I meant for white: for black of course e is rubbish and clamp is the move (or attach if it works like you said, not here). At the other places the label is on one or both players move in that area, e is neither's. In terms of edge yose e is inferior to e3, though it could gain a bit in the centre around f4 but if white tries to make those points black will likely gain more on the left side so it's harder to factor that into the size calculation. Similarly b has centre points effect too.

work in progress...

c: 14 and 2/3 double gote (assuminh white can't block and ko).
d:
e: ar e3 is 12 double gote (assuming white can't block and ko)

Your journal is very interesting,please keep updating it

Today we went to another school. The kids there are stronger than in the school we first went to. I played a 3-stone game against a boy that played incredibly fast. No matter how complicated the position, he never took longer than a few seconds to put down a stone. Most of his moves were excellent, some were not, but I got sucked into the blitz-speed and played very poorly.



The second game I played was 2 stones. I tried to focus on playing as slow as I had to again, and it went much better this time. He played some very questionable moves, which was enough to get ahead enough for some blunders in reading didn't make me lose outright. I got sente at the start of the endgame, retained it for the most part, and won by 5,5 points.

Sorry for the double post, the endgame solutions weren't displaying correctly in the other post. Below you can find the answers for the endgame problems:

General rules for calculating:


Area A

Area B

Area C

Area D

Area E

For d in terms of edge yose it is better (by 2 points and awful aji for white afterwards) for black to descend rather than hane and retain the option of wedging into the kosumi afterwards. However, black loses a little in the n4 area this way, possibly 2 points, possibly zero as in yose terms white n5 is possible so it's complicated to say which is better.

Indeed I missed 2 points in E.

I think the program looks very good:
- you get to study L&D, for real, not as a lip service, and for days, not just the first day after you made the vow
- you get to study the endgame, of which the abstination is another reason for weak players staying weak
- you play a lot of games and every game is reviewed by a pro !!!
- and that pro focuses on the things that make a difference, not on fancy ideas

In the unforgiving eyes of professionals, we 15 kyus and 2 dans approximately make the same mistakes:
- our moves are not severe; we are often happy with making a move that looks okayish proish
- we lose our focus, stamina and discipline and make outright blunders

The root of this is obviously our poor reading ability and our sloth in improving on it. We probably think a lot *about* the game. We should think more during the game.

Enjoy, Hushfield!

Quick note:

The answer for endgame C is a mistake.

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 . y |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . X . X z |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 O 8 |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O v O u . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . 6 |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . 4 5 |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O 3 |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O X X 7 |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . X X X O O 1 |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . O . . . . . X X . |
$$ | . . . X . . . O . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . X e . O . . . . O . X . X . . . . |
$$ | . . X O . . . . . . . O X . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . d . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

tenuki.

After White does not make a solid connection, but descends at 8. Later "z" is a Black sente.

----

Also, Uberdude is right that in region "d" the move for Black is the descent.

----

Edit: Oops! I see that if Black plays first at "z", White has to answer at "v". OTOH, either player is likely to play at "v" first, anyway. An alternative to is "u", which avoids that question.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Knotwilg: I think you're spot on about the program. There are two other dan-level students here at the moment, and they constantly get told to do more problems. Like, literally every game review. The last thing I heard translated from Yan Laoshi was even: "Like this, it doesn't matter how many games you play. You should improve your reading first. Do more problems."

Uberdude: I did exercise D first, and may indeed have fumbled it a bit. Writing the whole post took me over 2 hours, and it served as a great review of the calculating lesson. I'll check again with Yan Laoshi on what the best moves for both sides are. The value is 3 points though, of that I'm sure.

Bill: an important thing I should have mentioned the board is not "one whole board", but just the 5 local positions. There is no relation between c and the position above that. I see now I should have stated that clearly before.

Problem A.



Problem B.



Problem C.



Problem D.



Problem E.



Notice how special those 5 point sente are. I think that the position that I showed before is more typical of real game positions.

Edit: Thanks to Uberdude's eagle eye, I see that I composed problem A too hastily. It looks like I did the same with problem E. Watch this space.

Edit 2: Problem A revised. I moved some White stones from the third line to the fourth.

Edit 3: Problem E revised by raising some White stones.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Bill, in your A white can answer d18 at e19 to save two points on the top as the f17 cut is not a problem afterwards, unlike in Hushfield's. But black could then tenuki that as it is a slightly beneficial exchange as white follows up with extend rather than ponnuki to save the c18 stone which means black now gets a19 in sente. Complicated!

So if black plays d18 early enough that he would then tenuki e19 white should tenuki d18 and then black's follow up is e19 kosumi not e18 push. I doubt many would get that right in a game, I wouldn't before today.

Oops!

Funny how I always consider the E-19 response in play and in solving problems, but overlooked it in composing that one. I tried to eliminate the complexities of plays above the second line, because the analysis gets longer and trickier. I succeeded in oversimplifying.

Edit: Having done some analysis, it looks like Black D-18 is ambiguous and E-19 has the same size, each gaining 4 2/3 points. So normal play with Black first after Black's earlier B-18 is D-18, E-19, tenuki.

