hi,

I've decided to start a study journal for two reasons. Number one is the obvious one: I want to get stronger and I think this will help me. Number two is that during my struggles with go I stumble upon things that are funny or amusing (or annoying and disastrous) that I'd like to write down/share but it seems stupid to create a new thread every time. So this thread is going to contain my advances and victories as well as my defeats and go rants.

A short history of my Go experience
I first learned about go while reading Hikaru No Go when I was 14. At the time we were playing a lot of 4 in a row during class and it got boring. After reading up on the rules online, I challenged some of my friends to some quick matches on a 9x9 with pen and paper. I also downloaded igowin and got up to 12k. At the end of the month I was successfully beating all my friends and they didn't want to play anymore. That and the fact that the magazine that was running the manga went under, led me to lose interest in go.
This summer, while traveling the USA, I finally got around to finishing the manga and my desire to play was reawakened. Luckily the one family I was staying with also played. I asked the dad, boasting that I was a 12k. He of course, being 1k, wiped the floor with me. After that I started an intense week of study and managed to work my way up to 18k. Back in Germany, I joined the local club and hit the 10k mark on KGS after just over 3 months of playing.
Then I was forced on a 2 month hiatus due to starting College and finding and renovating a place to live. I started playing again at the end of December and am working my way up to sdk.

An overview of my "strengths"
I would say I am basically the strongest ddk (<- not something to be proud of ) Because I play a lot (too many?) games against weaker players (roughly half of my club are 15k or worse ) I am pretty strong at punishing mistakes at or below my level. I am also strong at exploiting weaknesses in my opponents formation and halfway decent at killing groups.
Since I have also studied a fair amount of joseki my opening is probably stronger than that of opponents of similar rank.

My weaknesses
Reading. When playing against weaker players I can rely on my better shape and more experience to carry me through a game, but I very often get slaughtered by stronger players. Even if I force myself to read I get crappy results (as anyone can see in my Malkovich )

Other than that I have picked up several bad habits because I play too many weaker players. I don't have a very good feel for the priority of stones, because I usually play a "forcing" move first and then play both points of interest. This turns out to be disastrous against stronger players. Another thing I don't quite appreciate is sente, because weaker players often don't know what to do with it, even if they get it.

Current study goals

Short term goal: 9k by the end of February
Mid term goal: Getting strong enough to represent my club (mid-sdk by July)
Long term goal: Getting strong enough to beat my US sensai in an even match.

_________________
While I was teaching the game to a friend of mine, my mother from the other room:
"Cutting? Killing? Poking out eyes? What the hell are you playing?"

Writing a weblog or a study journal, posting 100 posts the week on Lifein19x19 and kibitzing on KGS are among the least effective methods for improvement. For improvement there is playing, doing tsumego, reviewing, replaying better players games and once in a while reading a book. No offence.

I understand that, of course. Maybe I didn't express myself well enough. For example this problem I did last night:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W White to live
$$ -----------------
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . X . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . X X X X |
$$ . . . . X O O O O |
$$ . . . . X O 1 X a |
$$ . . . . X b . O . |
$$ -------------------[/go]

The solution was (a) but I'm pretty certain that 1 also lives (a and b are miai). It would be stupid to open a new thread just for this simple ddk problem, but this seems to be the place to post such observations.
If I missed something please tell me.

_________________
While I was teaching the game to a friend of mine, my mother from the other room:
"Cutting? Killing? Poking out eyes? What the hell are you playing?"

A and B aren't miai :

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W White to live
$$ -----------------
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . X . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . X X X X |
$$ . . . . X O O O O |
$$ . . . . X O 1 X 2 |
$$ . . . . X 3 . O . |
$$ -------------------[/go]

oops, self atari

Black a kills after this , because white b is then self-atari.

If I had something smart to say I would, but I think I'm just going to proceed to bang my head against the wall.

_________________
While I was teaching the game to a friend of mine, my mother from the other room:
"Cutting? Killing? Poking out eyes? What the hell are you playing?"

No worries, we all malfunction like this from time to time. In my experience, shortage of liberties is one of the hardest things in go to read, I always seems to lose a stone here or there in longer problems

I think I'm on a roll lately. I played at my club yesterday and went 4 out of 4 . On against a 3k with 6 stones, one against my arch nemesis the 1k (I finally beat him in a 9 stone game, even though he killed a huge group of mine) and 2 more against a ddk friend of mine.

I'm also 5-1 in my last online games. Though the one lost is bugging me. Not because I lost it, but because my opponent wouldn't give up and I got frustrated.

