Twitchy's Corner

[Twitchy Go]

I have set a goal for shodan by November 14th or sooner. I am currently a 12 kyu KGS. This fits in with my preferred method of learning of leaping into the boiling shark infested water and hoping for the best

My current lesson plan is to:
Do Life & Death for at least 30 min a day

Study the books:
Suji and antisuji of Go
Shape up
Opening theory made easy
Fundamental principles of Go
Later volumes of Learn to play Go

This will be done until there ideas become intrinsic. I will study which ever I feel like at the time, but they are probably enough to make it to 1 dan with beyond problem books.

Work on learning techniques from sensei's, more complicated L&D groups, good shape. and fuseki

And of course playing and reviewing games.

Additionally I will be replaying one of Go Seigen's games 5 times a day, then moving onto a new one the next day. Hopefully I'll learn something from this by osmotic factors, but I am just doing it because it is fun.

I'd do more but it would cause annoying conflict with other people in my house

I'll be posting at least some of my games on this journal.. This is more so I can see how my thinking is evolving then anything else. I would be greatly indebted to any reviewers, but don't feel pressured.

[Twitchy Go]

EdLee suggested defining in my own words the go concepts of Influence and Lightly. So here is my definition(along with a few others), please let me know If I'm way off the mark

Influence

Stones played high and/or facing the center and sides with an eye to future profit through fighting. Influence is often achieved by letting your opponent take some territory.

Light

Stones that have served their purpose and can/should be sacrificed

Lightly

Playing near your opponents strong spots or inside their framework in a manner that allows for you to A) live inside B) escape; resulting in significant reduction of your opponents potential territory. This can be achieved by letting some of the stones die to live with the majority.

Heavy

Stones that serve important roles, such as cutting your opponent. Not an indicator of size, 1 stone can feel heavy

Equivalence

Having more then 1 desirable follow up to a move. I don't understand this concept well

Potential

Good: Leaving positions settled but with nice follow ups to be pursued later
Bad: leaving cutting points or being over extended with your own group.

That's how I see it at least

[EdLee]

Twitchy Go, Nice efforts!

Stones played high and/or facing the center and sides with an eye to future profit through fighting.
Magic is often achieved by letting your opponent take some territory.

(My substitution, as mentioned )
From your post #3 in blindgod's thread -- http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... f=4&t=5822

This lets W create nice magic that will be used to make a fair share of territory later.

For beginners, your definition does not really help them answer these questions:
1. What is this magic again? What is it exactly ?
1(a) So all highly placed stones have this magic? No? Which ones do and which ones don't? How can I tell?
1(b) So low stones don't have this magic? Again, how can I tell?
2. What do I do with this magic?
2(a) "To make a fair share of territory later"? How?
2(b) What do you mean by "fair share" ?
2(c) By attacking? How?
3. I just let my opponent kill my big group and she got a lot of territory -- did I just gain a lot of magic?
4. (Repeat of 2.) I need to play a move now -- what EXACTLY do I DO with this magic again?

[SoDesuNe]

Heavy

Stones that serve important roles, such as cutting your opponent. Not an indicator of size, 1 stone can feel heavy :rambo:

It's more popular to say that stones are "heavy" when they lack eye-shape (despite consisting of a bunch of stones), respectively have bad shape (e.g. dumbling) and thus can be easily attacked by the opponent (Proverb: A weak group is -30 points). Quite often those stones resulting from invading your opponents framework and handling the situation inefficiently, e.g. not lightly.
I would not say, that one stone can feel heavy. One stone can easily be sacrificied, in itself it's just a two-point-loss (prisoner and territory beneath the stones - japanese counting).

Your definition sounds a lot like "What are important stones?". Cutting stones are in general very important.

[Boidhre]

Good luck! You're doing something very similar to what I am doing, though with more free time I imagine! I'll be following this thread with interest.

[Twitchy Go]

@EdLee
ok.. trying to answer the follow ups is hard , I'll think about it and get back to you about it.

@SoDesuNe
Lack of eye space makes sense. Perhaps a better explanation for a single stone being heavy(IMO) is letting a stone become useless? Playing an incorrect response and then having to frantically work to keep your approach move on the corner alive. Sacrificing it seems like it would set you back alot if it was an approach move.

@Boidhre

Well I certainly hope I'm interesting enough to hold your interest
Your also doing a journal? Well I'll check it out when this week of school dies down, been way to busy for more then a few forum forays.

