Life In 19x19

Yukontodd wrote:

But I badly need to finish working through Tesuji by Davies, I'm not finding it the easiest of books to get through unfortunately.

I really dislike this book too. I have been having much better luck with "Get Strong at Tesuji". It's almost entirely problems, six problems per page with brief answers on the flip side, all levels mixed together but graded with one to three stars. If it's too hard now, you'll maybe like it better than Tesuji once you hit sdk.

Yeah I like that book a lot, I've been doing one and two star problems for quite a while. I'm starting to do the occasional three star problem for reading practice also. Thanks for the advice.

Starting Lithium tonight. Fingers crossed etc.

Clubs day at the local university went very well and there seemed to be a good bit of interest in go.

My mood is better today. It's been quite labile off the mood stabilisers, I hope it stabilises with the Lithium.

A friend loaned me "A way of play for the 21st Century" so I could take a look at it. It's way over my head. Loads of interesting ideas in it but I'm just not strong enough for them to be that applicable on the board for me. Fascinating book though, just what I needed this evening to put me in the mood for more study. I think I'll try and get some more of Get Strong at Tesuji done tonight. I don't feel up to playing a game unfortunately.

Lithium, well, the side effects are a bit interesting (I was spitting up blood for a short while...) but no nausea which would have been what I feared the most, I had a bad experience on Epilim (sodium valproate) and severe bouts of nausea. I'm on a low dose at the moment (400mg), so we'll see what happens when that's most likely trebled.

Boidhre wrote:A friend loaned me "A way of play for the 21st Century" so I could take a look at it.

By Go Seigen?

EdLee wrote:

Boidhre wrote:A friend loaned me "A way of play for the 21st Century" so I could take a look at it.

By Go Seigen?

Yes. Highly interesting.

Boidhre wrote:

EdLee wrote:

Boidhre wrote:A friend loaned me "A way of play for the 21st Century" so I could take a look at it.

By Go Seigen?

Yes. Highly interesting.

Indeed, the fellow who's style is impossible to understand, let alone try and imitate, but one must try.... one must try

tomukaze wrote:Indeed, the fellow who's style is impossible to understand, let alone try and imitate, but one must try.... one must try

They say, a good pro to model your style on might be someone like Otake Hideo or Takagawa Kaku. Their games are famous for showing how to play in a solid and shapely way. Don't get me wrong, Go Seigen is wonderful, but at our level it`s probably easier to get mileage out of studying Otake. He also wrote a great book on the opening, which your might want to read. It`s called Opening Theory Made Easy.

Just went through some of Otake Hideo's games there and they're beautiful. Thank you Tami.

Concentration is terrible at the moment. I'm doing a fair few problems but it's very draining. It's stemming from a complete lack of focus which is leading to great boredom on my part. It's very nostalgic, I was like this for years and years before I was on medication but never recognised it as "something wrong," it had always been there since childhood. It's only on medication that I've been able to focus fairly well.

But anyway, mostly working through 1001 Life and Death Problems at the moment. Some supplementary problems on gochild as easier "brain food" when I've a few free minutes.


Tomorrow I'll be attempting to teach go to strangers for the first time at an gaming (board/role/wargaming) event. It should prove interesting.

For what it's worth, I found playing go most difficult when I was around 10-11k. For the opening, I had learned enough to think that I had a good reason to play one move or another, but as soon as the fuseki was over, I was at an utter loss. I had no idea what I should be attempting to accomplish, and each move felt like trying to find a lost shell on beach. Well before the endgame, I was typically mentally exhausted and many games ended in disastrous embarrassing blunders.

A few stones later, the middle game now feels like the fuseki did then. I at least have the sense that there is something I'd like to try, so I do, and sometimes it succeeds, more often not, but I don't get the feeling of being too overwhelmed to concentrate anymore. I still lose track of whole-board issues in the midst of a local fight, but it's not as bad as it used to be.

daal wrote:For what it's worth, I found playing go most difficult when I was around 10-11k. For the opening, I had learned enough to think that I had a good reason to play one move or another, but as soon as the fuseki was over, I was at an utter loss. I had no idea what I should be attempting to accomplish, and each move felt like trying to find a lost shell on beach. Well before the endgame, I was typically mentally exhausted and many games ended in disastrous embarrassing blunders.

This is my experience too, except I'm normally quite comfortable in the yose even if I'm pretty weak still there.

daal wrote:For what it's worth, I found playing go most difficult when I was around 10-11k. For the opening, I had learned enough to think that I had a good reason to play one move or another, but as soon as the fuseki was over, I was at an utter loss. I had no idea what I should be attempting to accomplish, and each move felt like trying to find a lost shell on beach. Well before the endgame, I was typically mentally exhausted and many games ended in disastrous embarrassing blunders.

A few stones later, the middle game now feels like the fuseki did then. I at least have the sense that there is something I'd like to try, so I do, and sometimes it succeeds, more often not, but I don't get the feeling of being too overwhelmed to concentrate anymore. I still lose track of whole-board issues in the midst of a local fight, but it's not as bad as it used to be.

A while after becoming shodan, I came up with a definition:

Being shodan means that you always have some idea where to play. It may not be a good idea, but at least you have some idea.

Today went very well, myself and Tomukaze were kept busy teaching people almost from 11am to 6pm.

Oh, and I beat Tom even for the first time during one of the lull periods but unfortunately I didn't record it.

Actually I feel utterly enthused about go from seeing so many new people get so excited about the game. Teaching people might just do wonders for my interest in this game.

My confidence about my go is a bit better after the game with Tom. To be fair he was distracted during it with a second game even against a "15k" (we're guesstimating the guy's rank, he'd not played in years) so it wasn't a real victory but still it was a nice change from losing all the time!

Things are quiet go playing wise for me, I've been busy enough with the go club. We had our first meeting last night and had 14 people show up which was great! My only game of the week was a game with the local EGF 2k on 6 stones. We didn't finish it, I think she had it won but it felt "comfortable" as a handicap. I didn't feel horribly out of my depth. I'm fitting in tsumego and tesuji problems where I can during my day so I'm not totally neglecting go. I'll get a serious game in on Sunday most likely, depending on how many beginners show up and how much teaching I have to do.

Edit: The Lithium seems to be suiting me. We'll see how things pan out as the dose is increased but I'm in excellent form at the moment.