally honest. After the game i review and kindly say ''Next time please place 9 stones'' :p

Thanks for doing these I will work through them all

Thank you for letting me know, I've updated the file
Because it's a mass amount of commentary I'm trying to complete, there would probably be more errors and typos than usual.

Unfortunately, an unexpected situation has occurred, for the next couple of days I'll have zero time the game reviews would have to go on hold for a short while.



I agree, I find it slightly strange that someone who wouldn't mind playing an even game with a pro, would be so fussy about giving beginners a handicap. Of course, you are most likely to be right, and they may have the chance to play a longer game when given a handicap, but at the end of the day, it's their choice, you teach for the student, not for your own ego (you'd naturally be rewarded by an increase in the students strength). You could choose to go easy on them, or add a little realism into the mix-- it depends on the person. It's not arrogance if you want to play against a pro even, it's a natural thing to want to do.



No problem I hope this helps you get stronger even a tiny bit and that you can follow the pro games with just slightly more understanding.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Unfortunately, for the past few weeks I've had a limited amount of time, so it's been diffiult to do any training whatsoever, and I couldn't comlete the pro game reviews. However, when I discovered that There was a Single Digit Kyu tournament happening on Online-Go.com I tried to set aside some time for that, and squeeze in 5 ranked games to enter.

For some reason, I'm struggling to find out why I lose ganes during game reviews. More specifically, it's getting harder to find my mistakes. And while it's been a long time since I felt I was stronger than my dislayed rank, I'm beginning to get fustrated every time I don't feel like I'm playing at "pro level"-- I don't really care weather I won the game. And of course, that means I'm fustrated with all my games.

I can't seem to figure out how I could have won this game below-- and because that says I'm not at pro level, for some reason, it makes be slightly upset I really want to get stronger for some reason, don't know eather it's because I can't study go as much these days...



I know that most 5 dans would be falling on the floor with laughter when when I say I don't know how I could have won the game but I'm not as strong as you guys as I seem to be making less blunders, which must be a sign that I'm improving, I seem to be losing more confidence in my Go I think my lack of basic joseki knowledge leaves me feeling slightly insecure, but I think the main problem might be something else. Even after replaying pro games, which usually makes me feel stronger, I still feel scared on the Goban well, it is what it is

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Okay, it's All the way to 10 dan from here on! My kyu losses don't matter!

First game from the onlinego.com STW Tourney:



I got two byes in a row so lets see what would happen...

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

I came 5th in my first ever online tornament you can see the results here--

http://online-go.com/tournament/3153

These mini tournaments are fun ^^ a good way to help improve your go.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Congrats! Yes, indeed -- the main problem lies in the basics ( the fundamentals ), ALL of them.

The file seemed to be buggy, so I removed the comments (which were interesting).

The transition to the middlegame is flawed. I see comments mainly about Black's lost opportunities.

I'm looking at K16. This seems to be a game of four frameworks, currently. I would start with this shoulderhit to give White a floating group.

It should be easy for Black to make shape in the centre and damage White's framework on the lower side.

The thicker way to play is to capture at P7. White will make shape on the right side. Then what? H16 on the upper side is still good, though not as interesting as the previous possibilities. A play on the third line on the lower side? Not quite easy to choose a point.

Thanks! I haven't been online for a while so didn't see these posts I'm hoping that in a few weeks from now, when I have more time and internet connection, to start up pro-level training type sessions onL19, so I'd like to gather some information on how "iinsei" train in Korea, China and Japan, and form a new fourth way . NASA wants to go mars in less than ten years . We should be aiming for adding a new continent to the list of international title winners before that!

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

First three games of the Pandanet Online world champinship. I tried to speed review these games, so they are quite brief and don't go into everything about the game-- what I'd call something close to a level 2 review. In the end, though, they still took at least 1.5-2 hours to finish heh.

For some reason, my brain seemed to not be working as well in these games XD well apart from th fact I'm plainly weak, and know little joseki, my reading seemed to be quite slow and shallow for some reason, so these games aren't of the best quality. But I reviewed them anyway, And it was nice to play stronger players-- I can say with assurity that I had never played more than 15 games against human players stronger than me in my entire go playing career-- for the past year, where I have never played any bots, it was about 3 before these games.







