Ian Butler's Go Journal

[Ian Butler]

I reckon it's been months since I played. And yet since buying a house with my brother and him getting into Go as well, we've been playing 13x13 every day for a few days now. And I found myself finding a 19x19 game online. Just for some Sunday fun.
And what do you know, Kageyama was right: Ladders Are important.

Case in point: i misread a ladder in this game, read it correctly three moves in, tried to make it work anyway but had to forfeit the match fairly soon. Don't miss your ladders, folks

I was white. Small self review: i think these moves were bad, or slow:
-22 i'm not sure. didn't want to tenuki and didn't want to play d13 for aji. So maybe it's fine?
-34 feels off. probably because it gives the opponent a huge corner.
-64 debatable. It worked out in the end, kind of, but there's probably a lot of better moves locally.
-84 (was scared but i can read it's alive so i shouldn't be afraid, so stupid!)

And then, of course, the ladder

[Knotwilg]

Your opening is not according to AI gospel but that's ok. Still at 18 I think even pre-AI gospel will call for a corner reinforcement in the lower left, rather than targeting Black's shape point. Next, when Black counters at 19, your answer needs to push up and split, rather than allowing Black to link up and reduce your attack to mere crawling. Even then, 22 should at least atari.

When Black has dodged the attack, 24 should definitely be elsewhere (lower left), the cut at 26 is super small and you even feel you need another reinforcement at 26. The whole sequence from 18 to 26 spells "small".

Fortunately, Black plays a few small moves of his own and you get back into the game. I don't think 34 is off: it does a lot of work afterwards and when you cut off 4 stones with 52 you are clearly leading.

I like 64 too. It's probably the best place to invade and it worked too.

84 is not necessary indeed but it's about 4 points in reverse sente so not a pass move either. Obviously reinforcing the center would have been great, given what followed.

When Black cuts, my instinct would be S7 to almost atari because that also affects the corner and it keeps things simple. i.e. I wouldn't even consider nor read the ladder.

No AI was used in this review.

[Ian Butler]

Thank you, knotwilg, for you input. I appreciate you taking the effort to put it in human terms, because I wouldn't presume to understand what the robots try to tell me anyway

I understand that 18 til 26 is fairly small. It looks very small in hindsight. I am surprised you feel as though 22 should've been the atari. That I did not feel at all.
After those small moves, do you agree with 28 though? It felt necessary and even now I think it's a proper move there, or is this also part of the "too small" according to you?

Your instinct at the cut is very interesting, and shows a lack of broad thinking in my game. I had read out the ladder long a while ago, and thus when my opponent did cut, the ladder was the only move for me. Maybe if I had read the ladder didn't work I'd come up with another move, but honestly the simple S7 would probably noy have been my choice. But it's also hard to learn from that particular mistake, other than the very broad and general: "always look for a few moves, 1 2 3"

Thanks again!

[Ian Butler]

ramble about hobbies and whatnot
I've reread a part of this journal just now. Hadn't realized it's been so long since I made that commitment to study the Tesuji book. I guess I dropped the ball fairly soon after that last post in December last year. With covid and all, I have turned quite a lot of attention to both reading (novels) and gaming (a lot of isolation and free time drives me to gaming often). I'm finally starting to juggle multiple hobbies better, since I usually tend to immerse myself in one hobby for longer periods of time. Like I did with Go, like I did with reading, like I did with gaming, like I did with music etc etc. For a few weeks, I've successfully managed to both read a lot, game a bit with friends, do daily tsumego, play a few games of Go with my brother, learn a new musical instrument and practise a few times a week, play some other music for fun a few times a week and combine that with work. So I'm happy with finally being able to do multiple hobbies without letting one overtake all the others.

I hope I can continue this and let Go simply be 1 of the many hobbies. That way I'll continue to enjoy it, but there'll be a lot less pressure and it's more for the sheer enjoyment of it. After all, if it's your only hobby (for a while), you put a lot of stock into it.

"plan" for now
Anyways. Ready to pick up where I left off: daily page of 1001 Life and Death problems and every few days a chapter of Tesuji by James Davies!

observation about tsumego and being rusty
Just a small observation, after a long time away from Go: when I play with my brother, I feel very rusty, yet my life & death seems to be rather sharp compared to the rest. So I think the many tsumego along the way really have an effect and that doesn't fade away so easily. Also doing 1001 Life and Death problems goes relatively smooth so far. Haven't gotten one wrong in about 70 problems and most I see the right answer within 5 seconds, though I do read out multiple variations of every problem every single time, so I do spend about (10-15 minutes on a page of 8 problems)

[Ian Butler]

1001 Life & Death (Richard Bozulich)
Finished the first 100 problems in the book. I do one or two pages every day. Here are my results:

99/100 Correct solutions
50% I saw the correct answer within 3 seconds (rough estimate)
35% I saw two or three strong candidates and I needed some more time to decide the correct one
15% I had no real idea at the start and tried out multiple moves, taking minutes to read out as many variations as possible before finally answering.
The 1 wrong answer obviously fell into the last category, and even than the move wasn't on my radar because it made a very ugly shape, yet it was the only correct answer.
Even for the moves in the first category, I read out multiple variations and tried out different moves to see if there aren't any other that could work, too. (there never are, it's a good book, but I try anyway).

So a big success so far with the book. My life & death has never been sharper, I reckon. Really enjoying these tsumego puzzles.