Hi everybody

Long time no see but maybe some of you remember me. Watching Bakuman made me think of Hikaru no Go and I found myself ordering a load of go books. I've resolved to post one game review a day in order to quickly get back to my former strength. Of course the real goal is to surpass my old self as soon as possible.

Anyway here's my first game:

Things didn't go quite so well in this game.

Hi Splatted,

Game 1.

Your question here: fix your shape at Q8 with , instead of the greedy move.

Game 2.

The local move for W is R5.

If you want to fix the cut with a tiger's mouth, it's L7.

Thanks Ed Lee your comments were very helpful.

Some comments on the first game:

And some for the second:

Did you count before you resigned the second game?

_________________
Occupy Babel!

No I didn't count before resigning. Lesson learned hopefully.

Thanks for the comments skydyr.

I've decided a game a day is too much to upload. I'll still do the reviews but I feel like I'm unnecessarily spamming the forum and it doesn't leave time to discuss the games. I don't know how often I'll be uploading now but I think less is more so maybe once or twice a week. We'll see.

That being said, here's another game:

I feel I should also write a post documenting my current study methods and what I'm thinking, so without further ado:

I have the following books:

Elementary Go series by James Davies
- Life and Death
- Tesuji

Lessons in the fundamentals of Go by Toshiro Kageyama

All about life and death (1+2) by Cho Chikun

Also Relentless is on the way, as a I want to join the study group.

I'm currently working my way through the Elementary go series: Life and Death problems and Lessons in the fundamentals of Go. The problems seem very simple to the part of me that still thinks I'm a 3k but also many of them are too hard. I fear as the book gets harder towards the end I may be forced to switch it out for something else. That being said I have already noticed some improvement in my reading ability. When I first started it was almost impossible to read anything and my mind would be constantly wandering but it's starting to come more naturally now. I think my main problem is keeping track of liberties while I read so I'm trying to focus on that for now.

I've only read a page or two of Lessons in the fundamentals of go but I feel I already got a pretty hefty realisation out of it. It should have been obvious but the fact you can improve your reading by reading the same thing over and over had never occurred to me and has significant ramifications in my approach to tsumego. I've resolved to read key branches multiple times until they're either comfortable to read or at least noticeably better than when I started. I bought this book thinking it would be a fun read but mostly full of things that I already new as good practice when trying to acquire a skill, but this early revelation has encouraged me to take it more seriously. I've resolved to go through the book step by step not moving on until I've applied what Kageyama suggests.

The other thing that seems worth a mention is my rank; I'm a 12k at the moment, which is honestly a little tough to swallow since I was a 3k (I think) and last time I took a long break I went pretty much straight back to my previous rank of 5k. The question of what's different this time is obviously on my mind a lot but I really don't know. Perhaps it was a much longer break or perhaps I got much stupiderer somehow, but 3k seems an impossible height to climb to. It's hard to imagine the small daily steps adding up to so much progress. Trying to look on the bright side though, this is an opportunity to remake my go without all the bad habits. I was pretty entrenched as a 3k before but I may find that when I get there this time the wall just simply isn't there anymore!

Edit: I've noticed that when I'm playing stronger players I don't feel like they are playing on different level but rather that they simply don't make the stupid mistakes that I make. Perhaps this means that I can get control of these bad habits I will regain my rank quite quickly. The key seems to be beingaware of liberties, like in my tsumego, but also making sure I actually read things out. I do very little reading in my games and it definitely costs me. I need to fight the part of my brain that tells me everything's either too complicated to read or to simple to need it.

Hi splatted,

Not very good shape. ( Joseki is R11, or Q12. )

J4.

Seems inefficient. Can you find a better local move ? Again, inefficient. Can you find a better local move ? You're happy to block at C13.

.. You force B to make good shape & live 100%.

This pull back is very strange feeling.
First feeling is get ahead, K10.
You mentioned Mr. Kageyama's Ama to Puro --
chapter 4 talks about the struggle to get ahead.

