For once I went over a game without using Crazy Stone (yet), so I'm posting it here without computer assistance in the hope of getting some human thoughts. This was a live game played against a friend last night. I was very happy with my opening (though I'm not sure yet how happy I should be!) but made some big strategical and tactical mistakes at the end and lost by 2.5. Thanks in advance for any comments.

141: Can you omit the connection and take sente?

164: For the move on the top that you didn't take, I believe the sente hane and connect is better than the gote clamp.

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Occupy Babel!

Thank you for the comments!

141: Yes, and Crazy Stone confirmed this. In fact I ran into a similar situation a few days later when playing a training game against Crazy Stone, where a stone two diagonal points away from a first-line hane can help reduce the severity of the second-line cut. So hopefully I will recognize this in the future.

164: Yeah, I have to learn to recognize sente and gote sequences more easily.

In going over the game later with Crazy Stone, the biggest mistake that I made that I didn't already have some idea about was that a push at D4 (during the middle game) would have been very strong, because the cut at C3 is huge.

Yeah, that's one that you see a lot after that joseki in professional games, sometimes surprisingly early.

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Occupy Babel!

I just got back from another AGA tournament, going 1-3 as a 3k, but one of the losses was giving 9 stones to a 12k, and all my other games were interesting. The result should bring me back down to 4k, but that's okay. I'm now 4-8 as a 3k, which is decent enough that I'm still going to keep entering tournaments at that rank. And I have four (well, three really) more serious games to learn from!

I guess it's time for an update. I've played 7 tournament games since the last update and went 4-3; my AGA rating is 4.3k but I'm entering tournaments at 3k and feeling confident. In my last two casual games I beat a 3k and a 2k by resignation.

I joined AYD in the spring and have played 15 games in it. It's been an awesome experience and I've already signed up for the next two seasons. The lectures are outstanding (you get access to the full backlog) and getting your games regularly reviewed by a very strong player who knows your play personally is gold. It also has helped with my nervousness about playing games, since I feel like the point of playing is to get a useful review, not as much just to win.

I also have been watching lectures and doing problems at Guo Juan's site. The spaced repetition system is something I was already sold on, and it's been great for retaining things like joseki as well as training my pattern intuition. There is a small mismatch in that In-seong (of AYD) is very up-to-date on the latest fuseki and joseki developments so sometimes I will be memorizing a joseki line that he regards as obsolete. Not a huge deal in practice because obviously the joseki can't be that terrible if everyone was playing it until 2015, but to get the most from his reviews I want play things that he recommends and maximize the review time spent on other things.

I've backed off of all the tsumego (still haven't finished Maeda vol. 1) and am concentrating on playing and studying the areas that those two sites focus on. 1d may still be a while away (and I may never get there) but I feel like my play is a lot more mature than a year ago. Most importantly, I'm still feeling very motivated and enjoying go a lot.

My third AYD season just ended so it's time to take stock again.

My energy has flagged a bit so I've eased up on my brain-busting active studying such as tsumego problems and my activities have mostly been more casual:

• Guo Juan's lectures and spaced repetition problems
• AYD games and reviews
• Serious non-tournament live games with friends

The good news is that in my most recent AYD month I beat a 1d in a serious even game for the first time, which is one box checked off on my list of go goals.

I haven't played a live tournament game since my last update (they stress me out, which is probably another thing to work on), so my AGA rating is still 4k, but I just totalled up my live games since that update, and looking at my even games in that period, I'm 7-0 vs players 4k or worse, 4-4 vs 2k, and 1-0 vs 1k. So I am pretty comfortable assessing my skill as at least 3k, and 2k opponents don't scare me at all.

From AYD and Guo Juan I definitely feel like my sense of "Go culture" on the board has improved a lot over the last year. I feel like there are signposts to guide me in my decisions and I flail less. One promising thing that I've noticed is that my mistakes are smaller. I'll make what feels like a big mistake and beat myself up about how terrible my position looks, only to find when I look at the game on the computer later that I was only down by 5 points or something. If my perception of mistakes is getting more sensitive, that should mean I'm getting better, if that makes sense.

When I look at tsumego I still always feel like a total beginner, but my reading seems to be okay for my level so I'm happy to concentrate on other things for now and just enjoy playing the game at my current level rather than go back into intense study mode. I don't feel like I currently have the motivation to seriously push for 1d (the way I felt a year ago), but if I keep playing and enjoying the game, I hope to maintain my current skill and enthusiasm, and maybe I can make a push later on. Just the fact that I can give players at the 1d/1k level a good game makes me happy with the level that I've reached.

I'm currently going through the Chinese equivalent of Speed Baduk 10-12 (the "Intermediate Series here). (They're great, by the way). I just got to this problem, #16 on p. 68 of volume 11:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc B to play and kill W
$$ | . . . , . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X X . . . . .
$$ | . X X . . X . . . .
$$ | X X O O O O X X X .
$$ | X O . . . . O O X .
$$ | . O . . . O . X X .
$$ ---------------------[/go]

My solution:

The book's solution:

What am I missing?

(Meanwhile: still enjoying AYD, still around 50-50 in live games against 2k AGA friends, just beat a 5d AGA friend down to a 4-stone handicap (went 3-0 with 5 stones). I'll get a reality check at the US Go Congress in a month.)

Maybe this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc B to play and kill W
$$ | . . . , . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X X . . . . .
$$ | . X X . . X . . . .
$$ | . X O O O O X X X .
$$ | X O . . . . O O X .
$$ | . O . . . O . X X .
$$ ---------------------[/go]

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The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

If a3 is not there so black can't play a1 next:

Aha, thanks. So my move does work but the official solution is better because it is more robust to small changes in the position? Should we consider the presence of the stone at A3 a bug in the problem? (I just double-checked and it is part of the problem, not an extra stone I typoed in.)

I suggest that the stone on A-03 is a typo.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

I'm inclined to agree with Bill that there's probably a mistake in the book: this is a realistic looking position and black getting a stone at j1 is a plausible thing to happen in a game because it might have some follow up to the right. So the problem is basically: show why j1 is sente on the white corner group (and if it was sente to the right as well you got a nice double threat). Conversely black getting a stone at a3 is very unlikely to do anything useful towards the left side given black already has stones at b4, c4 etc so it's very unlikely a stone will end up there in actual play.