Life In 19x19

Hi L19,

It's been a while since I last kept a study journal. Although I kept studying go, the 110% effort "dan-or-die" attitude that came with maintaining one has put me off from doing so again while having only minimal time to spend on go. Until now that is. Summer is upon us, and one of the benefits of being a teacher is having two glorious months to spend as I see fit. What better way than to make up for lost time with the stones? In a few days' time I'm leaving for China, where I will be studying under the tutelage of Yan An 7p in his go school, through the following program: http://internetgoschool.com/goinchina.vhtml.

Some excerpts:

Guo Juan's Internet Go School wrote:Since 2006, we have been sending Western students to study Go in a Go school in China. All of our students have had fantastic experiences with the great teacher Yan An 7p and the students from his Go school.
The study schedule is intensive, studying Go six days each week, so we only accept students who are really eager to work hard and improve their game through tough training.

Guo Juan's Internet Go School wrote:Study Go at least 8 hours a day, 6 days a week.
Teacher Yan An 7dan pro will give you exercises and play teaching games, and review all of the games you play against the other students in the Go school.
Play at the Go school with other young Chinese students (they are really strong!).
Play teaching games with other teachers from the Go school.

Some of you may have seen my tea-loving avatar pop up in other threads here and there, but most of you probably don't know who I am. I'm a Belgian single digit kyu player, currently ranked at EGF 7k, KGS 2k, IGS 6k, Tygem 3k, WBaduk 9k. Those ranks are really just numbers. In China, I'll just be the weak foreigner with the freakish amount of hair.

I plan to update this thread as much as possible, writing about the general experience, the contents of the lectures, sharing some games reviewed by the pro teachers at the school and perhaps share a daily go problem from the exercises at the school. If anyone has any requests or things they would like to know, feel free to ask and I'll try my best to help out.

My apologies to the admins for starting a second study journal, but I do feel this one is significantly different from my previous one. If it's not allowed to have two study journals, feel free to delete the old one.

I'm very much looking forward to the experience, and hope to be able to share it with all of you.
Hush

Awesome, good luck and have fun !

Have you been to China before ?

Anyway, please share even trivial details of your experience.

I wish I was younger and I can do that !
Please... post a lot of things here

Cool!
I wanted to do the same a couple of years ago but then I was "just" sightseeing in China (even staying a couple of weeks in Wuhan : D). Now I'm too broke and not that passionate about Go anymore.

Really like to read your experience, though! Looking forward to it =)

Good luck to you.

Thats quite a schedule, 48 hours a week seems like a lot.

Today was my first day in China, and even though I've been awake for close to 40 hours now, it did not disappoint in the slightest.

Driving from the airport to the appartment where the other exchange students, Yan An (7p) and his wife live, I noticed the driving styles are somewhat different from Belgium. Every square inch is used, and yet nobody seems to crash. Most cars have battle scars though.

The appartment is really nice, the other students (an AGA 3d from California, an EGF 1d from France and an AGA DDK from New York) are all really nice, as are Yan Laoshi (honorific for teacher) and his family.

Even though I was pretty tired, I couldn't resist the offer of playing a first teaching game with Yan Laoshi (on 4 stones to see what level I'm currently playing at). I was handily destroyed in under 100 moves, and afterwards the review left very little to the imagination. I'm really just a beginner here. Everything I did was wrong, and I'll have to start by doing a lot, and (if I'm to believe the other students) A LOT of problems to improve my reading.



I got a big list of tesuji problems, which will be my homework for tonight. Below I'll give one. I'll post the solution in a later update.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c 手筋（二）: Black to play
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . O . O . . . . .
$$ | . O X O . . . . . .
$$ | . O X . . . . . . .
$$ | . O X O O . . . . .
$$ | O X X X . . . . . ,
$$ | . O O X . O . . . .
$$ | . O X X O . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ ---------------------[/go]

Well, I'm off, I have a ton of tsumego to solve before leaving for the go school at 8 AM tomorrow morning.

Hushfield wrote:I was handily destroyed in under 100 moves, and afterwards the review left very little to the imagination.

Is there any other way to conlcude a game against a professional player? =D

Hushfield wrote:

$$c 手筋（二）: Black to play
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . O . O . . . . .
$$ | . O X O . . . . . .
$$ | . O X . . . . . . .
$$ | . O X O O . . . . .
$$ | O X X X . . . . . ,
$$ | . O O X . O . . . .
$$ | . O X X O . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ ---------------------

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c 手筋（二）: Black to play
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . O . O . . . . .
$$ | . O X O . . . . . .
$$ | . O X . . . . . . .
$$ | . O X O O . . . . .
$$ | O X X X . . . . . ,
$$ | . O O X . O . . . .
$$ | . O X X O . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ ---------------------[/go]

Forgot a variation!

SoDesuNe wrote:

Hushfield wrote:I was handily destroyed in under 100 moves, and afterwards the review left very little to the imagination.

Is there any other way to conlcude a game against a professional player? =D

By winning . But that needs an appropriate handicap (9 stones?) and rest.

Hushfield wrote:Everything I did was wrong,

Excellent milestone.

And as hinted in passing, you may want to take this
opportunity to find out how many stones from pro:
Less than 9, or 9 or more.

Thanks for the encouragement. I am really liking it here so far.

