Hi, I can not find a section about the Magic Sword either, in The Chinese Opening.

(Frankly I'm surprised anyone reads any of his stuff. I get why you'd miss that an just focus on what I have to say, I have to bring a lot to the table for this journal to work. )

So far The Chinese Opening has been good. It seems that the book is going to discuss how the opening impacts the mid-game, which I'm really hoping for. It shows all the "standard" white responses of the 1970s-80s. Many of them I still see played today. Some of them not so much. A lot has happened to the Chinese opening in recent years. Who would have guessed in 1989 that today an early 3-3 invasion by white would be a staple of the modern Low Chinese? The book also says that the High Chinese occurs almost as much as the Low Chinese, which is no longer true. Even the Low Chinese is starting to occur less. And, of course, the Mini/Micro Chinese is not discussed, even though it is probably the biggest thing to come out of Chinese opening theory in modern go. (So the book lacks the most popular modern opening. Why didn't you buy a book on that one? )

Taking a look on Go4Go, there were 16 games played on the 23rd of January. None had a regular Low or High Chinese. One transitioned into Low Chinese from a denied Kobayashi. In one black looked like she might play a Low Chinese, but then decided to approach white's 3-4 stone. Other than that there were 4 Orthodox games, at least 1 arising because an opponent denied the Mini Chinese. There were 3 cross games, one with a Mini Chinese. One game that became a more 1800s style as white approached black's 3-4s on moves 4 and 6. There were also a couple with sort of Orthodox-esque openings, one of which looks like it arose from a denied Mini Chinese. A couple with non-standard openings. There were 2 Mini Chinese games. The Low Chinese has sort of fallen out of favor in recent months. (You took all the time to look that up just to say that the Low Chinese isn't common anymore? You could have just said that. That's not a secret. Everybody knows. )

One chapter on the Chinese fuseki and one on the Magic Sword is not really enough to go on. I'll write more about the book as I read it and will probably post a full review when I finish it.


Chapter 5 - The Two Space High Pincer. It is page 85 in my version. The Two Space High Pincer from a 3-4 stone is called the Magic Sword. Kato mentions the name on page 15 when discussing diagram 37 and 38 in the first chapter and at the start of Chapter 5.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

Well, traditionally it referred to a specific variation of the 3-4 high approach 2 space high pincer (the outside 3-4 attachment followed by push and cut), though now it's frequently used to name all 3-4, high approach, 2 space high pincer joseki. I'm not sure from your statement if you may be conflating it with the 3-4, low approach, 2 space high pincer.

I only meant the high approach. The chapter only covers the high approach. Kato Masao does not discuss the low approach. The only reason the joseki is discussed is because an early high approach to the 3-4 is the only way to deny the Low Chinese fuseki. He states "The aggressive pincer of 5, initiating the joseki known as the 'Magic Sword of Muramasa', is Black's standard reply."

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

It is not that the Chinese is unpopular, but that it gets denied often. The denied Kobayashi you mentioned was probably Black getting in an approach before making the Chinese (the Kobayashi is considered inferior these days). The 3-4 is also a denial of Chinese - it's awkward to make the framework when W is thick in the bottom left.

Post 137, the game on 1-26-14. At black 229 a clamp at S-10 would reduce white's options and liberties.
Black 217 and 219 not so hot.

I played a couple of IGS games today. I won both by over 20 points, so I don't think my rating on IGS of 8k? is accurate. (That's why it has the "?" - duh... ) I wasn't going to post these games, but given that I haven't been playing as much and given that I probably won't get too many games in this month with classes I might as well just post what I've got. (He also has a FlyOrDie game that he's not showing you. Apparently he's going around on servers pubstomping instead of taking on the KGS. )

I would like to set my rating right on IGS, so hopefully I can play more games there as well and have that one be accurate. It is hard to judge what rank I should be on there. Given the scores I should be around 6k, but I backed off a lot in both games when I recognized my win so I wasn't exactly playing for big wins. (Just play more go on both servers and then you'll know your rank on both...)

