Disagree. Firstly, the emphasis on commented games is, I think, often misleading. Commentary on passages from games may be helpful, but there is too much content in most pro games to assimilate. Secondly, on the few occasions where I have had top pro comment directly, it has not been the same kind of thing as the game commentaries that are filtered through journalists.

You are right Charles, careful selection is necessary. An Younggil's reviews at gogameguru are top pro analyses.
When I read those I could really feel the gap in thinking. Even though it became understandable for me as a low dan, thanks to An, I understood even better that the kind of variations they calculate and the kind of evaluation they make, is at a completely different level. It's not just about being a bit smarter, rather thinking differently. In that sense, commented pro games are a great source of inspiration.

I really don't believe in studying uncommented pro games in large quantities, even less since I read good commentaries, at least not below, say, 5d. We are simply not equipped to derive anything meaningful from such study. I know there are fans of "immersion" but I think it rhymes with "illusion". Imitate the pros and you will get somewhere but you won't get far if you don't understand what you're doing.

It can be fun to browse through pro games. And the illusion that it makes you stronger is also very enjoyable. But it remains an illusion, according to me.

I agree with Charles.

Besides, to get to pro shodan Shusai Honinbo Meijin recommended playing over 1,000 pro games. Pro games have everything.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I think I found a tiny portion of the "secret" of pro games. It may not be what many first thought! We're a little confused here in the west, but "replaying pro games", and, "replaying pro games" are two completely different activities, something we do not seem to understand very well in the west. I'm planning to finish writing all of my thoughts on " My recent approach to study (I'm going to prove its worth)", I can't claim to know much, but I do wonder what your opinions might be I can say this, When I got to 9 kyu in 2013, I suddenly got stuck, and unable to move up in rank, resorted to spending nearly a year mainly replaying pro games in a hope to raise the level of my weak opening play. And a whole year later, I improved by less than two ranks. I was quite frustrated, and thought it was a wasted year. But now I understand, after moving from 7kyu to 5kyu in 3 months, that 2013-2014 was an important year for my Go-improvement. I was to naive to understand at the time, wanting instant-improvement. However, although my strength did not seem to change, my Go in Jan 2014 was unrecognisable in many respects to Jan 2013, yet you could still tell that it might be the same player from the signature hope-to-kill-dragon mis-maneuvers .

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

I haven't been here in a little over a week, because I wanted get a into rythym, to put a little training so we could see some RESULTS.

THE PLAN

Okay, here's my insanely ambitious plan.

I am aiming for Blackbelt, 5th Dan EGF by December 31, 2015. But more importantly, my real goals are not about rank, but ability specification, for I do not aim to become strong soley for my benefit.

Right now, I can usually read at least 10 moves in the more complex positions in my games, given enough time. I usually play rapid, however, and can also be lazy or impatient to play the next move, causing me to only read 6-8 moves every now and then (silly, isn't it ). Reading seems to be the stronger part of my go, but my problem is that I'm prone to basic slip ups, missing 5-move sequences after reading 10-15 moves, so fundamentall training is important. The goal is to be able to read at least 15 moves in any given position by the 25th of December 2014, hopefully bringing my reading up to 4 dan, my real skill level of course much weaker due to my ddk opening skill, before the London Open, (where I aim to Go above the bar). Problem is, I have about three weeks to do so, so tsumego is important! Wake up an hour early and do Go Puzzles!

The Hitachi problems vary wildly in difficultly problem to problem, the challenge is to solve elementary ones in 30sec and Intermediate ones in 60sec, however I am only getting around a 40% success rate. I must increase that to 75% before the 25th. I started from problem 400, so you can have a shot at solving 50 of them in under 1 minute using a timer.

One other problem is the fact that I seem to be falling apart in the opening in every single game game I play, especially the joseki. I think the best solutions might be to replay many pro games quickly (I'm slacking up on this part) and play many, many fast games, and to look up the joseki in all of them. Positional judgement is possibly the worst part of my play, probably second only to joseki. An aspect I must work on.