Yesterday and today I did around 150 go problems. The ones I was given by Yan Laoshi at first (one which I added in the previous post) were too difficult for me to solve in a reasonable amount of time. I solved about 6 in an hour, and those were mostly tesuji I already knew. Also, sometimes I'm looking for a tesuji or way to kill that is not there, and then a stronger pupil just glances at it and says: "oh, that's an endgame problem." I've therefore been given Lee Changho's life and death series to work through, am doing volume 3 right now and that seems to be about right. I get around 90% correct and never spend more than a few minutes on a problem. We'll work our way up from there.
SoDesuNe: I'll provide the solution to the problem once I actually manage to solve it myself.

We had an introductory lecture on endgame today. It was mainly about the general order of moves to be played. Yan Laoshi distinguishes 3 categories of endgame moves: sente, reverse sente, gote. Within the sente category there's a further distinction between double sente (sente for both sides) and single sente: sente for just one side). One should always play moves from the sente category if possible, and within those moves, preferably double sente first. In some cases single sente is more important, because it can influence thickness or shape of certain groups, and one should play that. Apart from the general rules on magnitude of endgame plays, we had some calculation exercises on value of endgame moves.

The teaching game today was a 5-stone affair. Yesterday I ended up playing too fast, and so my main focus for today was: play as slow as I have to. For some moves I really took my sweet time. Obviously I still got trashed, but I was more satisfied with it than yesterday's game. I think that's mainly because I took more time.



Ed: about the handicap stones, I'm not sure how valuable such a number is. I don't think they go all-out in these games. I've played Japan's Haruyama 9p a few years back on 9 stones, and won by resignation, but that was a simultaneous game (as most games played with professionals are), so I'm not really sure one can derive an accurate measure of strength (or weakness) from that. I also try not to focus on that too much as two of the biggest flaws in my game (and funnily enough the factors that prevent me from enjoying it at times) are my focus on rank and my fear of losing. Not having a number pasted on me, and losing every single game I play prove to be very helpful for both those aspects.

During dinner, which was excellent - there's a whole array of Cantonese dishes on the table for every meal of the day, we talked about Yan Laoshi's way of teaching. He really focuses on the fundamentals. He preaches patience to all of his students, tells them not to worry about improving fast, but to worry about improving the right way. He really emphasizes the basic building blocks of tesuji and life and death (for middle game fighting strength) and joseki (so we have more ideas and better options to choose from during the opening).

Well, better finish that homework: I have around 70 more problems to solve before going to bed.

Oh, I love the Yi Ch'ang-Ho series : ) I actually bought mine in Wuhan.

Some biased and very personal comments on your first pincer because I faced that opening quite a lot ^^



I think, the move is actually totally fine and it's just a different way to play out the game but I personally couldn't make it work :o

Have fun =)

Hi SoDesuNe, that's a really good point you make. I'll ask the teacher on his opinion about the shape. I've often heard him say we should refrain from playing certain moves which seem playable in even kyu-level games, because we lack the strength to back up our moves against the superior reading of the Chinese kids and pro teachers. I'll consider some other pincer options in future games.

Today there was no lecture, but tons of joseki study, go problems and we also went to the school (there wasn't anybody there yesterday). I played 2 games with Chinese kids. Usually they play very fast and run around, get distracted, etc, but especially the first opponent I played took a lot of time, which was nice, so I didn't have to feel guilty when I took even more.



The second game went much in the same way, but my opponent played a little faster. Still, the game went on for a long time.



Yan Laoshi pointed out several overplays I made in both of the games, but the kids didn't punish them sufficiently. Both times when we got to the endgame the kids were getting really distracted, and I managed to keep sente for longer than I should have.

Overall, I think the games today were a success: I set out the specific goal of taking more time for thinking about my moves, and I managed to do so even in a room full of Chinese kids shouting, running around, and - I kid you not - throwing go stones out of the window.

Non-go related: I had my first hundred-year-old egg today. It really looks disgusting, but it tastes surprisingly normal. They take a duck egg, boil it, than bury them in salty mud. You read that right: very salty mud. After doing that for a day or three, they put them in grass. And then yours truly eats them. Scrap one off the bucket list.

If you see any weird/bad moves by me not pointed out by Yan Laoshi, feel free to comment. All input is greatly appreciated.

I'm off: I got 99 problems, and they're still not done.

Hey Hushfield,

Enjoy your stay in China and also a lot of greetings from the guys from the GGG!

I must admit that I'm a little bit jealous

I'll certainly follow this thread to see what you're up to!

Greetings,
Philip

are you staying at Yan An's place or at the college dorm he sometimes rents out?

also, is he still saying the phrase "suu sou" for a slack move?

Hi cornucopia, how did the GGG tournament go? Say hi to everybody at the club for me.

Often: I'm staying at Yan An's place. The phrase I hear him say most is "no weiqi! no weiqi!", when we play a move so bad it can't even be called go.

Today we had another endgame lecture. It consisted mostly of calculating the value of endgame moves. Below you can find the exercises. You have to provide the exact value of playing in this area, while also stating whether something is double sente, sente for one side, reverse sente or gote.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . b . . . . . . . |
$$ | . a O . . . . . . . O X O X . . . . . |
$$ | . X X O O . . . . O . O X X . X . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . O . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . X . X . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O X X c |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . X X X O O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . O . . . . . X X . |
$$ | . . . X . . . O . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . X e . O . . . . O . X . X . . . . |
$$ | . . X O . . . . . . . O X . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . d . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

I'll post the solutions (I have solutions this time, promised ^^) tomorrow.

Today's teaching game with Yan Laoshi, five stones, much more than five mistakes: