SoDesuNe paves his road to Shodan

karaklis · Post by **karaklis** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 4:05 am

SoDesuNe wrote:It's a difficult situation when a 1-kyu does not know what a Bent-Four-in-the-Corner-shape is, since KGS claims it's Seki. If they tell you to prove it, they will fight the Ko and under japanese rules you just can't defend every Ko-threat beforehand, because you will lose points.

IIRC the status of the Bent-Four-in-the-Corner-shape depends on the oustide liberties: 2=alive, 1=ko, 0=dead. Am I missing something?

Koffein · Post by **Koffein** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 4:57 am

karaklis wrote:IIRC the status of the Bent-Four-in-the-Corner-shape depends on the oustide liberties: 2=alive, 1=ko, 0=dead. Am I missing something?

under japanese rules bent4 is dead, regardless of any liberties.

for example J1989:

Article 7. Life and death
1. Stones are said to be "alive" if they cannot be captured by the opponent, or if capturing them would enable a new stone to be played that the opponent could not capture. Stones which are not alive are said to be "dead."
2. In the confirmation of life and death after the game stops in Article 9, recapturing in the same ko is prohibited. A player whose stone has been captured in a ko may, however, capture in that ko again after passing once for that particular ko capture.

life is defined locally. the shape itself is ko, but there is no local ko threat, so you can't prevent the capture. ko threats on other parts of the board don't matter when you define life and death under japanese rules.

under area-scoring (basically everything but japanese rules) life is usually defined as "it's alive if you can't capture it in a real game" (simplified)

outside liberties don't change anything - just fill in these liberties before you start the ko.

SoDesuNe · Post by **SoDesuNe** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 5:58 am

karaklis wrote:
SoDesuNe wrote:It's a difficult situation when a 1-kyu does not know what a Bent-Four-in-the-Corner-shape is, since KGS claims it's Seki. If they tell you to prove it, they will fight the Ko and under japanese rules you just can't defend every Ko-threat beforehand, because you will lose points.

IIRC the status of the Bent-Four-in-the-Corner-shape depends on the oustide liberties: 2=alive, 1=ko, 0=dead. Am I missing something?

He had 0 liberties in the game and still claimed it was Seki. Hm, yeah, maybe I should use chinese rules. But then I can't use SE to "analyze" the game afterwards =D

This was the corner:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$Bc $$ ------------------ $$ | . X . O O X . . . $$ | X O O O X X . . . $$ | . O O X . . . . . $$ | O O X X . X . . . $$ | O X . . . . . . . $$ | X X . X . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Maybe someone would like to reverse engineer what White did wrong? ^^

speedchase · Post by **speedchase** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 11:08 am

karaklis wrote:IIRC the status of the Bent-Four-in-the-Corner-shape depends on the oustide liberties: 2=alive, 1=ko, 0=dead. Am I missing something?

If there already is a bent- four eye shape, then with 1 or 0 liberties, it is ko. with two it is alive.
They aren't talking about that though, they are talking about what happens when the attacker can make a bent four at any time, which is death

xed_over · Post by **xed_over** » Sat Oct 06, 2012 10:28 pm

SoDesuNe wrote:my page on senseis library (http://senseis.xmp.net/?SoDesuNe)

I like your journal and your sensei's page.

SoDesuNe · Post by **SoDesuNe** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 8:01 am

Thank you! And sorry for the late reply. I'm kind of drawn towards StarCraft 2 at the moment ^^

SoDesuNe · Post by **SoDesuNe** » Wed Nov 07, 2012 12:24 pm

Uhhh, working at some problems again and my hiatus certainly lead to a decreased reading skill. I'm at Yi Ch'ang-Ho's L&D volume 2 right now and I already got a couple wrong. If I remember correctly I could just browse through this volume last year :X

SoDesuNe · Post by **SoDesuNe** » Sat Nov 10, 2012 7:25 am

Re-discovered goproblems.com (245 problems and ongoing)! They have some sort of ranking system now, I like that very much. Maybe I'm not that bad at reading. Or their 6D-problems are falsely tagged ^^

SoDesuNe · Post by **SoDesuNe** » Thu Nov 15, 2012 4:03 am

I really like doing problems on goproblems.com at the moment. They appear much more "fresh" compared to book problems. Most likely because a lot of them are taken from actual games.

