I think your null hypothesis to see if you got stronger since last year shouldn't be a review now against the game but against a review a year ago, everyone is a few stones stronger in the review just five minutes after the game!

Anyway, have fun, I might drop by one day.

Very true, good idea.

another 5 games in a row that should have been big wins (so up to 9 in total in a row), but one lost by disconnection with almost all endgame done, and other ran out of time on my last stone, about to kill a huge group.

I show one, simply for the alphago joseki in the lower left. It is hard to say if it is better than the old human joseki as it requires understanding of the complex aji in W's position. I find it far harder to judge than 3-3 joseki or others which I am convinced as being significantly better than the old human joseki. Even if this is better, I think it is only slightly.



Ke Jie vs Peng Liyao game 4, teaching tool joseki

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . 4 . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . O 3 . |
$$ . . . . . . . b . . . |
$$ . , . . . . . O . . . |
$$ . 0 a 9 . . 7 5 6 . . |
$$ . . . . . . 1 2 8 . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ----------------------[/go]

I have wondered for a few months (see game vs st24) why alphago doesn't play 2 that often in response to 1 but rather 5, since otherwise B seems to profit by playing 1 initially rather than 2, since B still has access to jumping in the corner at 8. And the normal joseki where B follows up 1 with 7 seems often better for W since W seals off the corner nicely.

When I played 2 recently, I felt concerned that my opponent could easily tenuki and I didn't have a good move, so it was plausible that they could do something extra. Humans used to tenuki to a as a joseki in this shape, but it isn't very convincing when W gets to defend at 7. So alphago's solution of 3 is really cool. And the fight that ensues after B plays 11 at b is fascinating.

personally, I'm still not clear as to why W 6 is forced to play from the inside. How does the 3 4 exchange change things?

It's amusing how nervous I was on the days before the London open. even writing myself a promise "I will just enjoy the event, and not get hung up on the results" to avoid stressing over it, when by day 2, I had gone to the other end and felt totally carefree about it. During day 1, I had felt pretty disorientated, not used to playing long serious games on a real board, getting nervous, paranoid my opponents would see all the things I was be thinking about, and this might cause be to become emotional, sometimes overly greedy, other times overly scared of fights. By day 2, I had summarised a list of things to help me focus, and hopefully this experience will help me when I play in my next tournament:

1) Where are the biggest points
2) Is this move really urgent
3) Which are the weak groups/connections, and where are the shape points, to what extent are they weak, ...

Looking back, it seems clear that however much my go has recovered in the 2 weeks before, not taking go seriously for a term has meant I have stalled. And my 4 ranks/year increase has gone down to maybe 1 rank/year. And my pandanet wins mean little as online opponents don't take the game so seriously and as pandanet is relatively weak, so my opponents this tournament were just stronger. But I do think my play wasn't as strong as my play online. I'm not sure to what extent it is that this is an intense exhausting tournament (and also that I was therefore conserving energy and playing more lazily), or that I focus less well and have worse intuition/reading on a real board, but I think both are a factor.

I had decided that my priority was not to get so tired that I couldn't focus on maths in the week after (compared to thinking of it as a rare opportunity to play and discuss with go enthusiasts). I realised that I almost didn't even want to go to the tournament. It seems that in the past, I could be perfectionist about my go, being at 100% record against most of the dan players I had met (3-0 in several cases) and my 4 ranks/year, encouraged me to maintain that. Back then during my depression, go had become the only thing that meant anything to me anymore, when I had felt helpless at the insanity of life. So this casual attitude to my go feels quite new to me. Maybe this is telling me that I am actually quite satisfied with British champion and can move on. Perhaps it is also just nice to turn down the pressure and letting other people win can be quite enjoyable. But I still feel responsible when I represent a team, such as the Pandanet European Team Champs. I'm not sure how I'll deal with the world amateur next May.

The biggest weird thing that I noticed from my games this tournament is the shift in style. For around 2 years now, my style has been to play very stable games, avoid fighting variations, settling for simple variations, and playing a good endgame. But it felt like I was playing much more messily and fighting this tournament, often not striving to play good moves, but complicated ones. I suspect it is partially a habit from playing weaker players more, such as my good pandanet results, and also just laziness to read, just playing for fun and not consistency. So very often I was playing moves I'd never tried before, just to experiment how they would go. Hence many of my games have huge margins, when normally my games are close.

