Life In 19x19

Thanks Knotwilg, I'm gonna buy it in SmartGo Books *now* (thanks Anders!)

I'm trapped in an odd slump. I've done almost no tsumego since last week (probably 10-15), except for the 4 coming at the beginning of our lessons in the Nordic Go Academy. I've also only played my weekly game there, nothing else for this week. A combination of more work than usual (managing a new campaign of Facebook ads) and a higher number of chores in preparation to our trip to Norway next week have reduced my free time and my available mind power. This has resulted in that I don't want to solve tsumego in my commute but just read something light or just check my RSS feed.

I hope my days in Norway will add some mental energy to my bank... At least they will add some idle time while we are in Tromso chasing Northern lights. After all, there is not much else to do during the day. Probably some Tygem/Wbaduk play in my iPad... Or writing for my blog. Let's see.

Not many news. For my birthday my girlfriend gifted me a set of stones (I'll buy the board), Come up to shodan (by Rin Kaiho) and The Art of Shogi (non-go related, but cool enough). Also got me the Quoridor board game, quite fun!

I did not many Go things while on holidays after all. I read a fun fan fiction based on Hikaru No Go (here). I also did a few tsumego in my iPad/iPod Touch and read around half of Sakata's The Killer of Go (up to Sakata-Go). And it kind of shows, even if I'm not actively trying to kill, today I had two games and in both I ended trying to kill something. Succeeded in one, failed in the other (had to resign...). Both were NGA games so they'll be reviewed.

Now sharpening my tesuji (from Segoe's Tesuji Dictionary) and will do a few problems from Get Strong at the Endgame in preparation for next weekend's tournament.

Also, my KGS rank is now unsettled as 5k?. I guess I'll have to play soon.

Today I played tthe 4th game in February for the Advanced Study Room. If you don't know, in the ASR you need to play at least 4 games to avoid being kicked from it. So... I made it, and chatted a little in the ASR room in KGS. Then stalkor (one of the admins there) reminded me this "blog" had been 3 weeks dead. Oh my... True!

It was slightly hard to get the games... Holidays, tournament and the Mobile World Congress eat quite a lot of time.

I have some reasons for this. One is that I was active in some related topics: playing in the Barcelona go tournament. I asked here several related questions (if I should record the games, why, how), also some questions about my brand new board. But nothing about study... What have I been doing!?

Well, to begin I have not done much about the Yi Ch'ang-Ho tesuji/tsumego series. I have grown slightly afraid of the Tsumego book 2, since I fail too much there. But... My shipping of Japanese books arrived just as I was back from Norway (I was there on holiday for my birthday, catching a glimpse of the Northern Lights just as my birthday loomed in). Which books, you may ask? Easy: one is the connecting book we discussed [url=http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5289]here[] and the 1-dan tsumego from the Nihon-Kiin dan level books. No, I'm not over my head. When I bought it I didn't expect it to be my level, it was just a purchase to get free shipping. It turns out (as Tien confirmed me last weekend) it is my level. They are very good books and I can't recommend them enough.

In particular the connecting book... It has 270 problems, and I enjoy them so much I'm afraid of solving any. I'm on problem 30-40. They are all connecting, by using several connecting tesuji. Some involve cutting the troublesome stones. All are awesome, this is the kind of tesuji I loved back in "Tesuji". I'll be getting a new order soon (some yose books and another books from the dan series).

For my birthday my girlfriend got me Rin Kaiho's Come up to shodan. I've read around half of it, and it is a very sharp book. Very interesting! Also for my birthday, I got myself Go Seigen's A way to play for the 21st century. So far (I've read half of the first chapter or so) it looks like a very interesting book.

Now, for the tournament I plan on writing a detailed post in my blog, but most of what will go there as "new" for my readers will be known to you. I entered as 10k, and managed to win 2 games and lose 3. The two games I won were against French players, and I lost to Spanish players. I hope French players are as strong as Spanish, or I'll be far worse than 10k... The tournament was very interesting, and I got to meet some "new" players (in fact I'm the "new" for them, but I've been playing for longer ) There I found out that Lluís Oh, a Spanish (he's Korean but has been in Spain for quite a long time) is starting a teaching program, and I'll be getting 12 hours starting March. Let's see how useful it is, the price is very good. I'll also keep playing in the NGA, the reviews from Jeff, Tien and Namii are awesome.

To round everything off, I want to get to the Gamma league in the ASR in April.

I think this is everything so far If I missed something, or you think there's some hole somewhere please ask!

PS: I'm attaching a non-go related picture

Today I played 3 games... 3 loses. One was in the NGA league, the next the deciding match in the Kocoro cup and this afternoon I tried to play an ASR game. Since I could not get anyone from Delta to play in 1h, I gave up and played a rated game against a 4k. I want to kick myself in the head after the game. Although I pulled a neat tesuji on my opponent mid game (I think I've seen it in GGPB or in GoProblems, it was neat to play it live), I was losing. Then my opponent went for the greedy play and I could kill a large group of his... And missed by playing a stupid move (truth be told, I had just 2 byo-yomi periods left and the current was almost finished). Meh. Tomorrow I'll win. You can find the game below. Comments welcome as always

One question: why B6 and not C6? You played the same move against me as well. I think C6 is joseki, although I don't know any particular fault with B6 either.

