Life In 19x19

School days are a bit different now, as a lot of the kids have other obligations. These consist of piano lessons, violin lessons, dance lessons, English lessons, more math, because, hey why not, right? I even heard that if you're only studying one instrument or have a single extracurricular activity, you're considered somewhat of a slacker. The kids here have so many extracurricular activities it would be enough to give most Belgian kids mental breakdowns or severe depressions. The result: pretty empty go school. All but one of the kids that turned up were in the mid-strong 5d range.

Yesterday's games: In the first game, I played Hu Jian Zi again. It's only my second time playing him. He's one of the stronger 5d kids at the school (I think he's about the same age as the two kids that took the pro exam).

I usually try not to get my panties in a bunch over ranks and ratings, especially as they're not all that accurate in a lot of rating systems. But here's a little more info for those interested: in the schools we visit 1d and 2d are probably strong single digit kyu by EGF standards. There's a lot of variation in the 3d range. There are some pretty strong kids, but there are also those that I can beat in even game. 4d is a bit stronger yet (EGF 2d and upwards), and 5d has an incredible amount of range. The weakest 5d we've encountered would be around EGF 2d, and the strongest 5d can give the weakest 2 stones easily.

For reference: if you want a 6d rank, you need to win (or get second place) in a ranking tournament. I heard that 7d is only awarded to the winner of the amateur go championship. I'm not 100% sure about the exact terms for these last two, but I'm sure there's someone here that knows where to find the exact qualification terms. By the way, Zhou Zi Yi (notice we're at the third different spelling of his name now, this time from the man himself), the 10-year old tsumego prodigy, is off to one of the national tournaments in pursuit of a promotion to 6d. Best of luck to him.

But yes, today's game. Hu Jian Zi is a strong 5d. He gave an EGF 1d and an AGA 3d two stones, played them simultaneously and made both resign in about 40 moves. Still, I'm quite unsatisfied with the game because I lost after once more failing to read an answer in a tactical situation. Need we say it? Do more go problems. For those interested:

The problem:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c Black to connect
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . , . . . . .
$$ | . . X X . . . . .
$$ | . . O . O . . . O
$$ | . . . . . . . O .
$$ | . . O O . X X . .
$$ | . X X . . . . O O
$$ | X O X X . X X X O
$$ | . O O . . . O O X
$$ | . O . . . O . . O
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ --------------------[/go]

The solution: The entire game:


The game against Zhou Zi Yi consisted of me making several joseki mistakes, wrong answers to probes and generally losing my two handicap stones until white decided it was overplay time. This gave me a fighting chance, until I let greed get the better of me.



It was his birthday, so we'll let this slide as a birthday present. Ahum.

Today's games were not much better. A game I won but should have lost:


The second game was another of the dreaded running battles. The result further reinforced my dislike for this type of games:


Writing a study journal can also serve some therapeutic purpose. After today's games at school I felt pretty bad. I overplayed, played crude moves and misread a lot. Having another look at those games, and writing about them allows me to compartmentalize them, and just look for some things to work on.

What to take away from yesterday's games: Continue study of 5-3 point joseki. Do more tesuji and life and death problems. What to take away from today's games: Read far enough ahead to see whether a move might turn out to be an overplay or not. Do more tesuji and life and death problems.

If you stuck with the post this far, thanks for reading. As always your feedback is greatly appreciated.

In my opinion it is easier to analyze and cure overplays than underplays, therefore I wouldn't mind erring on the sharp side, as you are currently doing.
All your games are showing fighting spirit now. Getting the mentality straight is a good primer. Then you can study shapes and tactics to improve the local result. Already one can see recurring tactics in your games which may sometimes be wrongly chosen or ill timed but essentially show that you are building strong go muscles.

Today is our day off. While we're still doing problems and joseki study, no games were played. This is as good a time as any to give you a bit more of an in-depth look at our teacher.

I haven't asked many questions about Yan laoshi's career as a go player, so the biographical info and player history is copied straight from Guo Juan's internet go school.

Guo Juan's internet go school wrote:He learned Go at the age of 11. When he was 16 years old, he received training in the China National Team. He won third place in China ‘Xin Xiu Cup’ (new talented cup) in 1985. 4dan in 1982 and 7dan in 1989. In 1999, he founded the Hu Bei (province) WeiQi Club, and in 2001 the Hu Bei Tian Yuan Youth WeiQi Training Center. He has been successful in both playing and teach Go. He is a famous Go teacher in China now. He lives in Wuhan.

The honorific for teacher in China is laoshi (literally "old teacher", though the old should be seen as a sign of respect, not one of back aches and diminishing strength). Yan An (7p) is known to everybody here as Yan laoshi. That seems normal enough, but he also calls himself Yan laoshi, which we thought was a tad bit weird. The teacher thing doesn't stop there. Both his wife and son also call him Yan laoshi. And if that wasn't enough, the title is carried over to his wife as well. For the longest of times I thought she was called shimu. Until somebody told me that shimu actually just means "the teacher's wife". Even their son calls her shimu sometimes.

Yan laoshi mainly teaches young children (between the age of 8-14). I expect fifteen years of teaching have shaped him just as much as the kids he teaches. He talks in a way which is easy to understand, even if you know little to no Chinese. He loves telling jokes, funny anecdotes and making faces. Even though kids often get scolded during reviews, he makes sure there's laughs to be had as well, so the kids never feel bad after a review. He really likes the kids he teaches, which can be seen in almost everything he does, but perhaps is most clear in the occasional pat on the back or rub through a kid's hair after they suffer a rough loss. He always brings snacks and candy to school for the kids. We've heard that quite a few of his students have turned professional, but I don't have any numbers on that.

If some kid is making the same mistake repeatedly, Yan laoshi pulls out the discipline ruler. Apparently, he used to whack some of the kids on the head with that, until some of the western students (that came here long before we did) pointed out he really shouldn't do that. Now he just whacks the board instead, and air strangles them. The latter move always elicits loud laughing from the students following a review. As a joke, we got Yan laoshi a super-sized rolling pin, and called it his back-up discipline stick. It has already been used quite extensively for home teaching games and comic relief.

Two of his favourite phrases are: sushou (crude move) and bu shi weiqi. shi xiangqi. (that's not weiqi. that's chess!). The last one is often abbreviated to "No weiqi!"

When we're playing Yan laoshi in a teaching game, he becomes a different person. All jokes disappear, and he suddenly looks one feet taller and much more intimidating. While playing, he rubs two of the pale green yunzi from his bowl together. These sound exactly like a knife being sharpened. Just like the proverbial knife, his moves are never fancy, just very, very sharp. He's had a lot of time to perfect the art of the teaching game, but it's still impressive how he only plays basic moves. If you play well enough, he will resign, but if he judges you've made too many mistakes, he will press until you realize the only option is to put two stones on the board at the same time. Except for the seven-stone games with DDK players, I've never seen a game being counted.

Yan laoshi has an impressive collection of tsumego books. Judging from the amount of books, he really favours the two Japanese composers Maeda Nobuaki and Hashimoto Utaro.

Away from the board, Yan laoshi likes good food, fine alcohol, the company of his family, and basketball. Back when Yao Ming was still playing, that was his number one idol, but lately he's followed China in rooting for Kobe Bryant. It's probably his only flaw of character . Yan laoshi used to play for a very long time, and according to his son (by far and away the best basketball player in the neighbourhood), Yan laoshi used to be a legendary 3-point shooter. We got him a new basketball for his birthday.

I was surprised to discover Yan laoshi also likes video games. His smartphone is a portable game station that never stops entertaining. One of the games I've seen him play the most is a Chinese old-school space shooter (in tradition of Gradius or R-Type). He's really good at it (still haven't managed to break his high score).

Hey Hushfield, I really enjoy following your blog here. Thanks for sharing!

Hushfield, this is an amazing journal Please keep sharing. Very inspiring!

To everyone else:
I've been trying all day to figure out how to order 围棋定式大全, the Joseki book, but I can't figure out how to get Amazon.cn to work for a US user. It's very intimidating, and quite confusing.

Sorry to ask this, as I'm sure this may be common/tribal knowledge, but I am new: does anyone know where I can buy it from a place that actually wants my money?

Thanks for the comments. SamT: I haven't ordered anything from amazon.cn yet, so I can't really help you on that front. Have you tried asking a local supplier of go books whether they can order it? In the US, I've only ordered from Yellow Mountain Imports before. For people in Europe, try sending an email to Go Webshop Keima. Both suppliers were very quick to answer my questions.