The events: I wanted to meet a friend online and still had about 20 minutes left, so I thought I'll play a quick game on KGS. I was winning the game quite comfortably with a huge moyo. We were already in the last staged of the endgame, when he started some crazy invasion. I killed it and thought the game was over, but he tried again. At this point I got frustrated because my friend had already contacted me. I killed his invasion again, and again, and again. At this point I was already chatting with my friend because he was wondering what is taking so long and didn't notice a snapback my opponent set up. This continued for several minutes, where I killed everything and got very frustrated. He finally killed another group and I resigned. More out of frustration and time constraints then because I thought he played better than me.

Here's the game.


Question: What do you do with guy's like this?

_________________
While I was teaching the game to a friend of mine, my mother from the other room:
"Cutting? Killing? Poking out eyes? What the hell are you playing?"

206 @ H8
208 @ N15

He's clearly wanting to mess around, he's clearly miles behind, so kill all the aji so you don't have to read.

In this guy's defence, he was pretty successful with his invasions... If it works, I wouldn't call it "his bad style", but rather "your lack of vigilance".

I know that this feels frustrating, but you did not need to make it so difficult on yourself in this game. You are miles ahead, so there is absolutely no need to let him die in gote or catch those extra 2 points... Just connect everything as solidly as possible (leaving no aji behind), answer his moves, and capture his stones. Stop thinking about maximising your profit (you have enough already) and start thinking about winning the game as quickly and easily as possible!

Next time that an opponent does this, don't worry, don't get agitated, but consider it an exercise. Being able to handle this is an absolute prerequisite for getting stronger. And if you don't falter, you can be doubly satisfied with the game you just won!

_________________
My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

Yeah, well, maybe I shouldn’t play with RL time pressure. Thanks for your tips guys.


I'm still having problems playing against the mid-kyu range. Its right that sweet spot where the handicap isn't so high that it just smothers them, but they are so much better that they can dance around me all day.
The reason being: my reading sux!

So I've started working through Life and Death but the Problems are really hard I am between 40 and 70% depending on how you count. 40% to get the actual sequence and 70% on the first move (where I'm pretty sure I'll get the rest if it were an actual game). Now this would be bad if it were an normal problem book, but prior to each of the sections the scream at you THIS IS THE TESUJI, PLAY THIS AND WIN. I guess I really suck at reading.

On a side note: One of my "students" has reached 24k on KGS. (At least someone is improving)

_________________
While I was teaching the game to a friend of mine, my mother from the other room:
"Cutting? Killing? Poking out eyes? What the hell are you playing?"

Here is a game I played against my "student". I was kind of tempted to post it in the review section, but honestly, its game between an 11k and a 24k. Who cares?


He's been playing for 2 months now and since 3 week on the 19x19. I'm kinda proud

_________________
While I was teaching the game to a friend of mine, my mother from the other room:
"Cutting? Killing? Poking out eyes? What the hell are you playing?"

Update: I still fail at reading. But I am now solid 10k on KGS, that means I want to improve another stone in 3 weeks. Let’s see how well that is going to go

Because of the teamowich I started playing Tengen opening whenever I could and it is unstoppable (sadly I am on the receiving team )

Here is a representative game where I have added some comments.

_________________
While I was teaching the game to a friend of mine, my mother from the other room:
"Cutting? Killing? Poking out eyes? What the hell are you playing?"

I really started training for the tournament on Friday with the goal of reaching solid 9k in a week, and what do you know: after one game I'm 9k whoooo. So I started playing some more and I have now improved 2 stones in 2 days with a winning streak of 15 games, no losses. Was I really that under ranked?

Another interesting thing: when I was around 12k I used to worship 8k's. I couldn't understand how they could play such strong games and really wanted to be as strong as them. Well no I am 8k and I noticed: I still suck! Is this normal when you level up?

On a related note, I still lose because of my reading. I have definitely gotten better and quicker, but I somehow blunder more often than before. I used to lose because I didn't read. I used to think "That looks too tight, let's not try anything there" or "That cut looks too problematic, let's just protect" Now I read out a sequence that seems to work and I rush in. A few plays later I realize my variation was crap and I'm in an awful situation. Weird how getting better at reading actually makes you worse



And lastly I have a question for the audience: Whenever I go to a tournament I usually pick an opening for black and play around with it for a bit to get a feel for it and then use it in the matches. This time I chose this fuseki, what do you think about it?

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c This is a label for the diagram.
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , 5 . . . . , 1 . . |
$$ | . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 2 . . . . . , . . . . . 4 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

_________________
While I was teaching the game to a friend of mine, my mother from the other room:
"Cutting? Killing? Poking out eyes? What the hell are you playing?"

YES.



For me, at least, getting to 12k meant never getting caught in double atari. 10k meant avoiding nets and ladders. Now I read something out and miss that I'm in double atari. wtfbbq.



Why not like this? (Not a rhetorical question; what's better about your diagram?)

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , 3 . . . . , 5 . . . . , 1 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 2 . . . . . , . . . . . 4 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]