Right, but...

...Globally, B lets you fix your mistake in sente -- Q9.
The local shape is P3.

Thanks for the review Ed Lee.

Can you explain at J4 for me. I feel Like C6 is under threat and F4 doesn't need to worry about being cut off from L3 once it's connected to the left.

I like your move better than J4. Just my opinion.

_________________
be immersed

Ditto. It shows a healthy attitude of looking for the most important place on the board instead of meekly following your opponent. However after black defends the corner I prefer to build the left with d11. Trying to attack the reduction stone is hard and liable to end up as dame plus there's not much you can do to the right side with any strength you build.

I've decided I need to learn to incorporate more reading in to my games so have set two rules for myself: no fast games and read at least 3 moves ahead on every move. It's very hard to find a way to properly apply my reading ability in games because my level is so low, it mostly feels like I achieve nothing, but the only way to improve is work at. I feel like no matter how good your reading is there's skill involved in properly applying it to a game and if I had that even my meager abilities would bear some fruit. I hope that if I force myself to read regularly I'll naturally start to find the situations where it makes a difference and further work should make them more common.

So far I've had one game where I feel this was really successful but multiple games where I just keep forgetting to do it. What seems like a simple task actually requires a lot of focus.




Thanks this makes sense.

Relentless came today which was exciting. In it gives the following advice with regards to tsumgo.



This seems worth remembering, and what a wonderful coincidence that the fun problems are also the most helpful. I've decided that the elementary go life and death problems were getting too difficult so I've started on Cho Chikun's All about life and death. It turns out it's intended as reference more than a tsumego book but I'm just treating it as tsumego and it seems to work fine.

Edit: deleted the game to post a different one.

I've started trying to review my games by playing out the games instead of just clicking through the sgf. I still have to rely on the sgf a lot but I think this way but I think it encourages me to think about each move more. There's also a chance I may join a go club and if I do this will be a useful skill as there will be no sgf.

Another game. I'm replacing the one from my last post with this one because I think it's more worthy of review. My opponent obviously didn't want to play me because the automatch kept matching us up and he kept resigning. It wasn't until I'd gained a stone that he agreed to play me. I'm not sure if he realised I was the same person or if he decided a 9k was worth playing. I didn't even realise I'd gone up to 10k so I'm quite happy to be a 9k all of a sudden, whatever the circumstances.

I think you can learn to use some double hane techniques (which requires some reading but not that much). For example, and can possibly be replaced by a double hane.

I'm starting to feel like 3k is not such an impossibility after all, but Lessons in the fundamentals of go is going right over my head. Here's an example:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . X O . .
$$ | . O . X . X O . O
$$ | . . . . . O X O .
$$ | . O . . b a X . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . O
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Apparantly white should play a not b because it's a firmer way of capturing but I have no idea what he means by this. The ladder portion of the book was very beginner friendly so hopefully there will still be other portions of the book that are useful, but the net section is going right over my head.




I've set myself a new rule for while I'm playing games: to always try and read out life and death. It's so tempting to look at groups and just feel satisfied that they look like they have plenty of room to live but it's stupid not to read out something so important. It's also good practice and the goal isn't just to win the game your playing.



Thanks that makes sense. I saw that I'd risk losing a stone and dismissed those lines out of hand, but I now see that that was hasty.

The 'firmer way of capturing' is the one that leaves less aji or the aji is less useful for the opponent. If you capture with B in this example, white can get outside forcing moves at C and D that may help his group and give him outside strength while sealing black in. If you capture with A, white can extend and then black plays to the left of B. There are a few peeps left, but they don't result in white strengthening his existing groups or getting closer to sealing black away from the center.

I'll agree that this section is not the most clearly written, but the gist of it is that you should capture as cleanly as possible, so that your opponent gets the least amount of use from the captured stone. Sometimes that's the net that prevents a ladder breaker, sometimes it's the ladder that doesn't give local forcing moves, and sometimes it's one net over another for similar reasons.