[Magicwand]

my definition of light:
group of stone that are not easily attacked in one attack move because they will leave aji behind.

[SoDesuNe]

@SoDesuNe
Lack of eye space makes sense. Perhaps a better explanation for a single stone being heavy(IMO) is letting a stone become useless? Playing an incorrect response and then having to frantically work to keep your approach move on the corner alive. Sacrificing it seems like it would set you back alot if it was an approach move.

An approach move can very often be regarded as a forcing move and based on your opponents reaction you e.g. play a certain opening or just take another big point. If your opponent plays more moves to render your initial approach move useless, you will get Sente everytime since you don't have to answer.
Of course this gets complex (timing!) but as long as following up in the corner is not the biggest/most urgent move on the board both player should keep away.

Letting a stone become useless sounds like a "Thank you!"-move to me. Your stone forces your opponent into a shape he is very comfortable with and thus doesn't benefit you.

[Twitchy Go]

Thank you for everyone's thoughts on Go terms, it has been informative. And EdLee... I think I'll get back to you on the follow up questions in 5-6 stones because right now I am stumped. If you feel I would benefit from it feel free to share your answers. But I believe the point was that influence is not something I should worry about just yet.

Anyhooo, first game on KGS since creating this little hidey hole. So i put down some thoughts on some of my moves, and the sgf follows. I think I played a bit to passively. The game is against a friend of mine of a similar rank. Ended up losing by komi

Move 17: a hane at S6 is better perhaps
Move 21,23 75, 79,81: going to list here all the times a hane would have been better(it happened a lot)
Move 29: Didn’t like the empty triangle but it seemed to be the best way to seal corner
Move 36: D7 steals W base and starts a running fight, might have led to a win in the long run.
Move 67: double Atari at J10
Move: 91 was the last big territory claiming move
Move 95: A speculative sequence, hoping to follow up net/Atari with stone at O12, and connect out. Didn’t work
Move 99: aiming at P14, it was spotted
Move 102: W messes up the edge work
Move 195: I believed it to be forcing and W responded, not sure if it was in retrospect.
I felt I was ahead by a fair margin in the middle game and played "safely" as a result. If I had thought I was behind I would have been more aggressive.

http://files.gokgs.com/games/2012/4/19/Kip20112-TwitchyGo.sgf

For your viewing entertainment!! Or as much entertainment as is attainable from a lowly DDK.

[jts]

Thoughts on the game:

7: Letting a 4-4 stone get double approached is quite severe. So a local response is pretty big. In fact, it's bigger than a double approach on a 3-4 stone, so white should ignore your move and return to the upper right. But maybe you have to be the victim of a double approach a couple of times before you can truly appreciate this.

17: This move is on the second line. In general you want to avoid second line moves. Are you familiar with the reasons for the relative strength and weakness of moves on the first, second, third, and fourth line?

In general, when your opponent plays a contact move, your first instinct should be to look at the hane. Contact fights in go are brawls. They work a lot like street brawls; whoever brings more friends wins. Playing a stone that doesn't reduce the opponent's liberties is like having a friend who slips into the bathroom when the brawl starts.

23: See 17

29: Separate white instead. (After you play Q13, we call his shape ______, because ______?) After that, P14 and R14 are equally good moves for keeping your stones separate (miai, or equivalence).

43: See 17 This is like your friend running for his car, slamming on the gas, and driving across three states.

On influence:

If I were forced to explain how a car works, Ed could undoubtedly beat me down into admitting that it's really just magic. But, after giving thanks to Nyaralathotep for the unspeakable mysteries of the internal combustion engine, I would still be glad that I know how to drive. Just because you can't explain it doesn't mean you should lose faith in it.

[Twitchy Go]

Well I'm familiar with the fact that the third line is the line of territory and the fourth is the line of influence. The theory being that its hard to press down the 4th line but its invadable. The 3rd line might get pressed down but You'll live with enough territory to be happy. 2nd and 1st line moves are endgame for finallizing the position. If I'm not rock solid on the strength/weaknesses I'd appreciate others insight. I felt that I was ahead and played to settle the shape. That said, a hane above the stone would have been best in all 3 cases mentioned, correct?

Of course I will continue to use influence. The not worying about it is more in the context of teaching others about influence. I thought hard about those questions and decided that I couldn't discern any principles I would use to capitilize on influence. Therefore it is something I would not feel comfortable teaching, does that make sense?