So, here are the games:



The first game was against a 10k when he was given a 2 stone handicap. His corner defenses were very strange - never seen play like that before. Move 25 was my first real test - the other plays were more or less automatic for me. I think that worked out pretty well. By 87 I was liking the profit I got in the center, even if I was making points from thickness. I liked the leaning attack I started with 91 - that was some of Attack and Defense coming through in my play. 113 was me being greedy and almost cost me the game. I should have simply helped that group to live and then sealed off my points on the right. That would have been more than enough. After invading successfully at 171 there wasn't much to the game. I probably should have played 187 at B9 - I think that would have killed black's group. Even though his groups all lived, my opponent made a lot of gote fixing moves that weren't needed in the endgame. (He was just trying to help you win. You need it. )

My main question about that game: was the invasion at 171 well timed? Should I have done this sooner?



This game was interesting for me. I felt like I was forced into playing for a big center. I wanted to play more of a relaxed territorial game and not go for influence and a moyo. Yet, I ended up building the center. I normally don't like to play this way, but at move 39 I felt like my opponent gave me no choice. He had been taking all the inside he could at every turn, except for his unusual - and I think in this case poor - choice of joseki at 13. Not sure what move 85 was about... I think my opponent missed that 100 was an atari, that or he insanely thought he could kill my stones. Both my opponent and I missed that at 186 black could cut off my 4 stones. And, of course, move 213 should have been a game ending mistake had I played the throw-in at M1... (Funny how you tend to miss the game winning moves... )

Hopefully I get to play more go soon. Haven't even done much at the clubs recently, but that should change for next week with any luck.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

I just woke up (and bein KGS 4k? Means I probably know more or less the same little about go as you ), but 25 (elephant jump) was screaming at me "punish bad shape, punish bad shape". Extending once more for black (so, play in e elephant eye, W up, B up, W up, B hane) seemed pretty tough on W in that game.

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

Actually it looks like Black missed a big winning chance around 120. When White played 120 at L19, Black should have connected at H17. Black either captures three stones with J19 or captures five stones with F14. Either way all the White stones in the top center fall to Black.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc 'a' and 'b' are miai
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . a . 4 . O . X . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . 3 2 O X . . O X O O . O |
$$ | . . . O . . . 5 1 O X . . O X X O O . |
$$ | . . . , . . X O O X X . . O X X X O . |
$$ | . . . O . . . O X X . X X O O O X O X |
$$ | . . . . . b O O X O . O X X . O X X . |
$$ | . . . . . . . X O O . O . X . O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . X X X X O . O . O X . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . X O . O . X . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . O , X . X X X X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O . . . O . . . . . . . . O . X . . |
$$ | X O O O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . X X X O O . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . X O . . . . . O O O . X . , O . . |
$$ | . . X O O X . . O X X X . X O X O . . |
$$ | . . X X O X . . . . . . . . X . X . . |
$$ | . . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

But that is not the the whole story. What should White and Black have done instead?

All in all a very interesting position! Thanks for offering it up.

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

Not been able to post much, but I'm on Spring Break now, so I'm planning to get in more study and more games.

My goal had been to reach 1 dan by the end of March. That is unlikely to happen unless I've secretly gotten much better. (Secretly gotten better? What does that even mean? ) I may be around 3k by now, and I'll definitely be playing some KGS this week to try to get my current rating.

So today I took the time to watch dwyrin's YouTube lecture on a legend88 game. This playstyle by white exemplifies how I want to play go. I want to play calmly, solidly. I want to take what I have earned and be willing to give up things that I haven't. If my opponent tries to force me into a game where I have to play for influence, I want to be comfortable doing that. If my opponent forces me into a game where I have to make territory everywhere, I want to be comfortable with that too. A go-with-the-flow style of solid, strong play. (So you want your playstyle to be "take whatever your opponent doesn't want?" )

What I love about go is the fluid nature of the game. Unlike in chess where you need to meet every challenge of your opponent head-on, in go, whenever you give something to your opponent, you get something for yourself. That excites me. It opens amazing possibilities for each game.