Today I played my first game at 3 stones. As was to be expected, the gloves are coming off:

I did around 80 problems (40 tesuji and 40 life and death) yesterday, as well as a review of one space low pincer joseki and some more 5-3 point joseki. Tesuji problems are getting a bit more difficult now. I'm currently working my way through Lee Chang-Ho Tesuji vol.5. It's not the moves themselves (most are very easy to spot), but I sometimes make mistakes in putting them together in the right order.

One of the problems I didn't solve yesterday:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c Black to play
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . , . . . . . ,
$$ | . . X . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . X X . . . . . . .
$$ | . O X O O . . . . .
$$ | . O O X . O . . . ,
$$ | . . O X X X . O . .
$$ | . O O O X . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . . . . . .
$$ ----------------------[/go]

I expect to be done with my 1200 life and death problem book in at most two more days.

One can't help but admire a move like White 128, killing an eye while finishing off another big group too.

The mistake in the joseki is also a mistake in the basics. Giving white a turtle shape in exchange for an eyeless string can't be good. One must resist here and draw out these stones, even when fearing a large scale attack on the big chain. If you'd lose that fight, then at least you have put up a fight (wei qi) and also White will have to work for the capture, so that you should get some compensation on the outside.

Other mistakes were very hard to avoid in my opinion. Especially #7 & #8 "slow/cowardly move" vs #9 "overplay". This is already a high level of play and analysis.

I really love how these teaching games play out, there is a lot to learn.

After reading your post about how Yan Laoshi treats the different handicap games, I tried to follow this in my own handicap games. It's really hard though ^^
My judgement (and play in general) is obviously not good enough and while I don't try to win handicap games by any means necessary anymore, I find it hard to resign and then point out, why I think my opponent played good enough to justify this.

I guess it has a lot to do with how you think a certain handicap should be played.
Recently I played a 7H game and my opponent divided White's stones reasonably well but then frequently forget about defending his stones. At the end Black had twice as many groups on the board than White. I was glad that he was not afraid to attack but overall his stones did not work together (fun fact: at the end he had six groups. Meaning, almost every handicap stone got cut off).
For me, cutting White's and connecting Black's stones is the primary goal in such high handicap games. So I felt resigning was not right.


post scriptum: The answer to the problem is really hard to find on your own. But if you saw it once, you will always remember because it is so whacky : D
I like it very much, though, because it is one of the Joseki-gone-bad-problems, if I remember correctly.

SoDesuNe wrote: After reading your post about how Yan Laoshi treats the different handicap games, I tried to follow this in my own handicap games. It's really hard though

Perhaps the lesson to learn is to play teaching games with a smaller handicap than would be required for equal winning probability. Then you can let Black off the hook and allow them to win the game if they play reasonably well. On the other hand this might even be easier with high handicap.

I don't know about the resigning though. I feel it gives a false image to the student that merely playing good opening and early middle game is sufficient to earn you a victory, while a lot happens in the endgame and late middle game. In teaching programs the positive feedback of winning on your own account is often substituted by the teacher's approval. Then when the teacher is gone, you're on your own and suddenly the positive feedback must come from winning, which you haven't really learnt through all that kind resigning.

I do of course understand that a teacher cannot go through the motions of moves 100-250 in every teaching game. That's why it is important I think to complement a teaching program with games against peers, as seems to be Hushfield's case.

The answer to yesterday's tesuji problem: I agree with Knotwilg on the teaching game handicap: playing reduced handicap is a good idea, but always rewarding your student with a resignation is not. In fact, the reason Yan Laoshi does this with the foreign students is because he wants to train our fundamentals like direction of play above all else. We have limited time with him, after all. With local students that commit to longer study programmes, Yan Laoshi doesn't do this nearly as much. With the same student that was playing the rotational symmetrical 3-4 point handicap, he's now keeping the game close until endgame, and trains her on counting and playing the biggest points first. If she makes only a few mistakes in endgame, he will show no mercy there and finish the game. After the game review, she has to do 9x9 and sometimes 13x13 endgame problems, categorizing moves from big to small and double sente to gote.

