Okay, after settling whether that problem was right or wrong (heh) I have put a table again with LCH tesuji and tsumego vols 1 and 2. So far I have beaten my best % by a huge margin. I'm also counting as wrong a problem I didn't completely settle the status (I read it as "play here, there, here and no way to have 2 eyes," but the shape is almost seki, has a cut so I needed a small extra read or argument)

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I'm playing worse and worse each day. Again 7k KGS

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

This morning's loss (actually my last 3 games have been defeats, and I've only won once after coming back from the NGA summer camp :/) has been followed by a decent tsumego session. My previous run (normal orientation, 5 fails) had been spread among 3 sessions of 41 problems. This time I did the whole book in one sitting (took me around 35-45 minutes, give or take, I didn't check the time I started)

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Played a slower game today (25 min main time), since I was under the impression that my results lately were so bad because 10 min main time was too little after the NGA camp (main time was 40 minutes there.)

I barely won (2.5 points), my opponent missed a trick at the last moment. In this game the winner wasn't the one with the least mistakes but just who didn't make the last mistake.

I am not sure if my exchange of a group of 10 stones in the center was worth the small living group in the right side. Anyone to comment?

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Comments on just a few big points:
Why not double-hane, or even cut at M2?
Bad aji-keshi, as M2 is a huge threat.
Intolerable to let B get the previous big move in sente.
Yes, finally a counter-attack. Nicely timed.
Cut at H10 and fight! B has no way to hurt your two stones.
:w132: Does not work. This was the last chance for Q5 connection.
:b143: Should be S5 to kill. W is ahead after living here.
:w152:-:w154: Should be losing moves, giving B the J4 cut.
:w162: Can actually be L9 to save 3 stones.
:w176: Loses sente for nothing.

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Was close to our local go book shop today and couldn't resist purchasing something. Got "Keshi and Uchikomi."

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Ah, Tartakower! Back when I played chess I hated this quote, it made chess look like a blunder contest. But I liked him (or what I read about him.) He was the "inventor" of the Catalan opening (a queen pawn opening with quick bishop deployment, it has seen a surge in popularity lately according to Wikipedia, back when I played it it wasn't en vogue) which was the opening I used the most until I decided to settle for something that kind of worked as black and as white: Réti opening/Indian king's defense, IIRC (that's opening with the king knight and try to get a fianchetto for the king bishop quickly).

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I made a leather half-board to always have a tsumego/tesuji problem lying around. Also, I seem to read better when seeing stones rather than seeing pixels/dots. Half-board is the smallest useful area which is not a full board. Makes it nice to fit Segoe/Seigen tesuji problems, also makes it easy to set any kind of problem on the table (except full board opening problems, right). It's cow leather, for the lines I was lazy and used a calligraphic permanent pen (it's not as "wet" as a standard permanent marker.) I thought about burning in the lines (but making straight lines with a pyrographer is a PITA) or sewing them (quite a lot of lines, it's incredibly boring.)



The picture is blurry, my camera is kind of dead

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I especially like your 'semi-star points'!

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

The board ends there

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Been reading a few commented Go Seigen games lately. All books from SmartGo Books, first it was Yuan Zhou's The Style of Go Seigen (which I found great, as The Style of Lee Chang-Ho is,) then JF's Go Seigen's Ten Game Matches (which I'm still halfway, after Zhou's it feels very dry but good anyway) and on Friday I got JF's new Unfinished Symphony (I have read the first game commentary already, very good.)

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Won the Nordic Go Academny October tsumego competition (class B) with 34 tsumego solved out of 40!

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Congratulations! =)

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Didn't even open Seigen/Segoe tesuji though

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Ha ha ha, winning the competition is more important ; )

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Did the first 100 problems of the Nihon Kiin 1-dan life and death problems, got 19 wrong. Since number of wrong problems grew incredibly in the last problems (started with 6 wrong out of the first 50) I have stopped and decided to re-start it again. A neat tsumego book.

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Been a long time since I wrote in the journal... Well, next you'll be reading is a review of Jasiek's Positional Judgement 1: Territory (spoiler: I liked it, but it's a heavy read. It will also make you improve at the expense of time used during games.) I hope to have it done by next week.

On other news, I finally relented against Namii's suggestions to play blitz games. He said I needed to play more, "period". Need more experience assessing strength-weakness balance to gauge attacking moments. The thing is, my previous encounters with blitz weren't specially good. They were more like a nerve-wracking, anxiousness-ridden experience. Mind you, when playing go I use to be tense-anxious. But it has been getting better lately: last year (err... the year before last, actually) I'd get sweaty and tense before starting a game, just thinking of a game. Last year I got it down to just before starting, and these days (I mean for semi-serious games like NGA or tournament play) I'll get only anxious in tactical situations (and I think it's because I don't trust my reading...) So, blitz play used quite taxing and not fun, so I'd rather not play or play rarely just a normal, 30'+5x1' game. But since things have changed (I have some more confidence in my play, and also, I know there are many things I don't control when playing a game) I gave blitz another try. It wasn't that bad! I played with KGS's automatch feature on blitz (that's 1' + 3x10") and in 10 minutes games are done, more or less. This is so fast I don't even have time to get tense: by the time the tenseness chemical reaction is getting down my veins the game is done. I've been able to play 5 games so far (4W 1L, getting a solid rank of 5k, but I guess it will fluctuate while I get used to fast time settings... after all one of the wins was actually a loss won on time!) and I can easily squeeze a 10 minutes game here and there during the day, since the experience is being far better than remembered. Yay!

PS: I'm not playing blitz with my RBerenguel account but another one, an account only for blitz play.

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Only 19% wrong answers? That's 81% correct. Sounds like the book is too easy for you now. (50% wrong is about right, both in terms of information -- obvious--, and in terms of psychology -- not so obvious.) As for the difference between the first 50 problems and the second 50 problems, it seems unlikely that the problems are so finely grained in difficulty that the difference is anything but noise.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.