As a final note, I don't think I'll ever forget the bar brawl analogy. It made sense when he was slipping into the bathroom... but fleeing the state is whats burned it into my memory.

[EdLee]

Twitchy Go,

Sorry for the delay -- I just flew across the globe 2 days ago (emergency matter, sorry! )

As for The-Jargon-Which-Should-Not-Be-Named -- it's like walking. I cannot begin to tell you
even one single muscle involved (are there hundreds or thousands? I have no idea),
but I still walk. (Same with jts -- all I know is it has something to do with dino-juice --
and even that is about to change, I hear -- and not much else, but I still drive.)

Twitchy Go, your conclusion about teaching TJWSNBN, you're right on!

[Twitchy Go]

I decided that this post was unjustifiably whiney. And not really based in anything I should be mad about. I've since calmed down from what made me grumpy in the first place... and after having a chance to talk with the person in question; feel that I should at the least spend some serious time thinking about how I might teach a weaker player.
While I find the comments hidden to be generally embarrassing and not really something that needs to be in a study journal. I also feel that deleting the post would be running away from a stupid moment on my part. As such I have hidden the post. I'm probably being overly apologetic here. But venting on a forum board/face book is just so uncharacteristically me... I'm in a very confused state about how I ended up breaking all my rules to post in the first place.

Today was great! Stayed home sick from school and spent the whole day on KGS. Well after I rolled out of bed at 1pm. The only game I was really unhappy about was my first one against a 2 stone handicap. Ended up in a position I was very unhappy with by the end of the fuseki and it was downhill from there. All the other games were fun though(won or lost). My favorite one had me chasing down a huge dragon Thrill of the kill, but his play style was fun to butt heads with.
And then in the evening there were two interesting game reviews by Dsuan.

I also tried my hand at teaching a 26ish kyu player. I do my best not to be authoritative beyond my limited knowledge of course. A higher kyu offered to take over the review, and while I was a tad disappointed, the review wasn't really about me. What was annoying was getting talked down at, being accused of hoping for mistakes. Now I can understand all his comments, they were good moves looking at the board. And I had seen and considered a fair portion of them(being some number of stones stronger he had me out classed on a few occasions), discarding them as part of my goal. Namely teaching. My personal approach to teaching is to try to set up/ leave positions in such a way that the student has things to think about. Over ambitious cuts, leaving invasion points open a little longer then I would normally, things like that. I think that the discovery of these moves in a real game is better then simply being shown them in a flurry of sequences post match. Of course this becomes a problem when other people start reviewing the game, you just look like your trying to save face when you claim to have set up a situation for teaching purposes. The reviewer did a very good job with the review, I am not trying to criticize him in any way.

I teach the way I do because I don't see the point in slaughtering a weaker player, and then preaching about how he should have played. I'd much rather try to get them to play how they should play. With a few prompts when something is important. After all, why do you need a win in a F/T game. Teaching the student is what's important. And I think my approach works just fine. Well sorry for the vent, it just bothered me is all. And I suppose I'm fishing for everyone's personal teaching theory.

Edit: Sorry for the whining, I'll keep it to the very minimum in the future. This just bothered me I guess. If anyone runs into me on KGS please don't hold back on offering to take over the review. I realized that this message might be off putting in that sense. I would rather the weaker player learned something, and a higher reviewer is better. This has mostly been empty venting. And I get mad at the people who do this on facebook
I'd delete the whole vent now that I've slept on it. It's a little and somewhat embarrassing thing to let bother me. I just feel that that is bad form. Saying something stupid and then removing all traces of it. I'd rather live with the mistake.

The dragon hunt. For your viewing pleasure.
The game is however still something I'd like to share. This was a fun fellow to play against. It was very hard to keep from being sucked into his pace and overextending. If your around the 12-14 kyu range try hitting scyclow up for a good game!

move 186-192: we decided jointly that B at D13 let the dragon live. If anyone can read out a killing sequence with that B stone in place, I'd be interested in knowing it.

http://files.gokgs.com/games/2012/4/21/TwitchyGo-scyclow.sgf

Edit: I promise to stay on focus with my study journal from now on. Although I can't promise I won't complain at times. Getting my grievances out in the open, in this case, definitely turned out very well for me. I might have made a fool of my self, but embarrassing memories are good learning tools. My teaching style will be under going serious revisions as a result of this episode. How much? I'm still thinking. But as a 12 kyu I have rather limited knowledge to begin with, so taking time off teaching to contemplate this won't be a loss to the community.