Another thing of note is that I used up far too much time, often just thinking about one move, and still playing rubbish, running out of time pretty much every single game, being one of the last games to finish every time except the final game.

some reviews (very shallow compared to my normal reviews)

I work on some more reviews tomorrow

20180102:

At move 62, did you consider O16 or even P16? Either makes K17 an even bigger move.

Move 67: I think you are unnecessarily concerned about J4. I would have pincered at Q9.

Move 73: It does look slack. But upon further reflection, it may be best.
There are going to be groups from the east running westward. In particular, your P14 group is probably doomed to run or die. ( Or be saved with a humiliating gote move )
If it does run, it sure would be good to use it to threaten his K15 group while running.

Move 102: Q5 is HUGE. How can he miss it?

_________________
The rise of go-playing bots may force us to regard go once again as a game that is played for fun.
Computers may thus remind us what it really means to be human.

62: I didn't consider any other move, the only other move I'd consider right now is L16 (perhaps you're right that it is more valuable than the corner in this case, I'm not sure)

67: I think J4 is pretty weak given how solid W is next to it. But also given that B has a good advantage, it is natural to defend first. Of course, W is very thin everywhere, so Q9 seems pretty reasonable too.

73: I'd rather chase his corner group out and get my move naturally. Perhaps I thought that I had something better against his corner still, but it is practically unconditionally alive already. Though as W may just sacrifice the group that way, my move does make sense for stability, helping deal with the centre.
Edit: you might be right that it is best, I can't easily judge it, and perhaps I just didn't use it so well in the game.

102: of course, but P16 is huge too, and he is gambling that I make a mistake and fail to kill him, given that he is pretty far behind.

It's been full focus on my maths study this term, and it's reassuring to know I can go cold turkey on my go addiction.

There are many puzzling intellectual questions about how the human mind works:

1) I was struggling with basic maths and definitions last term. But upon returning this term, I found my memory has made a big and sudden jump, and I can focus on learning the key maths points much better. My best guess is that organising something I care about (the Collegiate Go Tournament) has forced me to be infinitely more organised mentally and in life. It's been a great learning experience, given how little I knew of how people worked and how things are organised. My persistent suicidal thoughts for the last 5 years seem to have evaporated, though I'm unsure how long term this is. On the other hand, I am very exhausted from doing maths, and my priority for this week is to sort out enough regular rest time.

2) I seem to only have 2 states of doing maths. (A) is an ability to full focus for many hours and with high quality understanding rate and retention rate. Non-maths things tend to be forgotten very quickly. (B) is a state where doing maths gives me headaches, and I can stare at my notes and I don't feel any intuition for what the words mean, so to do any work I have to go very slowly, line by line, checking what the definitions, writing everything down very clearly.

The weird thing is the massive gap between the two states, and how much momentum staying in one state gives, since it is near impossible to consciously make a transition from one to the other, but when the transition happens it seems to happen instantaneously. The periodicity of fluctuations tends to be of the order of 3-7 days. For the last few years, the state (A) just didn't seem to exist. This term, I'm increasingly familiar with what causes transitions: too much time socialising/ playing go, or lack of sleep tends to force the state to (B), while going to library with earplugs is my best way to induce (A). But I am still puzzled as to why there should be such a disconnect of 2 states and nothing in between. Perhaps it is something to do with subconscious processing taking up brain power.

I don't notice anything similar in go, but perhaps that it because I'm always in the (A) state with go, and just seeing a glimpse of a go position can set my brain running automatically for hours. I'm not clear in what way this is related to my autistic side. I identify much less with autism than I used to 5 years ago, but they do say that there is a correlation with high focus on just one thing.

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I still can't figure out what to do with my life and I'm going to need to commit to some career soon. How far do I want to go in maths & how far in go? One fully, or both to a balance, or neither?
I feel like reading books would be a worthwhile goal to give me perspective and grounding, if my memory has recovered enough for it to be meaningful.

It was enjoyable to visit the Grand opening of the London Go Centre over the weekend and wonderful to see lots of enthusiastic players engaging, talking, and learning. Watching the alphago movie was a great idea, and so was having Catalin Taranu there to teach and play.

I was probably too exhausted, and didn't realise I was going to be playing in a tournament there, but I think the quality of my game wasn't too bad, given that I've stopped making an effort to study go for nearly 5 months.

I just lost a PETC game for the first time to Victor Lin 6d of Austria. Just a very rapid review this time:



edit: found that Q11 is extremely powerful at move 171, as B's centre group is not alive. Other more direct moves to kill unfortunately don't work as the centre group has a pretty kosumi to keep everything together.

For move 120 how about j16 atari first as technique improvement? B should then tenuki (if connect then j14) and g13 is now not sente thanks to damezumari. If he makes the mistake of peeping then you can tenuki (I wanted you to simply jump at g9 rather than g11: aiming at b's weaknesses before taking care of your group seems ill-advised particularly in overtime). So he might try to attack around g11 but without that sente peep to help disconnect and your latent threats against his not quite alive middle I figure you won't die.

a few ups and downs in life lately that are going to change me, so here are my nostalgic words on go.

A beautiful game that combines calculation and analysis with the intuitive parts of the brain. Strong players think in terms of “proverbs”, much as wise people do in life.

Two simple rules, producing unlimited depth and complexity.

It's very weird how I feel increasingly poetic, given my mathematics background.

& wondering about life & creativity, and the nature of my struggles, turbulence, and changes that are reflected in how I view go.

From curiosity to distraction to addiction, to idealistic ambition to "solve" parts of go, to ambition to just get very strong, to sharing my thoughts and research, to teaching, to wanting to share the joy and promote go, to organising a tournament, to all the difficulties that entails, to reflecting on the whole process. And what it all means to me now. Is this a form of "love" for the game? How transient is such a feeling? How does it translate into intention and action? But it is also pretty painful, so perhaps I need to allow myself to take a break for a bit.

And seeing into the complexity of life, and chaotic uncertainty of the future.

In his ABC of Reading Ezra Pound says that poetry is concentrated speech. Mathematics is, as well. OC, we think of mathematics as precise, and poetry as vague and ambiguous.
"A poem should not mean,
But be."
-- Archibald MacLeish

However, math is also ambiguous, with multiple interpretations. Moi, I think of math as a form of poetry.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:

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

— Winona Adkins

The last few weeks seem like some of the strangest in my life. I admit I felt on the verge of being unable to attend the WAGC, my memory losing track of organising plane times and tickets.

Often my actions seemed out of character, talking too much and saying stupid nonsense, and inexplicable, and so did those of others. I'm still not sure what to make of it. Probably a variety of stresses + new environments + insecurities does weird things to people. But I suspect much of it merely lies in a shift in perception filters, and the weirdness arises from noticing, extrapolating, and rationalising different things. Perhaps the mind has a tendency to keep searching for order and logic among chaos and randomness. And faulty guesswork out of youthful ignorance and terror.

So I find myself doubting my perception of "reality" and memory. And doubting my attitudes about what is acceptable or not. Struggling to think clearly about what matters in life: the limits of principles, memories or dreams, competition or co-operation, people or places or ideals. All amid the mess of contradicting social judgements, both external and internal.

Hopefully I can learn from the experience, but it will probably take a while to process. Perhaps I still take language too literally, whether that of others or of my own.

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Now I am back home, hopefully things will be back to business as usual ASAP, with maximum focus on exams for a month.

Probably will work on some game reviews for the WAGC afterwards.

WAGC: 4/8 wins. Good to meet and play some strong players, and exciting to meet top pros for the first time and review games & share alphago variations with them. Japan has some of the most unique and colourful food, and I enjoyed the bento boxes provided.

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One of my more lasting impressions was how many of the go players/organisers were mathematicians. It was curious to hear some life stories from the older generation. And good to hear interesting problems to get me thinking and more inspired about maths (but perhaps that is the exam stress talking). Such as how the Greenland ice sheet has a noticeable gravitational effect on the water around it. So if the whole of Greenland melted, the sea level around Scotland could actually drop dramatically (but counter-balanced by a rise in the southern hemisphere). To be able to start from intuition and converge on truth by successively improving models was an instructive case.

By Archimedes, pure ice melting in pure water will not change the water level (approximating air as having zero density). But pure ice melting in salt water will increase the water level. And then adding in the much smaller effects of gravity makes things very confusing. I can't say I understand the last bit as I would have thought that Archimedes still implies a uniform density in the ocean.

But it did get me asking other questions, such as what if ice melts that is on a landmass (e.g. Scotland). This will surely automatically raise the water level? But will it in fact change the height of the land that it is sitting on (as there is less downwards pressure). How will the Earth's crust react to balance this?

If you're interested look up 'isostatic rebound'(if you haven't already!) The landmass of Scotland is actually still rising by a decent amount per year due to the pressure of the melting ice sheets being lifted after the end of the last ice age, ~10000 BP

They predict that if all the ice at the South pole melted, the majority of which is not sea ice, the global average sea level would rise by a whopping 70 metres!

Great you hear you had a good time and did well at the WAGC