The struggles of a go enthusiast in a far away galaxy

[MrHeisenberg]

It is very useful how you keep track of progress in terms of books which you read.
Can you post full titles of the books.

[BlueHazel]

I just want to say you don't need to set goals to achieve higher . If you love Go and continue to persist in it you WILL get better. No one at my school (I'm in high school, started in 5th grade) plays or even heard of Go (except for a couple Asians that don't know how to play). While I've had a private teacher to boost me with how to play the game, the path from 5k to 2D was all by myself, and I surprisingly only played a game per week or even once per month.

Oh and when I say persist that means persist smartly... I found reading some books not only interesting but also helpful. Don't bash out 10 games in a day because your mind needs to be perfectly clear! If you play on IGS and you find me on I will be glad to talk. I'm kind of lonely.

-Blue Hazel
2D IGS

[EdLee]

I just want to say you don't need to set goals to achieve higher
I'm in high school, started in 5th grade…
the path from 5k to 2D was all by myself...

Then do you have any idea what it's like to start Go at the age of 35 or over?
Be mindful your experience and advice are based on your perspective.
Other people's mileage may vary. Tremendously.

[BlueHazel]

I just want to say you don't need to set goals to achieve higher
I'm in high school, started in 5th grade…
the path from 5k to 2D was all by myself...

Then do you have any idea what it's like to start Go at the age of 35 or over?
Be mindful your experience and advice are based on your perspective.
Other people's mileage may vary. Tremendously.

As people age, yes they are unable to learn as quick- that has been proven. That wasn't my point. Speed isn't the thing.
As one engages in any activity, he is revealed to different scenarios and learns from them. I wasn't trying to imply similar progress speed, but that self-improvement happens naturally.

Sometimes trying a new method of looking at the game gets you past roadblocks, and that is what I believe I did. No matter HOW OLD, people are able to grasp things sooner or later.
Review games you have both won and lost. This lets you analyze what you did wrong/what your opponent did wrong (why he lost).

When I said not setting goals, I meant not saying like "I want shodan". Instead, simply have "I love go, and I will continue to learn and grow as I engage in this art." Setting specific goals is getting stress that can be unnecessary, while having goals to learn is not.

Bottom line is, regardless of age, you put in the time, it'll happen. A slower learning curve, no matter how slow, has a positive slope.

[1/7,000,000,000]

Well, it has been a while since my last post but i'm still around. In those past couple of months i didn't play much on KGS (no surprise there), solved a couple tsumegos, finished at last the 4th volume of graded go problems for beginners with 60-70% success rate, read some other books and didn't progress at all or not that much. Fortunately i discovered DGS in April and i've been playing there, it's a great place to experiment with/learn josekis and this is what i've been doing. It was kind of training for the EGC 2014 (there's gonna be a long post later about my experience there). Anyways i bought like 10 books from the EGC and when my exams finish in September the plan is to delve into them. Perhaps i should focus more on playing but tsumegos are so fun :p

In a previous post i wrote something about changing the context of the journal and i'm eager to do it. So instead of posting my boring games and wait for someone to review them or worse my even more boring statistics -which none cares about- i'm gonna give back to the community however i can. Maybe it will be some variation in a joseki, a nice tsumego, a strategic concept, an interesting position who knows? A week before i leave for Sibiu i started solving the intermediate Cho Chikun and since there are no solutions i thought maybe i can give it a shot. So here are the solutions and some false variations for the first 12 problems. DO NOT TRUST ME! There might be mistakes in there so be careful.

http://lifein19x19.com/forum/download/file.php?id=4964

ps. for some reason it changed the order of variations but you can figure it out

[1/7,000,000,000]

Well, it's been quite some time since my last update. Not a lot has happened since last time concerning go. The main thing is i participated in the 2014 EGC in Romania. Supposedly i would write about this in my previous post but i was so tired after i returned and then time passed and i lost all interest in go and when i found it again it was too late, so long story short i didn't write that report.

In few details, i stayed both weeks and they were my two greatest weeks of my life. The people i met, the games i played, the lectures, the simultaneous games with pros, the casual chat and play with a beer next to you, i won't forget any of this for the rest of my life. My daily schedule went something like this: wake up at 08.00, eat breakfast, go to the venue, play a round in the main tournament, watch a lecture, sign for the simul, eat lunch, watch more lectures, play a simul, play in the evening round of rapid, stroll around aimlessly with a big smile on your face, watch a lecture, go out with people i met there, drink some beer and play some go, go back to hostel and sleep at 00.00-01.00, rinse and repeat. I could do this for the rest of my life and i wouldn't be sad. If i were to speak about the tournament, the people etc. i would need too much time so i'm not gonna bother that much. What i will say is that i met so many nice and generous people it made think more positively about the world. I don't know, maybe it's the east asian culture of politeness that permeates the game, but i was positively surprised. Being around so many nice people makes you too behave in a certain way. I was never big on politeness and behave in a pleasant way (i did not behave rudely earlier, but i tried to be honest even if i was unpleasant), but that experience made me rethink my attitude towards others.

From the time i returned i didn't play much go, i kept playing in dragongoserver, solved occasionally tsumegos, but that's it. From this February-March i started a go club in my university in Thessaloniki which has been doing relatively decent. I borrowed some space from the natural science chess club (or stole, semantics) and tried to spread the word among students. I met some new people, organized some meetings, tried to teach a little bit, with below average success but that's life huh. In the meantime i made a page on fb in an effort to organize the Greek go community and with the guys from Athens i think we made some progress. This is the group https://www.facebook.com/groups/350505475160028/, we have approximately 100 members from all over Greece, but mainly students from Thessaloniki and Athens. After May the European Go Centre in the Netherlands sent us 12 go sets that we shared between the two cities and we have organized many meetings with mixed success. This zeal led to many old members start playing again and as of this moment Greece has been having by far it's greatest season in the European team championship in pandanet. We have a difficult task ahead of us since go is so unknown here, but we'll keep trying. Couple months ago someone organized some meetings in Crete, so there's that.

So this is were things are of this moment, even though i graduated i still try to manage the chess/go club in the university, i still play on dragongoserver (1k), have read some books, solved couple hundred tsumegos last couple months and started playing again on wbaduk (5k). There is no new year's resolution, what i need is to finally manage my own daemons so that i can continue improving in go and life and from time to time write silly posts concerning go such as this.

ps. in our fb group we communicate in Greek but i post regularly sgf files with tsumegos or pics (i'm a huge problem enthusiast) and you don't need to speak the language to understand those. Even the comments in those sgf files are in English so anyone can try them. You can check those in the files section so if you are interested stop by to say hello, heck maybe even become a member , why not?

[1/7,000,000,000]

Continuing from yesterday's post i would like to say this; the thing that hit me hardest is the difference between my lvl and a pro's. I had no delusions of grandeur prior to the tournament but man talk about a gap. None can understand what i'm talking about unless he sees a 50 year old pro playing 5 simul with handicap, a glass of beer by his side, taking turns demolishing his opponents left right and center. And after each defeat wiping the goban clean with a sweep of his hand and start reproducing each game while commentating. At times he was not sure of the move order but his opponent would show him the move and he would say ''oh yes'' and continue for the next 30 moves or so. Simply amazing

I also participated in a tsumego contest in that year's EGC. Basically we had 60 minutes to solve 20 problems and time would be a tiebreaker in case two people got the same score. I was one of the weaker players that participated and you can guess from the problems i didn't do very well, but still i take solace from the fact that even very strong players didn't manage to solve them all. For example Shikshin got something like 88 out of 100 if i remember correctly so my 40-50ish should be fine :p The only thing that bothered me is the fact that you only had to write in the diagramm the first move, so someone could get lucky. Anyway here are the problems, they are all black to play, find the best continuation, some might ko (i don't have the answers).

Enjoy!

ps. i hope i don't violate any copyright issues

http://lifein19x19.com/forum/download/file.php?id=6670

[Jhyn]

I was one of the weaker players that participated and you can guess from the problems i didn't do very well, but still i take solace from the fact that even very strong players didn't manage to solve them all. For example Shikshin got something like 88 out of 100 if i remember correctly so my 40-50ish should be fine :p

If I remember well, only the winner got 100 out of 100. After him there was a bunch of people with one mistake that were ranked by time. I don't remember the exact number, but not more than 100 players participated.

[1/7,000,000,000]

You are correct Jhyn, in fact the winner was a teenager from Romania if memory serves me well. I think Ilja came 3rd-5th or something. I knew 3d players who got about 70%, which to be honest was kinda shocking.

[Jhyn]

I did get around 70%, I think. My guess is that some problems looked deceptively simple and since we knew that time would be used for the rankings, we tended not to pay enough attention. I felt pretty stupid for some of them afterwards.

(You're from Greece, right? I think we talked, and maybe played football together, but my memory is fading. If you remember, I was a French 1d, Benjamin Hellouin de Menibus)

[1/7,000,000,000]

You probably talked with my friend, the other participant from Greece. I didn't play any football (luckily since my buddy told me that a few players got injured)

[1/7,000,000,000]

For those that haven't read the book ''The direction of play'' by Takeo Kajiwara i strongly suggest you to do so. This book is simply fantastic. I'd say that it's appropriate for SDK players and probably more suitable for 5k-1d players. As the title suggests it focuses on strategy and direction of play rather than tactics, so if you feel lost during fuseki or middlegame like me, then this probably might be good for you.

As i was watching a pro game the other day i remembered a few passages from the book. What surprised me is the total disagreement between what Kajiwara says and what the pro played. Supposedly black in the game should have built a superior position from the opening, yet he lost (the positions are not exactly identical).

Firstly, i made an sgf file incorporating the comments from the book. I didn't want to go in too much detail, since it might be considered plagiarism, but you get the idea.

http://lifein19x19.com/forum/download/file.php?id=6739

Now, as for the game, here are the details
[2015-12-24] 41st Japanese Kisei, preliminary
Mukai Chiaki 5p (Black) vs. Ishida Yoshio 9p (White) W+R (6.5 komi)

http://www.go4go.net/go/games/sgfview/52051

If you can't open the game this is an sgf with the first 20 moves (not going further for the same reason as before)

http://lifein19x19.com/forum/download/file.php?id=6740

Black lost eventually, but still...Why did white play so bad in the opening and let black get this position (btw Ishida is no slouch either)? Aren't pros supposed to think very hard even in the opening? If white is fine in that position, is Kajiwara wrong? Sure, the book was published in 1979, but this is not a matter of a new joseki, it's just direction of play, this hasn't changed that much. As you can see, the game is not some short of blitz, it's in the preliminaries of Kisei. So, what is going on? What am i supposed to get from this game? Who should i trust? Am i overreacting?

I'm feeling so lost right now.

[skydyr]

Kajiwara is best taken with a grain or two of salt, as he tends to use strong words to emphasize his point.

While games can be won or lost in the opening, this is far from the usual case, particularly at the professional level. Obviously Kajiwara considered the position in question to be favourable to black, and he is using it to illustrate a general point (don't play a 3-4 with the open side facing a strong opposing position.) But even if it's quite favourable, that may just mean that he thinks there's a 60% chance of the favoured side winning.

It's also worth considering that the book was written some time ago, and with the constant research into openings, a line may have been found that leads to a favourable situation for white, or at least a more even result.

[Bill Spight]

Don't worry.

I actually met Kajiwara at the Kitani Dojo. Not that we hung out, or anything. Kajiwara was brilliant, and came up with some original plays and analyses. But he was also a jokester. Not that he was joking in his book, but he had a tendency to exaggerate.

Also, a number of ideas about the opening that were current in Japan in the mid-20th century have been questioned, if not refuted, by pros in China and Korea. I think that Kajiwara may well have approved of the iconoclasm.

Anyway, here is an SGF file with a few thoughts about .

(;SZ[19]AP[GOWrite:2.3.46]GM[1]CA[ISO8859-1]FF[4]ST[2]GN[ ]PW[ ]FG[259:]PB[ ]PM[2]
;B[pd]
;W[pq]C[*** Is this bad? Maybe so.]
(
;C[*** IIRC, a database search some years ago showed that this move had a good result. Also see variation.]B[dp]
)
(
;C[*** You can also approach the bottom corner right away, leaving the other two corners miai]B[pn]
)

)

[1/7,000,000,000]

Still here, still struggling with my daemons. So, what's new?
Since March i reside in Germany, ''doing'' my M.Sc. The last couple go meetings back in my hometown before i left were spectacular to say the least. More than 10 people were attending them and in the last one i was present we were about 20 people! The European team championship has ended and Greece has come 10th in League C (by far our best season).

On a personal note, since the last update of the journal, not much has changed, still play on DGS exclusively, solve tsumegos from time to time and once a week visit the local go club. This Saturday i'm attending the annual local tournament. This will be my first tournament in 2 years so i'm curious about my level and a bit worried about playing with limited time. I borrowed ''Fundamentals Principles of Go'' by Yilun Yang and plan to play a couple games in the next days. My real weakness is fuseki so i hope i'll get some good ideas from the book.

I'll be posting again some of my games and some problems. As i stated in a previous post i would like to give back to the community as much as i can. In the next post the solutions of the problems will be given plus a new set of problems.

http://lifein19x19.com/forum/download/file.php?id=7360

i would welcome any comments/reviews of my games (when i play on DGS i keep notes which appear at the last move)

http://lifein19x19.com/forum/download/file.php?id=7361