Thank you all for putting up with my crazy roller coaster of a post for the past day. Its settled now.. I promise.

[EdLee]

(;CA[utf-8]ST[2]RU[Japanese]OT[5x30 byo-yomi]GM[1]AP[CGoban:3]SZ[19]FF[4]DT[2012-04-21]
PC[The KGS Go Server at http\://www.gokgs.com/]PB[scyclow]BR[13k]PW[TwitchyGo]WR[12k]
KM[0.5]TM[1500]RE[W+99.50]MULTIGOGM[0]
;B[pp]BL[1498.04];W[dp]WL[1488.34];B[pc]BL[1485.7];W[qe]WL[1436.48];B[rd]BL[1472.77]
;W[qd]WL[1417.69];B[qc]BL[1468.48];W[dc]WL[1398.78];B[fc]BL[1458.73];W[ce]WL[1390.65]
;B[dj]BL[1449.35];W[nq]WL[1371.01];B[or]BL[1428.44];W[qq]WL[1267.13];B[nr]BL[1391.08]
;W[qp]WL[1261.01];B[qr]BL[1380.87];W[qo]WL[1252.16];B[rr]BL[1376.14];W[mq]WL[1234.07]
;B[mr]BL[1371.83];W[lq]WL[1232.68];B[lr]BL[1364.04];W[kq]WL[1230.2];B[fq]BL[1355.9]
;W[cn]WL[1212.29];B[dq]BL[1338.59];W[cq]WL[1179.79];B[dr]BL[1323.23];W[hr]WL[1158.19]
;B[jr]BL[1309.07];W[jq]WL[1143.06];B[ir]BL[1304.25]
(;W[hq]WL[1139.41]C[See var.];B[iq]BL[1301.65];W[ip]WL[1137.79];B[fo]BL[1287.21]
(;W[hp]WL[1136.1]C[See var.];B[kr]BL[1280.04];W[re]WL[1078.04];B[rc]BL[1272.96]
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B[ah]BL[30];OW[4]W[bh]WL[30];OB[5]B[ad]BL[30];OW[4]W[ae]WL[30];OB[5]B[ac]BL[30]
;OW[4]W[sl]WL[30];OB[5]B[sm]BL[30];OW[4]W[sk]WL[30];OB[5]B[ma]BL[30];OW[4]W[la]
WL[30];OB[5]B[na]BL[30];OW[4]W[fa]WL[30];OB[5]B[ea]BL[30];OW[4]W[ga]WL[30];OB[4]
B[an]BL[30];OW[4]W[mc]WL[30];OB[4]B[nc]BL[30];OW[4]W[lp]WL[30];OB[3]B[]BL[30];OW[4]
W[hh]WL[30];OB[3]B[ie]BL[30];OW[4]W[gh]WL[30];OB[2]B[mg]BL[30];OW[4]W[]WL[30];OB[2]
B[]BL[30]TB[rn][aa][ba][ca][da][oa][pa][qa][ra][sa][ab][bb][cb][eb][ob][pb][qb]
[rb][sb][cc][dc][ec][oc][sc][fd][gd][ge][he][je][le][me][ne][oe][hf][if][qo][so]
[qp][rp][sp][qq][rq][sq][pr][sr][js][ks][ls][ms][ns][os][ps][qs][rs][ss]TW[cl][dl]
[il][jl][nl][am][cm][fm][gm][hm][im][jm][lm][nm][an][bn][dn][en][in][jn][kn][ln]
[mn][ao][do][nh][ho][io][jo][ko][mo][no][bp][ep][fp][kp][mp][np][aq][bq][dq][eq]
[fq][ar][cr][dr][er][as][bs][cs][ds][es][fs][ha][ia][ka][jb][af][bf][df][qf][ag]
[cg][eg][pg][rg][sg][ah][ch][eh][ph][rh][sh][ai][bi][ci][di][ni][oi][ri][si][aj]
[bj][cj][dj][ej][fj][fo][gj][nj][oj][pj][sj][ak][dk][ek][fk][gk][hk][ik][jk][lk]
[mk][nk][ok][pk][qk][al])
(;B[mp]BL[998.345]))
(;W[kr];B[ks];W[is]C[End of notes.]))
(;W[kr];B[ks];W[iq]C[Sente.]))

[Twitchy Go]

@Edlee
Whoa
How did I not see that..