In the review of my last teaching game with Yan Laoshi, I showed a variation in the upper left corner, and called it a 5-4 joseki. This is partly the result of both people that speak Chinese already having left. We get the most important points of a review, but it's more difficult to get long explanations now. After studying the joseki variations for a large knight's move in response to an approach to the 5-4 point, I found that the move I played is not joseki at all. It's an overplay. My apologies for the earlier mix-up. For those interested, I converted the 5 pages from our joseki book (p.716-721 for those who own the book) into the sgf below. It includes both joseki variations, as well as under- and overplays and their refutations.



I'll post today's games when I get both of them reviewed.

I'll fix the pages at http://senseis.xmp.net/?45Point43ApproachOgeima if I find the time. Any potential copyright issues?

That tesuji problem is one of the most beautiful things I've seen in this game. I thought I was dreaming the first time I solved it.

Knotwilg wrote:I'll fix the pages at http://senseis.xmp.net/?45Point43ApproachOgeima if I find the time. Any potential copyright issues?

Ha! Ha! Ha! That's a good one.
Or are you seriously concerned about all the joseki content 'sourced' from Ishida?

I don't own the place. I take responsibility for my own contributions. I was never involved in copying the vault of names from GoGoD or joseki from Ishida/Kogo. At the time we've argued a lot about it and I wasn't too happy with the course taken. I did transfer the Gokyo Shumyo version by Hashimoto Utaro to Sensei's and IIRC the problems were considered to be in the public domain, while the solutions were either found by SL members or referenced as Hashimoto's.

So, in the same spirit, I'm asking this question. But I'm glad it gave you a moment of laughter.

Knotwilg: while I assume joseki would fall under public domain (if even problems do), I'm not sure about all the specific diagrams explaining refutations of improper moves. Perhaps quote those as being the work of 廖渝生 (Liao Yu Sheng), the author of 围棋定式大全 (WeiQi DingShi DaQuan) (ISBN-9787536458857).

While there were almost no kids at School Stairs, School Pink Stones seems to be doing well for itself during summer. The 2-week recess was used to paint the walls, both inside and outside, and it has been cleaned quite thoroughly. Since a new semester just started at the school, there are a lot of new kids in our class. Many of these appear to be first-time students of Yan Laoshi. They've been assigned the same tesuji and joseki book as us. I played two of the new kids yesterday and today, and found - perhaps unsurprisingly - they are not yet at the same level of the kids that were here before them. I won all four games, but played really poorly.

In yesterday's first game my opponent made a pretty big mistake in the opening, and then lost all sense of direction for a couple of moves. I took advantage and had a lead which should have been comfortable. I should learn to play solid and thick moves if this happens again. I didn't, making the game closer than it should have been.



The second game of the day was played with a 9-year old girl who's new to the school. When I noticed a mistake in joseki, I quickly went from trying to punish the mistake to overplaying. I was not punished, but should have been. When I realized I was being a bully on the board, I let a second white group make easy life, and guided my opponent towards the big points in the endgame.



Today I played both kids again. Instead of slowing down, I played even faster. This resulted in a big mistake in reading early in the first game.



In the second game, I played almost at the kid's speed (no thinking), and the result on the board was clear about who was having the better end of that deal. When I noticed I wasn't doing so well against the little girl I beat by over 40 points yesterday, I overplayed big-time. In the end the game became really close, and I managed to sneak my way towards a close win.



After the review, I went over the game once more with Liu Jia Yi, and highlighted why her moves were good and mine bad. Also, she has gained the rights to all snacks I receive from Yan Laoshi.

Except for the losses against the three 5-dan opponents, all of my games this week have left a bit of a foul aftertaste. It doesn't feel good to win when you know you played a poor game. Playing stronger opponents forces me to look for better moves. But why does playing weaker opponents lure me into playing worse? I should work on playing a more consistent game.

Because we still study go most of the day on our free days, I feared that the problem with this week's games may be non-go related: I need some time off. I ditched my problems today, played some browser games, went out for basketball and did absolutely nothing productive. Right now me and my room mate are both lying in opposite corners of the room, and the AC remote is right in the middle of said room. Neither of us can reach it from our beds, and it doesn't look like either one is getting up soon. Forsti: if you're reading this: I can do this all day, man. I'm not getting that remote.