But results-wise I'm so much worse than... well, before ^^ In my regular games with another Go-club-member I'm now down from giving 4H to 2H. And he does not study Go at all :o On the other hand, it's not like that this would be a new experience in Go ^^

My biggest obstacle is not having a plan/a strategy. I remember a recent game on two stones against the local Dan-player. I had lost all my starting advantage by move 30 because I played two bad moves. And this was by far no fighting game. I just blocked from the wrong side (which was major but I did also end in Gote because I played Honte locally instead of assessing the whole board to play big and using my handicap stones to attack) and played an aweful slow move to "help" a running group.
Quite contrary to doing problems, I'm not assessing the board at a given time. I play mostly by instinct or by patterns. I had a lively discussion with the same Dan-player the other day, where he said that he prefers to discover his moves/strategies in the actual game as part of the creativity of Go wheras I am much more comfortable with knowing beforehand how to react in certain situations (e.g. knowing the Joseki, the follow-up, opening patterns, knowing how to exploit the Aji in common shapes, common vital points in middlegame like reductions/invasions etc.).
Maybe I'm too used to get spoon-fed knowledge and rely on the fact that I can read about or learn from another person everything there is to know. I blame my school education.

On a more serious note, I think this "not discovering for myself" vastly hinders my progress. Since I don't know a lot, I'm lost in a aweful lot of situations. I guess I simply have to start thinking again. Better have a plan going wrong than having no plan at all, eh? Maybe throw in a couple of pro games to tune my feeling a little bit.

And problems of course, I love'em : )
Maybe some readers will remember my book-list, I had planned to go through:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

I'm now at 501 Opening Problems. I think I will need to go through this book (and Get Strong at the Opening) at least three-times to get every problem right :X

SoDesuNe · Post by **SoDesuNe** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 4:12 pm

Since it's a wonderful coincidence, I like to share that I'm on problem 361 now. Still a couple more to go to finish 501 Opening Problems.

As I started with opening problems, I was mainly concerned about some feeling for direction, maybe getting to know some patterns or common moves in certain situations but I slowly begin to realize that this put the cart before the horse. Of course due to the static diagrammes, you have to assess the whole board and question the strength of every group, the boundary play between each Moyo or finding the right time to invade/reduce, but since I replay games from John Fairbairn's last book on games of Honinbo Shuei at the same time, I came across a remarkable comment about the opening: Opening moves should aim at a follow-up, they shouldn't stand by themselves, justified only because they are "big" but they should have an extended use as the board develops.
This sounds so simple, I never even thought about it. I only thought about "bigness" like extending from a corner enclosure or approaching.

I'm taking some freedom and give a short summary of the mentioned part in the book:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$Wc The Games of Honinbo Shuei, Vol 4 - Game 8 $$ --------------------------------------- $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . B . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . X , . O . . . , . . . . . X . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . X . e . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . b . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , 1 . . | $$ | . . d . . . . . . . . . . . . c . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . X . . . . . , . . . . . , O . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . 2 . . a . O . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

White is Shuei. The masterplayer. He plays :w1:

, extension from a corner enclosure. Very sound, I can follow.
To maybe rewind one move: Black decided to play the marked move instead of neglecting White the extension to :w1:

(it's Shuei, d'uh! Marked stone and :w1:

are Miai). This is commented as a somewhat negative attitude.

Back to :b2:

. It's common follow-up is 'a', but 'a' lacks appeal because White has P3 in place, low and solid. Black should have played at 'b', to have 'c' later on and thus eliminating any growing framework from White there. (My interpretation of 'b' is that it's a little farer away so that any wall, White might get due to the shoulder-hit at 'c' does not have a big impact on 'b', e.g. pincering it.)
'd' is possible, too. This move aims at surrounding the White stone at the top with 'e' and making a framework for Black.
As John Fairbairn writes: It is the follow-up that counts.

Some moves later in the game:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$Bc The Games of Honinbo Shuei, Vol 4 - Game 8 $$ --------------------------------------- $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . X , . O . . . , . . . . . X . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , O . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . W . . . c . O . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . O X . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . X . . b . O X . . . . . , O . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . X . . . . O . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Black still plays :b1:

later on, ignoring the marked White move. It extends from the corner and prevents a White play there, which I learned is a big move. We saw the follow-up of :b1:

, it's 'a'. But its value is diminished now, since Black has already a strong prosition at the bottom looking to reduce any kind of White framework the right side might produce.
'b' is considered to be better here, aiming at attacking at 'c'.

So now, I try to keep this idea present, to not play moves in the opening because they are just big in the book but because I know what I can do with them later on. I have the feeling that might help me overcoming the no-strategy obsatcle.

And go buy Fairbairn's books on Shuei's games. There are more jewels to be discovered =)

Splatted · Post by **Splatted** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 4:25 pm

SoDesuNe wrote: Opening moves should aim at a follow-up, they shouldn't stand by themselves, justified only because they are "big" but they should have an extended use as the board develops.

This sounds so obvious that it doesn't even need mentioning, and yet I now realise that it is (almost?) completely lacking from my play. Thanks for sharing. Your post was really interesting.

SoDesuNe · Post by **SoDesuNe** » Thu Dec 06, 2012 7:07 am

Completed my first run of solving 501 Opening Problems. Yi Ch'ang-Ho's Selected Tesuji Problems 3 is next. First eleven problems have already been solved correctly =)

post scriptum: And I'm also thorugh with volume four of Shuei's games. I'm now tackling volume three and then maybe re-do volume four.

Dokuganryu · Post by **Dokuganryu** » Thu Dec 06, 2012 8:12 am

What would You say about 501 Opening Problems book? I wonder is its difficulty is appropriate for kgs 1k ?

SoDesuNe · Post by **SoDesuNe** » Thu Dec 06, 2012 9:48 am

Well, I'm around 2k and I got at least 1/3 to half of the problems wrong. For me it's appropriate, and I think I learned a lot while doing the problems (intuition-wise).

SoDesuNe · Post by **SoDesuNe** » Wed Dec 19, 2012 3:53 pm

Almost through Yi Ch'ang-Ho's Selected Tesuji Problems 3, but I'm not focussed lately, so I get a lot of moves wrong or I did not read the strongest counter (counts as solved wrong in my book) since I mostly just "feel" for the right move.

I'm home now at my parents over the holidays, so I have a different environment and naturally I like to see and spend time with some old mates. That's why I'm very shaky with my training regime. I maybe solve five problems a day compared to the 30 (mainly via goproblems.com) I did in the last weeks. And I did not replay a Shuei game in a long time now.

Then I'm not faithful to Go. I still play StarCraft 2, which is as time-consuming as Go can be, and I couldn't resist buying Guild Wars 2 at a highly reduced priced the other day (it's awesome!).

So lots and lots of stuff to choose from, but since folks around here are more into StarCraft 2, I neglect Go for now.

But I'm confident this will pass. Back at my place, I have more Go-players around and when the weekly meetings start again, all will be well, I assume. On top of that, I have a really nice wish-list for Christmas and I'm looking forward to browse through the following:

First Kyu
A Way of Play Go for the 21st Century
A dictionary of modern Fuseki: The Korean Style
...and maybe I'll treat myself to 21st Century Dictionary of basic Joseki vol. 2

Life In 19x19

SoDesuNe paves his road to Shodan

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