the willow way

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Wed Nov 20, 2013 9:35 am

I feel like lately, I've gotten to a point where in my games, things are a lot tighter, in the sense of walking the line between disaster and success much more closely. There is a strong move to be played, that I think of almost immediately, but it doesn't win outright, or can make everything more precarious in the name of getting a good result. When I read it out and see that the result is precarious as far as I read, I start looking at other moves which lead to more stable positions, and often make these plays instead. In exchange, though, I take an inferior result which puts me somewhat behind, or doesn't quite work, because I was afraid of the real move, or didn't judge it correctly.

Of course, for the past while, I've often played in a way to complicate even when I didn't need to, so there's a balance to be found. I'll try and post some games where I see this happening, but quite often they are in person and unrecorded long enough that I forget them to some degree. Does this make sense to you stronger (dan level) players out there, and what did you do to break past it?

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Mon Dec 16, 2013 12:00 pm

I recently finished this game, and despite a couple of misreads, think I did pretty well. I really enjoyed the situation in the bottom left later in the game, so I'm posting it here to show it to everyone.

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Mon Jan 06, 2014 10:28 am

Success! I beat a local AGA 5d last night with 5 stones, though I got a bit lucky in parts. I've included the game below, which has some branches where I am remembering the order a little oddly, since it was last night, but the gist of the game is there.

We went over it afterwards, and I've included some of the comments, but more are always welcome.

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:21 am

This is a game I played recently on OGS and lost horribly. I'm not certain exactly where I went wrong, so comments would be greatly appreciated. I've included some notes in the SGF.

Claint · Post by **Claint** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 8:46 am

I like this willow way, for overall progression strategy in things.

Honestly, I was started reading this journal, and it looked a lot like my adventure with the game. I learned go, played some games for a few months, then came back years later.

I also became stronger without expecting it, from different sources. But also many years have passed without play.

I hope you become shodan and progress beyond.

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Tue Feb 04, 2014 7:20 pm

Claint wrote:I like this willow way, for overall progression strategy in things.

Honestly, I was started reading this journal, and it looked a lot like my adventure with the game. I learned go, played some games for a few months, then came back years later.

I also became stronger without expecting it, from different sources. But also many years have passed without play.

I hope you become shodan and progress beyond.

I'm not sure it's the best strategy, but it seems like as good a one as any. I think that, so long as you are thinking about go, you don't need to play too much to get better, up to a point.

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Mon Feb 24, 2014 9:32 am

A week ago, roughly, I played in the NOVA Chinese New Year tournament as a 3k and did quite well, at 4-0. Unfortunately, the time limits are such that it is hard for me to record the games, and after 4 of them, they all jumble together a bit, but I can describe a few of them a bit, at least:

In my first game, I took white with no komi and won by about 10-15 on the board. Don't recall a lot of specifics, though.

In my second game, I played against someone I've played several times in tournaments before, with 2 stones. In our previous tournament game, I'd taken 3 stones and lost by 3 points or so after I inexplicably made too large an extension with a weak group and lost it, though I got compensation on the outside. This game, I approached a 3-4 stone, made a moyo following an inside small knight's approach, two space high pincer, take the corner. Beat up on an invasion a bit to devalue the side while I built strength and took sente. My opponent took another corner and invaded the other side and I beat up on that making points on both sides until I won with strong endgame, by about 10 again.

The third game, I played with 3 stones against someone who later said they had never played against handicap like that. They played too aggressively and I killed a group, cut, killed another in a semeai and maybe a third while I claimed more than half the board.

The fourth game is the one I want to talk about, though. It was, in my opinion, a decidedly low quality game on my part. I was exhausted from the previous three games, and started misplaying right away. I had 3 stones handicap. I approached his 3-4 high, went into a magic sword variant which I misplayed and ended with a sealed but alive group and a few forcing moves on the outside facing one of my hoshi stones. He extended from the wall, so I kicked and fought, intending to sacrifice those forcing moves for a better bottom position. Then I played some early endgame moves in sente, and took the bottom star point behind the wall. He approached the bottom right star point on the inside, so I kicked, he extended, I jumped, and he played the 2-10 move. I don't think I dealt with it in the best way, because I didn't make that many solid gains, and ended in gote with ugly shape. He approached my UR star point on the right, so I defended with the small knight's move since his wall was close. He then approached my corner group with a small knight's move, so I kicked (probably bad) and one-space pincered his UR corner approach stone. There followed a sequence where I desperately lived in the center while conceding a lot, got a picnic ko on an edge hane on the top side, lost the ko to reduce the center, played endgame, and then had him start a ko against the UR corner based on the previous one where I traded the corner for a large group of stones in the bottom right. Then a bit later he played a hane-connect on the right side, only in between my responding to the hane and his connecting, I forgot I needed to fix that, and played a nearby atari. So he took my stone, and I played a few stones to try and keep him from living on the right and saving the traded-for group. At this point, he counted, and counted, and kept seeing the score as dead even, so instead of responding to my original atari and taking his gain, he chose to save the dead stones and fight a semeai against the dead corner group. In the ensuing fight, I failed to notice that he hadn't had time to disconnect my corner from my living stones, played to get an eye in the corner, after which he cut me fully. I was quite lucky that I won the semeai by a few moves, and thus the game, but it seemed like pure luck. I was convinced I had thrown away the game with the hane-connect error.