No specific reason in fact. Now you point it, C6 makes better shape with no cuts. Lame on me :/

Lately I've been in a slump. All my games ending as loses, and I just feeling like being 8k (which may be true, who knows?). But then, there are some good signs. And one of them is making me rethink my tesuji training. In the game 2 posts above, I made move 95 aiming at the cutting tesuji in move 97. Of course, it is a "trivial" tesuji... I just found where I had been drilling it: SmartGo Kifu. For a while I had been using a training regime I read about in reddit: how many problems can I solve in a row? I started with 12k problems and worked up until 8k (i.e. once all were solved, move up, fail one: repeat). This particular problem is rated 10k, Problem GP6740. I spotted it very quickly in the game (and before actual play came there) because... I have probably solved this specific instance of the problem around 20 or 30 times.

So for my next tesuji/L&D training I'll keep doing easy problems ad nauseam. I'll mix problems from SmartGo Kifu (still 8-12k) and Yi Ch'ang-Ho's tesuji books 1-2 (and L&D book 1) as drilling practice, since all problems there are solvable for me. Yesterday I purchased (from my Go teacher for the next few months) a fun-looking book with semeai problems (cover and my left hand here), which will make for the "hard problem training" to add. The book looks fun (the kind of book a korean pre-schooler would like), but the problems are far from trivial. For the sake of comparison, Yi Ch'ang Ho's tesuji vol 1 has plenty of semeai problems, and these are somewhat harder.

After all, we can't read all positions like a L&D or tesuji problems. We need to get hardwired patterns we can read in an instant. This (surprisingly) is one of these now, just like the bulky five gets hardwired after a little L&D training.

As for my go, I hope it stabilizes a little and I get to play better. Lately I'm playing a lot of "for fun" games, even in the ASR. I just play without much care and just try to stay alive and fun, without much worry about the score (although I'm getting better at counting the score). This means I'm mostly losing, but I'm getting a relaxed time and hopefully trimming some bad habits (or at least finding them). Yesterday I had one of these against a 4k in the ASR. My fuseki was quite ugly, since even if I got quite a good deal in thickness I could not put it to any use. In the end I managed to only lose by 14 points, which is not that bad (but I don't think it was my good yose in any sense). I waited for a few seconds after the game and the customary "thanks for the game", and then my opponent left. I don't know what other people do, but when I'm the winner in an ASR game I'm the one to offer the review, I never wait for the other to ask (I always ask if [s]he has time for it first). But I guess there are people who act different, or just don't review. Game below.

Not a lot of news as of late. This month I'm doing some go teaching with a Spanish-Korean go teacher (Lluís Oh, formerly known as Eun-keun Oh, Lluís is his Catalan name,) he's an European 6 dan. The first lesson was on Tuesday, lasting 3 hours. We were 3 players, 2 had just learned how to play a few days ago... A hard time! The first hour was a simultaneous game, they played 9x9 with 4-6 handicap stones (I think they played 4 games in total, with rising and lowering handicaps) and I played 2 13x13 games, first with 3 stones (won), then with 2 stones (lost). The second hour was tesuji and life and death problems... Not even trivial for me (the tesuji ones were easier though), then a small session of life and death with them while I was taking a break. And more 13x13. Depending on the number of players, this part would be playing among students, but 3 is an odd number The beginners played among them 19x19 and I played 3 more games 13x13 against Lluís. As before, I won with 3 stones and lost with 2.

Yesterday I had my second lesson, this time I was the only student. The first hour was a 10-min player (3x20s byo-yomi) game 19x19 with 6 stones with review later. Very interesting game... I lost by 7 moku. I was happy... Next, checking my answers to some problems in the fun-looking book I linked in my previous post. Quite bad from my part, "luckily" Lluís acknowledged the problems were not easy, pointing how this one wasn't trivial:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Black to play and win the fight
$$ -------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . O . . . . . .
$$ | . O O X X X . . .
$$ | . X X O O . . . .
$$ | . X O O . . . . .
$$ | . X X O . O . . .
$$ | . . O X . X . . .
$$ | . . O X . . . . .
$$ | . . O . . . . . .[/go]

Then we played through the first 120 or so moves in a game from this year's Nongshim cup (Gu Li vs Kim Jiseok), with him commenting on why some moves were like they were, other joseki choices, what happened if this stone was what... Very very interesting things. Finally we played another 10+3x20s game, this time with 7 stones... I lost by 40 odd points. Basically I lost a whole corner and couldn't recover. But the review was quite encouraging... I had 6 or 7 moves straight in the beginning where he told me it was a great move or the correct move. All in the area that later died

I hope my losing streak comes to a close... Somehow I feel like I'm improving, it's just that parts of my game don't match to each other. Oh, and leyleth & speedchase are already at 4k, beating me to it. I'm now last in our long-run towards 2 dan

The problem offers some really nasty counter-moves from White ^^ First instinct was F15.

It was also my first instinct, and it was my final answer... Missed the cutting variation.



I have just finished the "macroendgame" test in Ogawa-Davies' The Endgame. Scored 54 points, meaning (according to their table) I'm "7-6k". I don't know what ranks they refer to (Japanese?), but it's not encouraging. Yesterday I started working on Get Strong at the Endgame (Christmas gift), and when I finish it (a long, long time from now) I'll give this test another try.

I should play less Go. Yesterday when I was in bed and a minute away from sleeping, this variation crushed my tiredness. In the end, I doze off while searching for a better move...



Any chance, Ko might be the answer?

@Redundant: this was my solution too, but Lluís disproved it (somehow). I think I have to write the variations as soon as I get home from class (the book has no solutions)

Perhaps this?