Hi, everybody!

There are so many new users here since I last frequented L19, but it's also great to see some familiar names. If I may single two people out, it's delightful to see that John Fairbairn shares his amazing expertise so generously and that Knotwilg is also contributing with his refreshingly frank and rigorous style.

I've been playing a lot of chess in the last 18 months. The reason for that was simply that I was playing a few games on FICS during a holiday when suddenly I began to appreciate that game in an entirely different light than before. Somehow, my eyes opened to a much wider and deeper range of possibilities than I had previously known.

I'm just starting to become interested in go again. Part of this is spurred by hearing about AlphaGo. Apparently, AG is showing new possibilities and new ways of thinking about the game. That's all over my head, I think, but it's simply the fact that there is still room for adventure that is so exciting to me. It makes me want to play go not for the sake of becoming a particular rank, but for the sake of exploring ideas.

To an extent, I've been there before, but the difference now is that I genuinely do not care about winning. It's about expressing myself on the one hand, and about trying new things on the other. In other words, I want to PLAY!

See you all here and elsewhere online!

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Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

I find that after almost two years without playing that my level is about 2k on KGS. That's quite pleasing.

One of the mistakes that I made when I was younger was that of trying too hard. Specifically, I would try to learn a lot of things at once and end up not being able to remember anything! So, I have decided to be kind to myself and learn only one thing at a time, starting with life and death. I am making sure that I know all the absolutely essential shapes and their status. It's quite enough to learn the status of one shape a day.

Thus far, I have:

one-space notchers - four die, seven live
two-space notchers - five die, seven live
three-space notchers - four die, six live
door group - dead
J-group - unsettled
Long L-group - murky, but probably a 10,000-year ko
Stones on the third line - four die, six live

That's a week's worth of very gentle and not-very-time-consuming study, but it should prove useful.

My reading does not appear to have deteriorated too badly during the hiatus. I love to play chess, and I think in some ways reading is the same thing as calculating tactics - simpler, even. The fact that stones don't move (except after a glass of wine) is helpful.

One area that I could improve in is in positional judgement. Since I tend to lose my count, I have another strategy in mind for that: simply put, try to calculate losses in one area and compare them with gains elsewhere when making exchanges. Clearly, if I find myself constantly losing points then I will know that I'm not doing too well overall. Likewise, if I manage to keep on selling my opponent rip-off deals, then I can be confident. When I can't calculate the trade - which is really hard to do in the fuseki phase - then I plan to go for whatever looks most efficient.

I'm currently experimenting with a policy of "thickness first". This is what I call a "policy" rather than a specific strategy. Maybe I shall try a "grab territorial potential and defend as best as possible" style at another time. However, one thing I like about the "thickness first" policy is that it makes playing go comfortable: by prioritising strong shapes, one can expect fights to turn out well and for territorial gains to come as the game progresses, and, of course, there is much less danger of seeing a group die in a horrible way. Conversely, the other policy of grabbing first and then weathering the opponent's onslaughts just seems stressful. Perhaps it's better to fight quickly with a thin sword and to rely on lightning reflexes, but if you lack the reflexes (shinogi and sabaki skills, and the ability to defend groups without giving away too much) then perhaps fighting with a great big war hammer is the best bet.

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Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

Great to have you back on the site, Tami! I hope the newfound joy you are finding in go lasts a long time.

I thought I would reflect on a few things and how they influence my thinking about go.

As I have mentioned many times in passing, I like to play the guitar - or rather, I did. Unfortunately, I cannot really go on with that because I have a problem with my right hand related to a very minor disability that I have (if you can call Poland's Syndrome a disability). But I have been learning to play the pipe organ instead (which doesn't hurt my hand), because I have always wanted to and because it would be a useful thing in view of my current occupation as a church musician. As my mentor predicted, the first three months were pretty dreary, but I have just reached the point where the coordination of hands and feet is starting to click and practice is getting to be addictive. Now, what has this taught me? The answer is the value of structured and regular practice.

Unless you are lucky enough to have a large space and a large wallet, owning a home organ with full pedalboard is just an idle dream, which means for most of us the only option is to find a friendly priest and arrange access to a church organ. So, I go to a local church twice a week and practise for about two hours at a time on each occasion. To make progress, I have to have a clear practice plan and stick to my schedule. And it works!

This is one reason for my current approach to go. I don't have a huge amount of time for it, and in the past I have tended to squander time by overloading myself. My organ studies are showing me that it is better to do one thing at a time and to study regularly than it is to try to learn everything all at once every day.

I have also come to doubt the "10,000 hours rule" somewhat. I'm busy and have to earn a living, which means that my only option now for improving at the things that I love to do is to aim for quality of practice rather than quantity of it. The surprising thing is that doing less but doing it regularly seems to more effective for me.

Therefore, with go, I keep a list and add something to it most days. It's usually a shape or pattern, but it sometimes it's a principle or way of thinking about a principle that has been presented to me in a novel way. When I play a game and lose, I take a look afterwards and look for the main mistake.

And I have been losing a lot recently, with my KGS rank falling to 3k. But I think it has been good for me. For a start, I am realising that even if Alpha Go can invent new ways to play, perhaps it's better for me to get back to basics. I am re-reading "Fundamental Principles of Go" by Yang Yilun to address that. In particular, I am thinking hard about the way stones work together and about the direction of play. Often, I get it spectacularly wrong, but it's good to make an effort. I have also been watching Dwyrin's videos, which contain some very helpful and easily digested examples.

My go might not have improved yet, but perhaps my way of reviewing games has. In the past I tended to be a bit shallow, and just look for the most obvious things, but nowadays I am trying very hard to interpret what happened in the light of what I have been studying, and I take more time over it. Also, it has finally dawned on me that a post mortem is good therapy for post-defeat blues. It's not in fact just scratching at a wound: it really does make you feel better when you arrive at an understanding of what happened, because you know that you have learned something, and that you were not just unlucky or bullied or some other excuse - perhaps it's like the relief a villain feels when they finally confess!

Here is a game review. As you will see, I got the direction of play wrong several times, and I really did not grasp where the vital points for influence were. My opponent kindly helped me to come to a better understanding.



Post Script

Don't sweat it, Tam. You don't have to find the best move and you're definitely not expected to. It's enough just to try to play a move that looks good according to the what you know. It will often be wrong, but that's better than playing mindlessly.

Post Post Script

I meant to mention that I particularly like two things that Dwyrin repeatedly says in his Youtube videos, and I like to think of them as the "Dwyrin Principles":

1) Don't attack to kill. Usually single-minded attack-to-kill attacks end up forcing the opponent to live while damaging your own positions around the board. It's enough to extract some sort of profit, such as building a framework, improving your shape, or gaining sente.

2) Give the opponent two groups to worry about. It is a lot trickier to avoid taking losses when you have to defend two groups, so if you can find or engineer a way to make your opponent care for two or more weak groups then you can attack to profit and possibly even kill something in a gainful way.

Yes, both of these ideas can be found in the famous book Attack and Defence, but I simply find Dwyrin's very lucid way of explaining them might have actually got the message through to me. To elaborate, I had a somewhat passive attitude to the concept of a splitting attack (which is principle 2, really), but I'm now seeing it more as a tool that I can set out to use rather than as a phenomenon that I might be lucky enough to find from time to time. It's already helped me back up to 2k.

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Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here: