Uberdude's journal

[Uberdude]

The final game with Lizzie analysis, I played from around move 140 with under a minute and a 10 second Fischer increment so it was pretty crazy! Not a smooth LZ cruise to victory, LZ said the lead swapped hands 20 times in the middlegame madness! Inviting the g13 atari mistake is based on a ladder which amusingly only just works for me.



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[MikeKyle]

First game was against this forum's MikeKyle, maybe he will upload our Lizzie review.

Sure.

I didn't save the sgf in lizzie at the time but I think i got the order right later on.

For anyone missing the context, this is a huge miss-match (even game 4d v 2k (egf)). Always great to get a game against a stronger player, and grateful for the review too - Bots are fun, but humans can explain using concepts, not just sequences. If anyone has other comments, I'd appreciate that.

frodshamr12019-02-02elf.sgf

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[Uberdude]

I'm through to another British championship match vs Andrew Kay, as expected given we were the only 4ds in a field of 1k-2ds. I lost to Andrew in the first round with a big mistake in a fight and no way back. Won the rest of the games but quite a few (vs Hunt, Wall) I gave my opponent a big chance but they kindly let me recover so didn't play particularly well. Here's the LZ reviews.

White vs Kay. I didn't live with 150 but stupidly died at top, played a load more and resigned when the theoretical ko at bottom became seki.


Black vs Rix (was doing well but mishandled my weak group on left, until he bizarrely let me kill his top left corner when I played a liberty increasing probe and then couldn't kill my middle)


White vs Hunt, doing well until started ko too early. Ended up killing his middle for a resign as I allowed the right side to be a ko.


Black vs Wall or how to overattack and turn your 10 point territory into opponents 35 point territory! He resigned at 241


White vs Mitrovic (most interesting game)


Black vs Fearnley (played terrible on left side!) Played more endgame, ended up (unnecessarily) killing top right with the j15 h14 tesuji combo I'd been aiming at.


White vs Scarff (closer than I hoped, though LZ gives me 90+ from early)

[dfan]

I'm through to another British championship match vs Andrew Kay, as expected given we were the only 4ds in a field of 1k-2ds.

Congrats! But what happened to all the very strong players? Are there no 7d-level players around or do they consider this tournament not interesting? (I have seen that happen locally but it is a bit more surprising at a national level.) I imagine that there must be plenty of strong players around who grew up in the CJK countries; am I mistaken (I might be extrapolating too much from US demographics), or are they not interested, or is there some other reason they don't participate? I saw no Asian names in the crosstable. The top of the US rating list is dominated by people with Asian names: see https://www.usgo.org/search-ratings.

I remember you complaining about this in the past, but I don't remember if there were more details.

[Uberdude]

But what happened to all the very strong players? Are there no 7d-level players around or do they consider this tournament not interesting? I imagine that there must be plenty of strong players around who grew up in the CJK countries; am I mistaken (I might be extrapolating too much from US demographics), or are they not interested, or is there some other reason they don't participate? I saw no Asian names in the crosstable. The top of the US rating list is dominated by people with Asian names.

First of all this is the British championship (not Open), so there is a requirement to be a British citizen or have lived here 5 years. So that excludes the various strong (usually ~5d) Chinese students who tend to study at university for just a few years. A few years ago we did have one, Junnan Jiang 5d, who had lived here long enough for his PhD to compete and win (I patted the racoon belly against him in the Challenger's but lost later!). Whether many of them would play if they were allowed I'm not sure, the timing is bad with university exam season, beating up us native weakies might not be so interesting, and it's a big time commitment. There is talk of changing the format given the declining entry.

