An Appreciation of Go (Marcus' Study Journal)

[Mnemonic]

Hey, hey, hey, what's this? You aren't spending a significant proportion of your day on go? Who the hell do you think you are? A grownup? (sarcasm)

First off, you beat that (censored, but something evil) Kirby. Second: If I am better than you by the end of the Temovich game HELL is going to rain down on you! (this is my way of encouraging you ) The least you can do is crush the bjesus out of redundant (I think this is an official malkovich declaration)

[Marcus]

I guess it's all about reading. I just played this game. I'm quite happy with the game overall, but the final ladder was a good bit of reading. The game also brought my volatile rank back up to 3k.

For those who want some practice, stop at move 146 and try to read it out:

[SoDesuNe]

Ha ha ha, nice one! =) Good catch! (With focus to the situation, I could also read it out - yay!)

[Numsgil]

I was able to read it out fairly easily, except knowing there was an answer helped a lot. If I saw that in the game, I might not read past 153 or so where the obvious ladder continuation (the other atari) just doesn't work (hope that's not a spoiler).

But yeah, that reminds me of the chapter in "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go" where he says ladders are the gateway to deeper reading since they don't branch at all so it's just a matter of visualization. This one is rather long, but it also doesn't really branch so I'd say most high SDKs should have no trouble reading it out with the knowledge that the ladder works.

You might consider posting it to goproblems.com.

[Shaddy]

I was disappointed when the lower left didn't die. The ladder was pretty cool though, I might have missed that in a game.

[Marcus]

I was disappointed when the lower left didn't die. The ladder was pretty cool though, I might have missed that in a game.

Yeah, I wanted to kill the group, but I misread how to make the ko in my favour. That's one of the mistakes I went over on my own after the game was over.

[gaius]

Nice catch! Though the game really was already over when white had to live in gote at move 118...

You definitely dominated this game

[Shaddy]

I was disappointed when the lower left didn't die. The ladder was pretty cool though, I might have missed that in a game.

Yeah, I wanted to kill the group, but I misread how to make the ko in my favour. That's one of the mistakes I went over on my own after the game was over.

There was no ko.

[Marcus]

I was disappointed when the lower left didn't die. The ladder was pretty cool though, I might have missed that in a game.

Yeah, I wanted to kill the group, but I misread how to make the ko in my favour. That's one of the mistakes I went over on my own after the game was over.

There was no ko.

I'm going to revisit this game in a day or two, when I finally have the time to properly evaluate it. Maybe add to my "Go Problems that come up in my games" SGF/DB.

[Koroviev]

Cool ladder! I managed to read it out from 146 and was pretty delighted...but I would NEVER see that in a game.

[Marcus]

I need suggestions!

While my reading is still not as good as it could be, it doesn't seem to be the real weakness of my game.

After some review and some meditation, it seems like I don't really know how to use my tactics and turn that into an overall board advantage. I guess I lack a sense of direction in my Go.

Often early in my games, I see an interesting line of play and play it out. It usually dpoes not seem (to me) like too bad a line of play, at least locally. However, what I frequently find is that those local situations start to be dissonant ... my structures don't work well together.

I know, what I'm describing is "Direction of Play", right? Well, I suck at it.

I'm totally lost as to where I should start to improve this part of my game. Should I finally try and pick up a book (in this case Kajiwara's Direction of Play, if I can find it)? Are there a specific kind of tsumego I should look for?

I admit that I'm pretty lax on my Go study. Part of the reason is that I don't ever really know what to focus on ... so I just end up playing a whole lot of games and learning piecemeal from whatever comes up there. I have on occasion reviewed my games with stronger players, and have been grateful for their comments ... but I've never really felt like I've had a good study focus to keep me improving at a faster pace.

So, a question for my colleagues on the board ... how should I improve my sense of direction?

[MagicMagor]

One thing is, to constantly remind you to check the whole board position. If you are reading out a local line of play (like an invasion), check the end result with the rest of the board - how does it look, how much influence does your opponent get etc..?
That takes some discipline, but avoids the pitfall of only seeing the local play.

Now, the next question is of course, how to judge a given whole board position. I don't know if there are any good books for this specific topic (i have "Direction of play" but not read it entirely, so i can't say how good it is), but the strategic decisions are probably most important in the opening. So any good book covering the fuseki should be a good start.
Whole board problems (fuseki, find the biggest move etc..) may also be a good idea.

If you haven't read it, i would reccommend "Attack&Defense". Not only is this a great book, it teaches not only the proper tactical ways of attacking and defending it also has chapters about the strategy. When and where to attack are probably sometimes more important than how to attack.

With this you might be able to start making plans during the game. (Attacking this weak group here and use the resulting influence to invade his side/make a moyo) These plans can act as a guideline when evaluating a whole board position.

If you are currently doing life&death/tesuji-tsumego, i would reduce the amount of time spent on these a bit. At least for me, heavily studying these local techniques result in more local play and less strategic thinking in my games.

But overall i find strategy in go still pretty hard and often feel pretty lost during the fuseki.

[Marcus]

As is my pattern, I return to this journal after many months.

I have now reached 2k on KGS (though it's a shaky 2k, and I may flip-flop back to 3k a couple more times). Actually, I feel better about my style of play, lately. What I next need to work on, I think, is improving my reading. Right now it's good, but it's not great. I keep missing important branches, mostly due to impatience.

I can taste the dan rank! it's so close!

[Tami]

For direction, it might be useful to try to apply two principles:


1) Play from weak stones, i.e. turn them into strong ones
2) Leave strong groups, both your own and your opponent's, well alone

Just about every go manual I have seen in Japanese gives these pointers, and a certain not-unsuccessful fellow by the name of Yamashita says No 1 is the 'fundamental of fundamentals'.

Why not try them and see?

[Marcus]

An interesting thought. Thanks for posting!