I think things might be improving, but I have to start playing more games next week to see. I may finally be able to post some here!

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

I was shocked when found the result was only B+5.5,
The game appeared to be out of a Mr Bean show, (on my part)
Two blunders in a row is a tough act to follow
I also played another game, and lost in a similar way,
But manually turning Tygem and Wbaduk games int sgf files and commenting them took much, much longer than expected.

So I only put One.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Despite several seemingly harsh comments, I was actually more amused than annoyed.

Also for some reason I couldn't download the SGF so I had to make my own.

Hopefully some of my exasperations are of use to you.

appears to be an obvious overplay: the white stones top right are by no means thick, so you need a restrained flanking extension before anything else.

At you should think about shape, for example L11. Pushing battles are rarely seen between strong players, because they typically turn out much better for one side. Here Black benefits, even though your 3-5 point in the lower right is well placed.

It is OK to go well outside the fuseki book, but it requires a thoughtful approach.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c Lateral thinking.
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O X . |
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$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

By the way, reading problem from the same family of offbeat variations. White to play.

@Tentano, Thanks for taking a look at my game! Yes, this is one of the extreme ends of the "bad game day" spectrum hence me posting here (it looks like a 10 kyu game, I even forgot to add in some other comments I wanted to out in) to contrast it with a less cringe-educing kifu (attitude determines a lot)

@Charles Matthews: Thanks for the notes! Yes, 42 is a definite overplay which I forgot to mention first time round. Black 39 seemed too timid, or should I say missef a opportunity to seal the game, so 40 and 42 were more or less experimental moves, wondering where black might play.

I believe the answer is the extension at R14?

Hopefully, The next game won't be so scary I did make a silly joseki mistake-- no, two, perhaps-- and ended up losing quite a few stones later...

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

The hardest part of training seems to be putting actual games in. Would have to do more of that

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

By , Black's cross stars game, the most aggressive of conventional openings, has turned into ducking-and-diving.

So something went fundamentally wrong. is not the obvious choice, but if you play it you need to be in the two-point jump and counter-pincer openings. The lower right corner sequence is a small local gain for White, but a significant strategic loss for Black.

Thanks for the notes! It actually turns out that white 18 may indeed have been a slight overplay, so black should not have turned out with a slightly inferior result (I'm mot sure if it was correct for white to let black completely cancel the influence). Also, black 13 is a very rare move for a pro. Yes, Joseki is probably my weakest part of my play, I have only read a few go books so DOP is not the trademark of my Go (being very nice). Attempting to Memorise hordes of Joseki isn't that effective in the short term, so I'm going to raise the number of games I play.

Yesterday, I thought that now would be appropiate to set the challenge of winning 5 games in a row on 7 different servers. Why? Well, while I've been determined to improve for quite a while now, for some reason I became even more "eager", if you will-- the downside to playing many strong players in a row without being used to it, like I did in October, is that you might become afraid of your weakest part of the game, and in this case, it was joseki, making it hard for me to even play anymore games much, and only studying. Well, I got tired of being afraid. And more determined to be able to face anyone in the world.

Ironically, after thinking about making sure that I reach 1d by 1st of Jan and "tough talk" about making it to 5th by the end of next year while Mastering every possible GCSE Subject there is, playing in a fun 9x9 tournament against mostly ddk was what needed to calm down, and discover a strange trend... that made the 5-win challenge the perfect goal)...

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

This particular post might be a little too long... (heh, yeah, particular) But I have an excuse!

On Saturday, I tried out, for the first time, a fun 9x9 double elimination tournament regularly held on OGS. The draw usually consists of mostly ddk's. However, it should be noted that on 9x9 ranks effectively become 3X smaller, making 9x9 tournament quite suitable for situations where there are wide margins of strength between players. In the first game, an interesting trick play arose (my opponent may have become flustered and made a mistake)



The unusual part, was that I lost two games! Once against an 8k where I made a poor play on move four and was behind by about five points. I managed to claw back into the game, but eventually lost by 0.5 a point. After three more games, I lost to a player who was 10k after bad shape moves and a silly L&D oversight. Strange, but it seemed like it would be a one-off occurrence, however the strangeness was just starting.



