Life In 19x19

Upon further research appears to be a joseki! learnt something new today!

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Actually a joseki!
$$ | . . . , . . . . . ,
$$ | . . O . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . 9 7 . . . . . .
$$ | . . X 6 . . . . . .
$$ | . 5 4 1 8 . . . . .
$$ | . X 2 O . . . . . ,
$$ | . 3 O . . O . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ +--------------------[/go]

An online game from today, overall happy with my play although I need to improve my reading still (duh I'm only 1/2 kyu )

No catastrophic mistakes and I felt confident in my ability throughout, still a long way to go though!

Unfortunately I've had very little time to play go lately, what with work, studying part-time and various other bits and bobs.

However I'm playing in the Candidates tournament this coming weekend and have most evenings this week free. Given that, I'm going to try and review one pro-game per night in the blind hope I might learn something and manage to win a game or two

Here's a game between an American pro - Andy Liu - and Lee Seedol. Early on in the game Andy has the upper hand but a few slightly odd moves and one weak group later he lose the lead and eventually resigns. Leela had some interesting disagreements with the game moves and on several occasions shows my own instincts to be outright wrong

I vaguely remember reading a review or at least brief comments on this game, but can't seem to find it now poking around usgo.org or their eJournal. Anyone else remember it? Also do you mean Leela Zero or classic?

I found a couple of sentences on usgo.org but not much more unfortunately, it's a shame cause I thought it was a good game and would have been interested in higher level commentary.

It's just ya bog standard Leela, I'm not sure how much more I'd get out of Zero at my level? Can't hurt to have a look I guess!

2nd pro-game of the week! No Leela analysis this time, I'm not entirely sure how much I get out of it. Often it leads to laziness and just letting Leela show me variations instead of reading them myself

I also watched a couple of videos of the recent European tournament final between Pavol Lisy and Ilya Shikshin but didn't look much into it myself

This time it's Kim Cheayoung 3p vs Yu Zhiying 6p. Compared to the last game I think these two play in a style I much prefer, I felt like the game had more of a natural flow to it and I enjoyed going over it alot.

Recently I've been on something of a down turn, not just in terms of wins/losses but in terms of how I feel about my game. Even games I win I don't feel I played well and sometimes I lose even though I felt I did. Obviously something is off about my judgement of how I'm playing but it's quite frustrating.

I still think a lot of this is down to my habit of playing blitz games during downtime at work (I work outdoors and often we have to stop for bad weather), something I really have to stop. Given how much I enjoy going over pro-games maybe this is a solution? Instead of playing myself, if I'm bored or with nothing better to do I'll go over a game or two. Even if I don't actively learn anything hopefully it won't reinforce too many bad habits.

With all that said, this is my third reviewed pro-game in as many days! This is the other semi final from the 1st Go Seigan Cup World Women's Championship, Li He (5p) as black and Choi Jeong (9p) as white

So for the past three days I played in the Candidates tournament in London (the opening round of the British Championship). I wasn't aiming to get through to the next stage but the opportunity to play strong players with long time limits isn't one I wanted to miss. As it happens I played (on the whole) much better than I expected, winning 3/6 - which was my aim - and beat some tough opponents.

Of my three losses one was relatively close, one my standard of play dropped considerably for some reason (although no excuses, my opponent played well and deserved the win!) and another I made a - somewhat embarrassing - joseki mistake and ended up resigning within 40-50 moves... In light of the latter two particularly I think I'll need to work on my consistency, I'll try to learn more joseki patterns and hope that through further study I won't have to many games where I just flop halfway through.

I played last year and won 3/6 as well but I'm fairly confident that I've improved significantly since then. As such I think I want to set a long term goal for the next year or so. By the time the next candidates comes around I want to be capable of qualifying for the next stage. I'm certainly not aiming for British champion but I think it would be a good measure of progress if I managed to qualify.

I'll post my games below after I've reviewed them as I think I have something to learn from each of them

Struttnoddy wrote:By the time the next candidates comes around I want to be capable of qualifying for the next stage. I'm certainly not aiming for British champion but I think it would be a good measure of progress if I managed to qualify.

Assuming Daniel doesn't take his place in the league as he has indicated (and Des doesn't cancel his holiday to Ibiza) I think you qualified this time!

Uberdude wrote:I think you qualified this time!

Haha good to know! I'll definitely have to swot up then

My first two games of the candidates with my comments and a few pointers from Leela. Both are against 2 dans and both I gave good games. I won the first and lost the second but having given it a good run.

I may review two more of the games, one win and one loss again. One of my losses was due to a silly joseki mistake so there's not an awful lot to review in the first place

After that I'm going to get back to reviewing and beginning to memorise pro-games and trying to learn new joseki. I'm going to outright stop playing online for a while too. Having seen how well I can do with decent time limits and proper consideration I don't want to be reinforcing bad habits by playing silly blitz games.

The last game I played at the candidates ended rather abruptly when I made the following joseki mistake. Foolishly and for some unknown reason I believed this move to be a tesuji (spoiler: it's not). I believe it does work in some special cases but 100% not here. Oh well, this loss has inspired me to brush up on joseki/fuseki in the hope I can give this opponent a better game come the next bank holiday!

On that note I've decided not to post my other games on here, I'm a bit exhausted of reviewing my own failings Instead I'll be learning some joseki and plonking a few on here as something of a record to come back to.

The disaster:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W
$$ +---------------------------------------+
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 5 O . . . . . . . . . O . . . . . |
$$ | . X . , . . . . . O . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . 4 3 O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X 2 7 . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . 6 . . 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 8 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ +---------------------------------------+[/go]

How it should happen (black then aims at the marked positions to invade the white moyo):

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W
$$ +---------------------------------------+
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 5 O . . . . . . . T . O . . . . . |
$$ | . X . , . . . T . O . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . 4 3 O . T . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X 2 7 . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . 6 . . 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 1 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ +---------------------------------------+[/go]

A joseki sequence I quite liked the look of:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W
$$ --------------------+
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . 9 . |
$$ . . . . . O . 5 6 . |
$$ , . X . 1 0 3 X 7 . |
$$ . . . . . 2 4 8 . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ , . . . . . , . . . |[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wm11
$$ --------------------+
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . O . |
$$ . . . . . O 1 O X . |
$$ , . X . O X O X O . |
$$ . 9 7 . 3 X X X 2 . |
$$ . . . 5 4 . . . . . |
$$ . . . 8 6 . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ , . . . . . , . . . |[/go]

Hard to tell what's an 'old' joseki or 'modern' joseki or what an AI invention etc etc. I'm sure there are resources out there that explain these a bit more. Does anyone have any recommendations for recent (ish) joseki/fuseki books (in english) that might be worth investing in?

I popped into the Durham go club tonight as I'm there for a few days studying. Had a good game against a low dan player (he wasn't exactly sure but somewhere around 1-2dan seemed right) No Leela analysis this time and my memory of the game afterwards was a mess Hopefully the game record and my general ramblings are at least vaguely coherent!

I've spent the last 4 days playing in the 2nd stage of the British Championship. While I suffered from a fairly heavy dose of imposter syndrome going in to it I had a great time and did much better than I expected. I won 3/7 games, albeit with two lucky wins and one game I threw away. Either way I'm very happy with the result and it actually put me up to EGF/BGA 1 Dan for the first time!

I'd like to aim for 2 Dan by this time next year although it depends how many tournaments I can play and (obviously) how well I do. I'll post a couple of reviews below later today or tomorrow