Anyway, I will redo that problem and check the others. Thanks.

Edit 2: Same thing with problem E. F-01 is better for White than the atari at F-02.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Seeing Knotwilg's cryptic warning in another thread that reporting and improving are communicating vessels, I might cool it a bit on the pace of writing here. I will still post games I play, and do the occasional write-up, but the endgame posts turned into several hours which were not put into solving go problems.

After a few more reviews from Yan Laoshi it finally sank in that I will have to do a lot of work. It's pretty motivating to be the weakest go player in town, and yesterday I spent around 8 hours doing go problems. That's on top of yesterday's 4 hours at the go school, which consisted of 1,5 hour of joseki study and 2,5 hours of playing games. I played an even game with another one of the kids and won by 6 points. Unfortunately, I can't show the sgf as pretty early on during the review I couldn't remember the move order. My opponent - calling him not quite focused would be the understatement of the month - couldn't either, so there was not much for Yan Laoshi to review. Hopefully this will be a one-time only brain fart, as I would like to actually get my games reviewed, and I don't want to write a record while I'm playing.

Today was our day off, but with 6 hours of problems and 2 hours of joseki study it's not quite the homely holiday one might expect. I'm finally getting into the study-zone, and have faith that prolonged exposure to this sort of regime will eventually show results. It's only 17:30 here, so I can squeeze in some more problems before dinner. Afterwards, we're going shopping (and I hope to score some more problem books).

It is not customary in go to record your own games during play, but I took up the practice, at least for serious games, after reading Krogius's book, Psychology in Chess. Botvinnik, IIRC, recommended first deciding on your play, then writing it down, and then making it. He also recommended noting which plays took you a long time to decide upon, as they indicated areas of difficulty which needed study. I found following that discipline salutary.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Beware, in go this could be considered cheating, since recording the move before making is a visual aid (in go.) In chess, since the notation is not graphical (enough graphical) it is not considered as such. Source: Don't remember (meh, memory) but read it relatively recently while checking some go rules vs chess rules.

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

If you record the move in ink (non-erasable, OC) and then always make the move, how is it an aid, visual or otherwise?

Perhaps you are thinking of recording the move on a phone or other electronic device. In a tournament recording it on such a device before making the play would be a no-no. A pen and paper recording is different.

In any event, you decide on the move before recording it, even if you are recording it on an erasable medium. No take-backs.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I knew I had read it somewhere

Bill, in a kifu, drawing (even a number) allows you to visualise more easily 1 move ahead. It's like hovering over KGS (which I'm ashamed to admit of doing, but of course, it helps with anti-slip to pre-move where you intend to do it, specially on trackpads.) Since chess is purely notational, it should be no issue.

Also, I read (I guess there, too) that you can write down whatever you wish as long as it is not an aid to visualising moves. So, could write down scores of areas, ideas or a love poem. But don't draw any dots in there XD

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

Thanks for the update on the rules regarding recording games, I'll keep that in mind. Today we went to school 1 again. After some joseki study I played 3 games. Luckily, I managed to remember every move played, so I have reviews this time around.

During the entire first game I felt like I wasn't in control of what was happening, and even though I managed to get into a winning position somehow, my poor reading made me lose relatively easy. The review by Yan Laoshi can be found below.



The second game was a two stone game. After both players made some pretty bad mistakes, I managed to get ahead in the fighting, and killed a large group. Again, review is by Yan Laoshi. There is a tesuji question at move 44.



The third game was a rematch against the opponent from the first game. Strengthened by the second game, I did much better this time around. It also helped he played even more ridiculous overplays. As this was a win by resignation before 50 moves, Yan Laoshi did not review the game.



After school I did around 4 more hours of problems, and watched a review of a 4 stone handicap game between Yan Laoshi and one of his local students. It turned into a really interesting lecture on how to play handicap. One of the most interesting things that was highlighted was that black should choose joseki that are easy to control and end in sente. that way you can have safe corners and also play big points. This way black can maintain its 4-stone advantage into the middle game. The way to carry the advantage through the middle game is by paying close attention to shape. If black can play in good shape everywhere, white has almost no chance.

The lecture was really interesting, but it did eat into my problem time. 4 hours wasn't enough for the problems I wanted to do, I should try to get more problems in tomorrow.

Great stuff Hushfield. It's inspiring. I've done about 200 problems over the past days.
What is the level of the problems you try? Are they enclosed L&D only or cut/connect too?

Hope your vessels remain large enough to keep reporting . But if they don't, stop pleasing our thirst for your latest.

edit: BTW, I don't understand at all why White resigned in the 3rd game. He can create an eye at R10 and at the top. Black's attack will have failed then and the influence to the open area is White's. I think Black "screwed up" by repeatedly attacking that group with contact plays. Before that, White's play sinned against the "small gaps" principle and Black had a good attack going.

edit2: I looked at the 2 stone game too and it seems you can read about 1-2-3 and ja-choong-soo on SL to your advantage. But you have Yan already