Then, I lost two games in the dame-filling stage.

In another shot at the 9x9 title





For some reason, I then became frustrated due to a mis-click while playing in this game. Interestingly enough, these past few weeks, I haven't been all that interested in whether I win online games or not, and being that this was one of the worst game of Go I'd ever played, it was the most unlikely mis-click to ever become upset about.



Here's a rare game against a 2D, who made a strange mistake...



It seemed as if my bad spell would never end. Finally, I won a game where I won after a bigger blunder, but white was alreadly ahead. Typical would be for white to just resign. A lesson about mistakes.



The biggest mistakes are sometimes the one not noticed at the current level.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Note: Heh, this is mainly a short rant (a little late-- 10-12 days exactly) about how much of a freshman I was ahem, _when_ I was playing in the London Open Go Congress for two days (out of four) last year, with enough use of the pronoun "I" to make me cringe, + some other thoughts and gobbledygook, but don't worry, there are a few short game reviews some might find useful...

I finally played in the London Open! After weeks of anticipation (actually, this was the only the second tournament I've ever played in, so please excuse me...)

This year was the toughest London Open ever to win, as three 7 dans, one 6 dan, and ten 5 dans. For comparison, last year there was only one 5 dan.

After entering the playing hall, it was announced that the bar would be at 5 dan (!). We spent some time in the hall before the start of round one (meeting up with someone from the previous tournament I went to, watching Andrew Kay review (?) a game), the predominant sound being chatter of dozens of people. Contrast that with the sound of nothing but the sound of ticking of 40 clocks and stones being snapped onto the board.

Game 1

For some reason, it was much more difficult for me to simply write down the coordinates of my moves than expected (I didn't use a proper game recorder), and spent 20% the time recording the game. I just played very badly, far worse than usual (no excuses, Elom!), so a loss was inevitable. When reviewed the opening after the game, I was mentally kicking myself half the time

In the game analysis room, we were introduced to Choi Dongeun 1p (assigned to help weak players like me ) and Fan Hui 2p (assigned to help not-so-weak players). It really didn't register until after a few seconds who I was in front of! I've always wanted a game review by a pro



Of course, the top room is quite different from the main hall. It just has a palpable tension in the air that the main hall doesn't have

Note: For the next three games, I did not record them at all until two to three days after my last game on the 29th. Unfortunately, I'm too weak a player to remember three game of Go in my head fr two days, so I only have the opening of each game, and I am definitely not 100% sure of whether the moves are correct

Game 2

Considering how much I wanted a positive win-loss ratio, I felt that I couldn't lose my next game no-matter what. Problem was, I already wasn't feeling very confident before my first game at all, partly due to the fact that I always believe that I'm going to mess up this or that joseki (I often do) and have been having a bad spell of unusual game-losing poka. It turns out that in this game, it was not me who made a jonseok mistake, but my opponent!



After the game, we played another friendly match (which I won this time, heh) in which an interesting mutual life position almost appeared (my opponent played tenuki and died instead), you could tell, however, that he really enjoyed playing Igo!

Actually, last year, having a game reviewed by a professional player was seen as a dream that may happen in the far future, more of a wish-- last year, the strongest participant in the Congress was 5 dan, and at the time I signed up, much of the information about this years congress had not yet been online. Having three professional and the amount of strong players this year was completely beyond the realm of what I (huh, I've used this pronoun so much. Wait, not again...) expected. How to explain this sudden increase in stature? Well, it can only be a good thing in any case.