There are no eligible 7d-level players (I mean EGF 7d, AGA 7d is about EGF 5d). Matthew Macfadyen 6d has dominated British go since the 70s but he is not so strong now and has retired from competitive play. Shutai Zhang 7d was a Chinese player who lived in England in the 90s and interuppted Matthew's win streak. Bei Ge 5d beat Matthew in the 2000s. There have been the odd 7d Asians here (e.g. 7d Koreans Oh Chi Min, Kim Youngsam studied here briefly, some Chinese 7d students (e.g. Qinmeng Zhang, Quichu Lu) occasionally turn up at London Open or other tournaments. But afaik there are no 7d level long-term residents of Asian origin. There is for example Li Shen 6d, who was active as a 6d child (he won the first Cambridge tournament I played in), briefly resurfaced while a student at Cambridge but has since disappeared from the Go scene again. 2 years ago Daniel Hu 5d (who was active on L19) did win.

European Go demographics are quite different to US. If you look at the top 6d and 7d Europeans the vast majority are natives rather than Asian immigrants as in the US. So UK is quite similar to other European countries, except our top active players are 4d with some inactive 5ds instead of 6-7d. Something I have noticed is a lot of the top Europeans started as children, whereas the current generation of top Brits like me started at university so it's unsurprising we aren't as strong. Our youth Go support/activity has probably been pretty poor compared to other countries though it has improved in the last few years, but still no home-grown dan players.

[Struttnoddy]

Congrats and all the best for the final!

Quick question, I must be missing something but I can't see the seki at the bottom of the board in your game against Andrew? It still looks like a two step ko to me

[Uberdude]

Quick question, I must be missing something but I can't see the seki at the bottom of the board in your game against Andrew? It still looks like a two step ko to me

I left it as the hopeless approach ko for most of the game, started the ko in endgame, he ignored my threat for just a dozen or two points so then it was seki at best or dead but either way was still far behind so resigned.

[Uberdude]

So my goals are:
- at least play in if not win British Championship title match next year
- get 2400 rating
- get solid 5d KGS from non-blitz

Well, I finally got to 2401, though maybe I will lose it once my loss to Andrew Kay in the first title match game is retrospectively entered into the database after the match concludes. I had a nice result at the Wessex tournament: narrow loss to a Chinese 5d after a decent lead, beat a 2d former 4d, got my first real-life tournament win against a rusty Matthew Macfadyen 6d who I've only beaten online and in a friendly game before (reasonably close game for a while in which I sacrificed some bits in a fight, but then when I was blitzing through the 10 second Fischer increment he speed up and made several blunders), and then beat another Chinese 5d after he played perhaps a bit too lazily (he never attacked my AI-style psuedo-thickness and just started the endgame early) but he let me capture some reduction stones in the middlegame and then I won by a point on the board as white.

[xela]

Well, I finally got to 2401, though maybe I will lose it once my loss to Andrew Kay in the first title match game is retrospectively entered into the database

And then maybe you'll get it back again after the second and third games :-) By the way, is there a date for game 2 yet?

[Uberdude]

Well, I finally got to 2401, though maybe I will lose it once my loss to Andrew Kay in the first title match game is retrospectively entered into the database

And then maybe you'll get it back again after the second and third games By the way, is there a date for game 2 yet?

Yeah, not feeling so hopeless after those practice games . Next game is Saturday 9th November.

[Kirby]

Good luck on the upcoming game!

[Uberdude]

I won the second game to set up a decider. Happier with how I played this game: no stupid blunders, just one big misjudgement born out of too much fighting spirit trying to get what I thought was a good exchange before connecting (actually there was another later but he didn't punish) leading to the ko (but I managed to trick him with g18 hane to get back to even) and then an oversight in endgame from a bad exchange that let him save a bunch of dead stones, but luckily it wss gote and I generally played a better endgame so won by 8.5.

[xela]

Sorry I wasn't able to watch this one live and cheer for you, but thanks for posting it. Good luck with the final of the final!

[Kirby]

Seems they should rename the British Championship to the Andrew Title. You guys enter the finals pretty often!

[Uberdude]

In the last 8 years (since Matthew Macfadyen retired) of the 16 finalists the names have been distributed as follows:

Andrew: 10 (5 each for Kay and Simons, 3 times vs each other)
Sam: 1
Daniel: 1
Charles: 1
Junnan: 1
Alex: 1
Nick: 1