All I have to do is master the basics. Life and death, attack and defense, tesuji and joseki. Once I understand the nature of all these things I can build my ideal playstyle. So I need to keep working on my fundamentals and I'm glad I saw this lecture. It has inspired me to keep pressing on because it reminded me of why I love this game. (Man you like to get sappy... )

EDIT: This is hilarious! I just played the kind of game from the review! (Well that's... ironic I guess... )

And it worked. I love this style of go! Built up tons of influence and then forced my opponent to try to live in the center. And I'm back to 3k on the rating system. I'll need to win a couple more games for that to be official, but that game was so much fun. I was laughing as I made sacrifices and my opponent let me get all those walls everywhere to attack that last group with.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

I'm very much enjoying my break, and have been filling it with studying go. (So the logic here: I'm on break from classes. Therefore, I will study. ) I was able to watch several lectures, played and reviewed a couple of games with Ember, and then reviewed a professional game on my own for the first time in weeks. And it happened to be a really good one.

The game was one of the Korean Female Kuksu semi-final matches, a game between Park Shiun 9p and Kim Sinyoung 1p. I like how simply and calmly black played to secure a nice victory. The game was easy to follow and I feel like I learned more about how to attack, defend, and find large points.(Again with this calm playstyle thing. You know, maybe you should get good at the game before you try to pick out a playstle. Maybe you're not even good at playing like that. )

I have been continuing to read in The Chinese Opening and have learned a lot. Kato Masao has been opening my eyes to new possibilities in this fuseki. (Oh, just say it. He's been opening your eyes to new opening possibilities. ) I hope to read more this week and possibly finish the book by the end of the month. I could finish it faster, but I'm also trying to get in Attack and Defense, which has really been challenging me and feels like it is exactly what I need to get stronger. (So get to reading. Why are you posting here then?)

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

A sad defeat today. (Finally, one of those games. ) I played another KGS match, as I said I would try to do more of over break, and I was unable to win against an opponent who played the "live everywhere" strategy I won against last time. I believe I made two key mistakes that cost me the game.



First, should have been at F3 so I could turn around and successfully attack black's 2 stones on the right. I got greedy and tried to both seal him into the corner and attack his stones. Too much. at D5 may have also been something to consider. (You complain that this opponent is playing an unreasonable strategy and then you go around and make an unreasonable move. You're just as bad as him. And he's better at this than you. )

Second, move 130 should have just sealed black in. The first cut didn't work, but the second one did. (Nice job getting psyched out. ) This definitely cost me the game, because even if I just seal black and can't kill him, I still get more than enough compensation to reduce the top and get points on the right.

I also have to give my opponent credit for finding the sequence to move 167 to get in the reverse monkey jump. That was a game saving set of moves. (Yep. Thanks igor1959 for preserving moyo's loss! )

I shall press on, though. More study and games will come this week.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

I wanted to make myself strong before attacking, but you are correct that I did not need it. I misread, just as I did at 130. (Of course EdLee is right. And of course you misread. He's good at go, you aren't. )

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

You mean G-03, right?

But, really, how about D-07?

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Actually, I meant E3. Expecting black to respond to not be sealed into the corner. Then I could go back and attack the two stones.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W This sort of thing
$$ | . . O X . . .
$$ | . O . . . . .
$$ | . X O O . O .
$$ | . X X . 1 . .
$$ | . . . . X 2 .
$$ | . . . . . . .
$$ ---------------[/go]

I've never seen D7 before. How does that sequence go? (Of course you've never heard of it. Because you don't know anything about this game. I've always liked you, Bill. Able to come in here and show up moyo at every turn. I bet the sequence from there is a game-winning punishment. )

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

I'm just a beginner. I'm wrong about Go all the time.