Afterwards, I met with two of the juniors playing in the tournament (I was one of the few others), 6 kyu and 10 kyu, the latter of whom I played a six stone handicap lightning Game with. However, when black missed an important cut that lost quite a few stones while giving white a strong outside position, (it was a lightning mistake, I think) the game quickly became difficult for black because the handicap was overcome too early. In a 4-stone game against the 6kyu, white made a silly opening mistake that allowed black to pincer where white should have extended, and from that point on black just did not let up, no matter what I tried. Seeing I had overturned less than two handicap stones by the endgame, I resigned! I'm sure that with some hard work and drilling of the fundamentals, they can become strong in the future .

the next two games were not reviewed by Choi 1p

Game 3

Next morning, we arrived at the ISH 40 minutes late , and I mistakenly believed that after 30min (60m may have been the actual time) if your opponent doesn't show up, you're awarded a win (but miss out on a game :/). Upon arriving, I met an opponent who had been patiently waiting for me to appear, so we headed straight towards the main hall for our game on board number thirty-something. I was perfectly capable of playing so called "fast" Go! (about 30-40m of main time were left).



One of the good things about playing in person is that your more able to have a post-game analysis. Online, you don't exactly know if the person has all the time in the world @.@ and you tend to usually want to play many fast games.

My aim is to be able to play a game in the top room next year. You could say that it's a bit much on the delluded side, but after some thought, it's not quite as scary as it first sounds (more below). But I definitely won't advise anyone to confident on that possibility !

One of the amusing things about the huge difference in level and attitude between Asia and Europe concerning Baduk is when trying to explain the meaning of ranks to beginners. Yes, the 10k-1k levels imply that Go is a hobby for you, and Dan levels are quite "advanced" levels, the time in which it takes to become a blackbelt in Igo is the same as many other martial arts. But describing it that way can put things out of context. In the end, I thought that the best way was to give my dad two almost contradictory scales-- the "pastime" scale and the "competitive" scale, where 4 dan is considered average. On that note, one other interesting situation was when my dad and I met with Matuesz Surma (Yay! Err, you didn't hear that). Of course, my Dad didn't know who he was, and was quite impressed upon finding out that he made it to Seven-dan (almost pro level) .

Game 4





I'm not sure whether it's because I finished all my games very quickly, but one of the things I was struck by was the fact that the number of people taking the chance to review their games with the professional players was relatively low, to the point where there were sometimes instances where none if the three teachers were actively giving teaching games or game reviews! I remember that Lee Hajin 3p once mentioned that in some tournaments not a lot of people review their games with pros.

But it's a privilege

Pattern

Wow, it seems that only one game was decided due to a Joseki error (#1).

Teaching

I knew that Fan 2p was one of The Top European players I saw on online TV a week or two earlier European Champion Very, very strong but seeing how passionately he was breaking down different positions to keenly listening amateurs I thought he must be something like 5p in teaching .

After my last game, seeing that the Pros were free, I had a second game review-- except, at the time, I wasn't sure whether I could remember much at all of the games I had played on the day, and thought that I may be more successful attempting recall of game #2 (I have no idea why this is), although I didn't expect to remember much (She had to teach at a lecture soon). I got stuck at a sudden point, even earlier than expected, and had to excuse myself having replayed only 40-45 moves (a little embarrassed ).

I feel that I lost the first game badly (I played horrible Go) and lost the second one almost "normally", in that if I hadn't played such a "stupid" move, the game would have been even. However, games three and four can be considered throwaways from a winning position. But any disappointment from that is dwarfed by the fact that none of the games were of good quality at all. It’s as if a wrongdoing had been done which could only be rectified by becoming stronger...