Also, if you're wondering why it say that I beat LoveLove9d on the site, I was challenged for a game, but then for some reason LoveLove resigned after I played my move as white.

So, I'm going to some joseki study, and I promise that the next game I post I would play better just wait and see.

edit: fixed a few typographical errors (I blame the keyboard )

edit: mistakenly typed two l's in typographicall: typographicall )

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

So, um... why so eager to approach right away? I won't say this is wrong by any means, but the situation might be a little clearer once all 4 corners are taken and give you a better result since you have a better idea what to aim for.

In the first game, as well, it seems like white is convinced he is going to lose before the fight gets started really. White is by no means in a terrible or game-ending position around move 28, and has potential to engineer some sort of attack against the central black stones.

In the last game, I think after , black has leaned on the bottom for a bit of strength and needs to use it to keep the left side stone low, or otherwise contained. In the game, when black pushes from behind and then lets white double-hane and strengthen himself, white has a huge wall facing a wide open area of the board, and black has a group curling in on itself with potential to attack a light white stone with plenty of room to make a base. Not exactly ideal.

In addition, at move 25, I'd prefer to take the top left corner, but I won't say taking the enclosure is wrong. However, when white plays in the bottom right corner, it makes the right side really big. Giving white the opportunity to play first there hurts when it's also a big point for black and white has the wall from the bottom left making it difficult for black to get much going there. As you noted, black gets a group that's basically sealed in and has about 5 points, while white's moyo is now mostly territory and white has no weak groups. After white's pressured the left side a bit, white just needs to play casual and keep things simple to cruise to victory.

That said, it's tough to fight against not only stronger players, but also the mental expectation of being slaughtered. The reward is that they point out your mistakes quite clearly, letting you know when you needed to fight back more fiercely, or that you played an overplay here, or that your judgement of the size of moves was wrong in this position. All things that help make you stronger.

Second game.

White hasn't got an outstanding result lower left, but does have sente. Why did you think this more urgent than the lower right? The left side has an open skirt.

Contact on the lower stone would make sense here.

Appears to be the wrong side.

Not one of the big points.

This pincer is "joseki-like", but that doesn't mean it is ideal in most positions. I'd be looking at F16, to change the balance of power in the game.

Now F17 would challenge White.

What about C5? Just enclosing the centre is usually a way to lose. And Black has been playing low stones on the left. Start a fight, at least.

The first game did look like a mismatch, because you tried to fight fire with fire. But here you overcorrected.

@Elom: game 3 move 9 you said you saw in a pro game, but white 10 answered differently. How did the pro game progress? What can you learn from that? What are the pros and cons of your opponent's game move versus the pro game and what can you learn from that?

Hello Everyone! I'm sorry that I haven't been able to come here at all these couple of days and respond to any of the comments posted here, I've only just managed to squeeze a game against a 6D yesterday (while doing other things at the same time, holding a smartphone).

Thanks skydr for you insightful comments, yes, I think that anxiousness caused me to play drastically in a way-- wanting to win so much (too much)

Thanks for your question Uberdude I think that in the Samsung game, you could see that Kim activate here white stone that was in black's area, but in the Panda game, we just split the points (but I think white got a better result). I'm planning to add a second sgf of the game with some axtra comments at a alter date.

Here I've made a blitz commentary (level 2) of the game I managed to play while multitasking. time is running out to have the chance to play strong opponents.



The most frustrating thing is that it can be too difficult to find out where one went wrong, a key aspect when playing games with stronger players is the review.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

@Charles Matthews, thank you for you comments, I've made an updates sgf but for some reason BTW Labels don't work on CGoban 3, so I'd have to post on a later date

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Marks for fighting spirit; but you can't expect to win such games without better technique.

Here's just one point. At I would always consider playing P7 rather than Q7. It is a thin shape, maybe, but quite resilient if you later take sabaki chances (at the 3-3 point, double hane or crosscut techniques).

It is partly a matter of style. But deferring fixing the shape means you get to "a better class of mistake" (not kidding, actually). Also you can expect to come away with sente.

To improve, you do have to answer the question "how do I get into better positions?", not just "how do I play the positions I get better?" Worth some thought.