What I would really like to figure out, though, after all of this, is how to keep myself from falling into that low-quality state, where it's too difficult to read and every senteish move must be responded to. I know a lot of people seem to get it after lunch, but do you all have any tips or suggestions?

Ember · Post by **Ember** » Mon Feb 24, 2014 10:59 am

Congratulations on your great tournament performance! 4-0 is more than "quite well", which sounds more like an understatement to me. ;-)

Anyways, your games sound like real thrillers, I really enjoyed your writing about them! The last game especially sounds like it would make a good movie. :-)

And luck is at least at amateuer level a part of the game, sometimes in one's favour and sometimes not. In the end, everything kind of balances itself out.

On your question: I know this feeling all too well, it comes to me many times right before the start of the third round on saturday evenings or on sunday after having had a short night (which is not that unusual when playing a tournament). What helped me this weekend was either getting in a little "nap" (I don't really sleep, I just close my eyes and try to relax for maybe 10 minutes) or taking a little walk outside if the weather is nice - like in that saying "After dinner rest a while, after supper walk a mile!". I found that to be a good tip. But I'm also curious to read what others suggest.

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Mon Feb 24, 2014 11:04 am

Ember wrote:Congratulations on your great tournament performance! 4-0 is more than "quite well", which sounds more like an understatement to me. Anyways, your games sound like real thrillers, I really enjoyed your writing about them! The last game especially sounds like it would make a good movie. And luck is at least at amateuer level a part of the game, sometimes in one's favour and sometimes not. In the end, everything kind of balances itself out.

Well, it was a kind of odd tournament, results-wise. I went 4-0, as mentioned, but so did four other people, in a field of about 26 or 27, and I don't feel like I really deserved the last win.

Splatted · Post by **Splatted** » Mon Feb 24, 2014 11:07 am

Quite well seems like a bit of an understatement after winning 4-0...

skydyr wrote:What I would really like to figure out, though, after all of this, is how to keep myself from falling into that low-quality state, where it's too difficult to read and every senteish move must be responded to. I know a lot of people seem to get it after lunch, but do you all have any tips or suggestions?

The million dollar question. All I can say is that trying to brute force willpower your way through it is probably not going to work, and that you just need to accept that your brain needs rest. I've noticed that at the conservatoire where I study the best musicians seem to take lots of brakes to the extent that I initially thought they were quite lazy, and I wonder if this is a two way thing. It's easy to see that they need to take regular breaks because it's not possible to maintain a high level of concentration for an extended period of time, but perhaps they're so good at reaching that level of concentration because they always take breaks when they need it and so are also practicing this deep concentration every time they practice their instruments.

Edit: +1 to napping as well. We were actually told when we first arrived that we should all learn to power nap. XD

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Mon Feb 24, 2014 11:43 am

It's tough to nap when you have 4 games in a day. Our tournaments are rather packed, time-wise. Perhaps a bit of meditation or something would help, though.

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 7:56 pm

So I went to the US Go Congress and did alright as a 2k, 3-2 taking 1 bye. I intend to put all my games up here, but for now, here is the first one. I don't recall the later endgame, but I have the result written down.

I need to go to bed now, but I will add comments later.

TIM82 · Post by **TIM82** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 11:03 pm

Just some musings on the bottom right corner upto black :b23:

. Not sure of these, take with a grain of salt.

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 8:14 am

TIM82 wrote:Just some musings on the bottom right corner upto black . Not sure of these, take with a grain of salt.

Yeah, I discovered this going over the game afterwards as well. Pincer to the large knight's approach is not something I play often, to say the least, so I was muddling through as I played.

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 5:26 pm

Here's my second game, with some commentary, but it was not my finest hour (or three):

Life In 19x19

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