Future Goals

I haven't been around here much because I've been busy studying ! (yes, so believable) Okay, I should work harder to improve. One of the features of my Go journey is the fact that I spend a lot less input than other players learning concepts. I've only read 3 go books (Rivermountain Go 1&2, (I was already close around 10k at the time, however, yet it was the first time I learned the proverb "extend three from two" etc ) and 1/3 of the book "the Chinese opening" by Katao Masao 9p, because the Chinese Opening is-- Let's just say I couldn't play with it, definitely couldn't play against it, yet modern Go is not the same without it ) and the lack of fundamental principles are a snag that needs to be removed. For an example, the jumping on the upper right of the first game was a basic mistake. Also, when showing a variation where black initiates the ko (instead of connecting in bad shape) I was meaning to calculate which cut was better, yet my fingers did not oblige while my mouth said "here or here". Of course, Choi 1p demonstrated that the two cuts are different, and that precision and reasoning are necessary. My fingers cannot take responsibility here, I must be responsible for my own moves and not disrespect the Go board with compromised effort and half-baked moves.

This why I set the goal of 4d-5d by the end of the year, not because it's crazy (okay then, partly because it's a closer to a pipe dream than a goal) but because I want to start playing a different game. The most likely scenario is that I'm hovering by the end of the year at around 2d~3d, but rank improvement isn't actually the goal. The hope is to 'be at peace with Go'/'become one with the stones'/'hmm, can't think of a third expression'...

So the main plan

1: Start reading books and listening to lectures (note that I did not include 'more' in that statement!), specifically one slightly below my level that focus on fundamental principles for the first six months.

2: Begin studying Joseki from multiple sources. I started this a couple of days ago, and I realized that what I learnt the most was about about positional judgement, not joseki. Therefore, no attempt must be made to memorize. Choosing two or three opening points two use exclusively each month while repetitively going over the same joseki sequences and comments should do the trick in the long term, anyway.

Hopefully, we'll see some good games posted here in the future!

*Okay, this is the last unnecessarily long first-person post I'm doing in a long time* *sweat*

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

I can't emphasize enough that if you are going to record your games using pen and paper, it's much much easier to use a traditional kifu, ideally a full sized sheet (Letter/A4). You don't have to worry about coordinates at all, just shape, and the shape on the record should match that on the board as you go.

Sensei's has good info regarding this, including links to printable sheets: http://senseis.xmp.net/?GameRecord

That said, it takes experience doing it to keep recording a game from distracting you, and once you get to a certain level, you may find it easier to remember the game and recording afterwards, as while going over it, than to do it during the game. I certainly find that in our local tournaments (45 min + 5m/20stones canadian overtime) the time controls can be a bit tight to do both, but I always record by hand at the US Open (1h30m + 5x30s byo-yomi).

I forgot to mention that they did in fact have game recording sheets at the Congress, and after the first game I actually took a sheet of recording paper with the intention of using it, but by the time I started the second match I wrote an X and forgot all about recording!

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Hello. It's been a while since the last post, and simply put, this journal has been relatively quit due to the fact that nearly all of my games are played online-- and the PC brokedown, during the very period in which I started to focus more on studying, meaning only games had been played in January and February, apart from giving four teaching games .

There is the feeling that my positional judgement has improved, so hopefully there'll be less blind fighting a little calmer, less "time to get to 10d" nonsense and filling the sgf with expert (not) analysis (shame ) or whining about how X loss was a throw-away, more substance .

(Exerimenting on OGS with a Tablet for the first time)

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Some comments:


I notice that you seem to look at the point at which white lost as fairly late in the game, but I think, apart from the iffy result at the top right, that the real problems came in the lower left when white overplayed a few times and black took advantage by cutting white apart. Running with the central group was also not good, as even when it lived, it solidified the entire left side for black, and it was hard to see where white was supposed to get the points to win after that.

You could consider the more advanced technique of using the central stones as bait, to force black to capture them relatively small later on while you build strong positions on the outside. The other thing is that with a 4 stone game, if the handicap is right, you shouldn't catch up until the endgame. Trying to catch up too fast leads to issues.

Thank you very much, skydr! After reading your notes, it becomes strikingly clear that white's whole approach towards the game and positional perception was flawed.

ps: On move 141, if white plays at B11 first, as far as I can tell, it seems that C8 and the kosumi at C14 become miai (pardon me if I've missed something, as I'm prone to blindspots ).

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.