Life In 19x19

Boidhre wrote: Edit: My thinking is, that a decent AI's play can't be any worse for teaching bad habits as playing other high DDKs.

Sure, but it's like playing solitaire to me. It's more fun to play real people and there are plenty out there. Check out the L19 room on kgs. If I'm around and have time, I'd play.

A question: DGS recommends using this test to figure out what level you should declare as: http://play.baduk.org/go-test/start.php?

How seriously should I take the results as a guide? (It's telling me 16K European (which is 11K KGS??) which I think is overestimating my strength by a fair bit)

Not very strongly in my opinion. I think we've all seen that test before (at least, I've seen it referenced many times), but I don't think it's a very reliable way to judge your rank (it's better than nothing though for people who have no clue). I would choose something closer to the actual rank you've established on KGS.

Boidhre wrote:A question: DGS recommends using this test to figure out what level you should declare as: http://play.baduk.org/go-test/start.php?

How seriously should I take the results as a guide? (It's telling me 16K European (which is 11K KGS??) which I think is overestimating my strength by a fair bit)

You should not take it seriously. After all, you can go up one or more stones in strength after a single game. Better to think of yourself as a pre-dan player.

Thanks, that follows my own thinking (i.e. that it can't be reliable).

Boidhre wrote:Yeah, I'm working through 321go and gochild at the moment as well as doing 30k-20k problems on goproblems. Should I be going for loads of easy problems or a mix of hard and easy?

The harder problems are intended to get more reading practice. As DDK you have no base yet to do reading. You have to know basic patterns first. You can get this knowledge the easiest way by doing loads easy problems. When you get better, you can increase the part of more difficult problems.

Bill Spight wrote: Then I started playing with my girlfriend's father, who was a 2 dan, and my total went up to five to ten games per week.

And your girlfriend, wasn't she jealous?
I scored 126 out of 200 on that test, which makes me European 5 kyu i.e. 2 kyu KGS. Quiet optimistic, I think. The first 20 problems in test your go strength made me 4 dan. Which I am not. Somehow I am stronger on paper than on goban.

Another game, first one since the one here that I was able to concentrate for much of it: (One bad blunder where I left a ladder get undone by not noticing an atari because I wasn't focused (Depressed so concentration is sub-optimal but CBT encourages goals and Go is a amenable to goal setting in a way few things are))



Questions/Thoughts (so I can get an idea if I'm thinking in the right direction):

W6: Should it have been Q10 and then K4 later?
B31: I really wasn't sure how to respond to this so I just made a wall to create a moyo on top (or at least I think it could be considered a moyo). I think this is ok but would like some guidance.
W46: I think this was a mistake but I'm not sure where else to play.
W62: I figure a bamboo joint in exchange for a wall is acceptable here?
W152: I'm a moron.

With how tight it was, was I silly to not be more greedy outside the Eastern corner?
Should I have invaded or reduced the West soon after he formed the wall in the top left corner? I think I should have but I'm unsure of timing and how urgently it needs to be done, I think urgent but I could be wrong.
I appreciate after seeing the result that I should not have offered to end the match so soon but should have pushed into the bottom East and the centre to try and force him to connect his groups and lose a few points of territory but I was tired and losing concentration etc.
Was I too passive here? Or do some games just have very few captures naturally?

Any comments and criticism very much welcomed. I could have very easily lost this game so that's why I've put it up for review.

cyclops wrote:

Bill Spight wrote: Then I started playing with my girlfriend's father, who was a 2 dan, and my total went up to five to ten games per week.

And your girlfriend, wasn't she jealous?

Oh, no! I think it was a good thing that her dad and I got along.

I scored 126 out of 200 on that test, which makes me European 5 kyu i.e. 2 kyu KGS. Quiet optimistic, I think. The first 20 problems in test your go strength made me 4 dan. Which I am not. Somehow I am stronger on paper than on goban.

You have good instincts.

Some comments.



You won because you made bigger plays than your opponent. Where you lost your way was in the fighting. The top left quadrant was urgent for some time and you eventually ceded a large territory to your opponent. You needed to make fighting plays with unclear outcomes.