A couple of comments about , and a few before that.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Thanks for the comments on the previous game, Bill.

A win and a loss tonight. Both going to the victor because they played correctly and then did not allow their opponent to trick them into losing. (Well, at least the loss went to the better player.)

I lost an OGS game against skydyr. I did quite poorly against his dual 5-4 opening. I approach the corners from the inside and then fought hard to get out, leading to a sub-optimal result in one corner and then death in the other corner. (So your 5-4 joseki is bad. I thought I remembered you once saying that you were comfortable with 5-4 joseki. That either means you were only comfortable with 5-4 joseki when you played the 5-4, which means you value the outside too much, or it means you are now realizing that you aren't as good as you thought. I'm going to guess the problem is both. ) Playing against dual 5-4 is definitely one of my weaknesses at the moment. Since I don't know how to handle 5-4 stones, that's something I should practice against and probably with as well. (Know your enemy? Trying that Sun Tzu approach to go are we? )

Here is the game. I'll show some of the ending variations I read out, but to be honest I'm not totally sure how each side should have played. I do know that white played correctly in the end. I'll show some of the tricks he didn't fall for. (So this is like a glimpse into an alternate reality where your opponent plays how you want them to play. I'm glad that reality isn't this one. )



The win was on IGS. It was an overwhelming victory because my opponent didn't know when to give up fighting for a dead group. I could have tenuki'd from the situation on the left long before I did, but I figured I had no need to. The game was already won by just killing that group. As Sun Tzu said in the Art of War, "[The good fighter] wins his battles by making no mistakes. Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy who is already defeated." (You... you actually are taking the Sun Tzu approach to go... )



So I need to work on my 5-4 joseki, learning when to approach a 5-4, and continue to not make mistakes at the end of won games. (Was that last one one that you actually needed to learn? )

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

A few thoughts:

First off, I think my first move was bad. It was played on a whim and should have been in a different corner, perhaps, as it allowed you to set up the opportunity for a favourable chinese opening, and resulted in me kind of wasting a stone breaking it up. This led to me scrambling to figure out what the heck I was planning on doing in this game, and I think I got lucky later to win.

Agreed that the push around 19 or so was aji-keshi, if not outright bad.

I'm not sure if was a good move or not. I wanted to activate options for my E16 stone, but P3 or something else on the bottom may have been bigger.

At 33, I looked this up on josekipedia, which claims that your suggested move is the correct response, which leads to a fight where white gets a lot of thickness and black gets something on the bottom. It's described as 'good for white' (in this case). I didn't like the cut at N4, though, and wanted to strengthen that a bit, which is why I played as I did. The issue, though, is that at black can use O6 to get a few forcing moves by atariing at M5 and M6, and then use sente to kill the two white stones or make them live really low while black gets the corner. Certainly having only two stones instead of three makes the later side/corner fight much more difficult for white than in the game.

In your variation at I think both sides would likely end up alive but small, and black would have a running fight in an area with a lot of white influence, whereas by killing the two stones, black gets a fair amount of territory and influence to make up for the central strength white builds. At that point, white would have almost no territory on the board, and while there's a lot of aji on the top side, the bottom and left would already be pretty solid. I'm not sure it would be easy for white to win.

Your other sequence around is roughly what I was expecting as the outcome, or white playing Q2 in sente and then taking care of the aji of the weak black stones. I don't think it's a spectacular result for white, when black can keep white's upper right stones low, and a white play there induces black to fix his side up.

Also, following our discussion last night I remembered why I didn't pay much attention to the ladder. White can just net the stones with M8 if they try and get out, and I didn't want to give black the opportunity to play a ladder breaker and really seal up the upper left.

Edit: the net doesn't entirely work, but I think it puts white in a favourable position.