P. S. Play as 15 kyu. Play non-rated games. Losing them is fine. Rating does not matter now. Playing as 23 kyu will not give you enough of a challenge.

Thanks for your analysis. Any ideas on the best way to learn how to fight? (it's the area of the game I'm most uncomfortable with) Just loads of games or tsumego?

Boidhre wrote:Thanks for your analysis.

De nada.

Any ideas on the best way to learn how to fight? (it's the area of the game I'm most uncomfortable with) Just loads of games or tsumego?

Loads of games where you avoid fighting will not teach you how to fight. You took big plays while your opponent won the fighting, and you just barely won the game. How do you feel about the plays where I said, You gotta? You gotta be willing to jump into the unknown.

Study of tesuji is good, but the biggest gains your opponent made came in the upper left quadrant, where you failed to engage him. He won the fight when you avoided it. Fighting isn't just about tesuji and life and death.

You won because you took big plays while your opponent took small plays. A lot of your errors came from replying locally to his small plays. Following your opponent around is a natural habit to get into, but should be resisted. It is especially harmful when your opponent is weak and you answer a small play with a small play. That is one reason why I recommended playing as a 15 kyu. Your opponents will make better mistakes. Another reason is that they will also take big plays, maybe as well as you do. So you will not have easy wins based upon your superior feel for big plays. You will have to fight. Sink or swim.

Bill Spight wrote:Loads of games where you avoid fighting will not teach you how to fight. You took big plays while your opponent won the fighting, and you just barely won the game. How do you feel about the plays where I said, You gotta? You gotta be willing to jump into the unknown.

Study of tesuji is good, but the biggest gains your opponent made came in the upper left quadrant, where you failed to engage him. He won the fight when you avoided it. Fighting isn't just about tesuji and life and death.

You won because you took big plays while your opponent took small plays. A lot of your errors came from replying locally to his small plays. Following your opponent around is a natural habit to get into, but should be resisted. It is especially harmful when your opponent is weak and you answer a small play with a small play. That is one reason why I recommended playing as a 15 kyu. Your opponents will make better mistakes. Another reason is that they will also take big plays, maybe as well as you do. So you will not have easy wins based upon your superior feel for big plays. You will have to fight. Sink or swim.

Thanks, that makes sense. Perhaps playing aggressively in handicap games will teach me a fair bit about fighting? I had a good game against a 9k last night and got some pointers from a 2k afterwards so what you said about SDKs being willing to help is definitely true. I don't feel comfortable reregistering as a 15k to be honest, it feels a bit like cheating my opponents into giving me teaching games rather than asking politely for them. I don't really care what rank I am at the moment, I just want to learn how to play better.

I just don't instinctively like jumping into the unknown. I guess this is something I need to get over the hard way through exposure to it. I see the logic in your variations on the fights, I remember considering the cuts but dismissing them as too risky. I need to get over my risk aversion. I had the exact same problem with Real Time Strategy games when I started with them, I'd play far too passively and had to train myself out of it by reviewing games with better players and taking their advice. Not that I ever became good or anything like that.

Boidhre wrote:Thanks, that makes sense. Perhaps playing aggressively in handicap games will teach me a fair bit about fighting?

In high handicap games let your motto be Bundolo! (Which, in the language of the apes, means Kill!) {That's for Tarzan fans. }

I had a good game against a 9k last night and got some pointers from a 2k afterwards so what you said about SDKs being willing to help is definitely true.

Great!

I don't feel comfortable reregistering as a 15k to be honest, it feels a bit like cheating my opponents into giving me teaching games rather than asking politely for them. I don't really care what rank I am at the moment, I just want to learn how to play better.

Sorry, I did not mean representing yourself as 15 kyu. You have not been playing long enough to have a rank. OK? If you want to be 23 kyu, play as 23 kyu. (When I started out I never knew that there were ranks below 10 kyu, myself. To me, 10 kyu meant beginner. )

Bonne chance!

Bill Spight wrote:You have not been playing long enough to have a rank. OK?

Understood and agreed.