Life In 19x19

Hey Hushfield! Thanks for stopping by. You have some very valid points.

The irony here is that I fully intended to lose my first 100 games quickly and not worry about it at all.

You know what? I wonder if I'm just playing on the wrong server.

I primarily use IGS. My experience there is that people there (with only a couple of exceptions) say hello at the start of the game, and when I inevitably resign, they say "thank you for the game" and are gone before I can even say thank you back. Many of them don't speak English, either. Honestly, with the formality and fast/automatic adioses, it feels colder on there than playing a computer. The computer, at least, I know has no heart .

Also: I have played maybe 10? less? games on there. I may just have too small a sample size, and too bad luck.

I will try actually logging into KGS sometime soon, and see if it is warmer/more human there. I will continue to avoid IGS at least for a few more days.

Edit: I logged into KGS and found the L19 room (yay!). I started an automatch search in the english language game room, let it run for a few minutes, but no dice. Got bored waiting. No one interesting in the game queue. Played a supposedly 20 kyu bot on 9x9 and thrashed it soundly twice before losing interest. Watched several 5d games. Then I went and beat MFG 18 kyu B+R with one less stone. I'll see if I can land a random game tomorrow.

Onward with the new plan to lose 100 more games!

As i've repeated in others' journals, try to win. More specifically, focus on those learning areas that will increase your winning potential. Fighting spirit is worth a lot in go. Setting a goal of losing games sounds very orientalish but in my opinion is a form of chastice. As long as losses don't keep you from playing, winning is so much more rewarding.

Knotwilg wrote:As i've repeated in others' journals, try to win. More specifically, focus on those learning areas that will increase your winning potential. Fighting spirit is worth a lot in go. Setting a goal of losing games sounds very orientalish but in my opinion is a form of chastice. As long as losses don't keep you from playing, winning is so much more rewarding.

Oh, I always try my hardest to win. I just don't manage it very often.

I believe Knotwilg's point is that you are going to lose those 100 games eventually (we all do, of course), but that shouldn't be your focus as a beginner.

I think sometimes the proverb "Lose your first 100 games quickly" is taken too literally. For me, the proper meaning of this is "Yes, you're going to lose, and you will lose a lot of games. Don't let this discourage you, and play as often as you can. The losses will mount, but that shouldn't stop you from playing."

The idea is more that you shouldn't focus on the loss. Yes, we learn from our losses, but for a beginner there's only so much that can be learned from one or two losses. As Knotwilg stated: play, lose, take a moment to collect yourself/focus, then move on.

Anyways, just my 2 cents.

SamT wrote: I primarily use IGS. My experience there is that people there (with only a couple of exceptions) say hello at the start of the game, and when I inevitably resign, they say "thank you for the game" and are gone before I can even say thank you back.

The clients send those messages. Few people type them.

oren wrote:

SamT wrote: I primarily use IGS. My experience there is that people there (with only a couple of exceptions) say hello at the start of the game, and when I inevitably resign, they say "thank you for the game" and are gone before I can even say thank you back.

The clients send those messages. Few people type them.

Thanks. I suspected that, but I wasn't sure. Just makes the place feel colder, to me.

On the other hand, I had a great time on KGS today, and was educated by several wonderful people.

Yesterday I took the advice of EdLee, Hushfield, and just about everyone else and focused on playing more games. Against humans, mostly. And online ones, too, sometimes.

I post them in case anyone is curious about them or about my progress.

Game 1:
I played a teaching game online on KGS with paK0 [10k] from here (many thanks!). Also, out of the kindness of his heart, Patchouli [4k], stopped by and gave even more review. We went through the game like three times, total. Many thanks to both of them!



My favorite part of this is Move 189, and how we both completely miss it. Patchouli's comments about it on the next few moves were hilarious at the time.

I met many cool people in the L19 room. It was wonderful. Made me feel much better about playing online.

I do have one annoying problem with KGS, though:

Since my rank is [?], I can let the automatch run for 10 or 20 minutes and never get a hit. I've also directly tried to connect to two appropriately ranked open games, and was denied both. This has happened for two days straight. I may, simply, never be able to get a rank there.

Someone advised me to play computers to get rank, but all the computers I've found are [-].

Big chicken and egg problem.

Game 2:

paK0 was of the opinion I should be destroying MFG at 18k with 0 stones, and I was desperate to give it a try.

First chance I got, I dropped 6 stones off my handicap with MFG and dove right in!

I was pretty sure that, in previous games, my losses came from playing too fast. This time, I decided to take a deep breath and purposefully pause 5 seconds after each of MFG's moves, so I would not rush to keep up. It worked out pretty well.



I had the same plan as the previous 6-stone and 7-stone games where I beat MFG:

1) take a corner
2) find a big string attacking that corner that I can cut off
3) cut it off
4) kill it
5) win.

After devastating me in the end game and lots of really stupid mistakes by me, MFG managed to catch up and win by 2.5 points.

Considering how badly he tore me up in Yose, I can only assume I was far, far ahead.

Result: I didn't win. But I'm sure I could've, if I were just a little more careful and better at Yose.

Game 3:
This game was in person, at the Thursday night Dallas Go Club, and I don't remember it, sorry -- I don't have that ability yet, to remember a game I played from start to end.

The game was against a 10 kyu named Kevin. Based on the advice of a 7 kyu at the club who often gives me teaching games, and estimates me at "the mid teens kyu", we set the handicap at 4 stones.

I tried the same strategy I used against MFG again. I'm beginning to be a one-trick pony, I think.

I successfully surrounded a huge string, cutting it off, and my opponent didn't even notice. He later said he thought they were alive the whole game, and was shocked when he realized they weren't.

However, this time I didn't go in for the kill. The string had 7 open liberties, and I would have to give up a lot of sente and make some truly disgusting shape to finish it off.

It all came down to one bamboo joint that for 30 moves I knew I needed to make. I never quite found the time, instead mentally justifying sente moves elsewhere to steal eyes/corners.

This was obviously a huge mistake. There was no other move on the board worth as many points. I should've just taken it. Immediately. Because I didn't, and my opponent eventually realized his danger, cut me, and won the capture race.

Kevin won the game by a huge margin. Conversely, if I had made the bamboo joint, I likely would've won.

Still, this strategy I keep using seems unreliable -- kind of like a "hail mary" pass in football. It's an all-or-nothing, lose-win thing, and if my opponent knows what I intend, it won't work. At least that's the way it's been so far.

I believe I should take another stone against him next time.

Oh, also: Everyone that looked at the game told me my endgame was terrible. So I guess I need to be working on that

Game 4:

I got home from Go Club at 10:00pm, a full hour past my normal bedtime of 9:00pm, but I was wired and feeling like I was playing slightly better. I wanted to keep going.

I logged into KGS, and once again hit the brick wall of game refusal, so I ditched it, and jumped to IGS. I've complained about IGS in the past, but I had fun this time.

Once again my endgame was terrible, but he didn't manage to erase my lead.



A weird thing:
Something about the way the guy played felt very enjoyable. Not because I was winning, I think. He just felt like a fun guy to play (watch me find out he's actually a computer!)

He immediately re-challenged me with one less stone, but I had to decline. It was 12:30am, and I needed to wake up at 6!

Great day, overall, but one problem:
I spent all my time playing, and didn't study any Tesuji, Tsumego, or Joseki. I already feel rusty.

I need to be independently wealthy so I can do this stuff full-time, and not in bits and pieces throughout the day

Mostly, though, I am glad that playing online feels fun again. On both of my servers.

A couple of comments on the bottom right corner in game 1.

R-10. Extension cum pincer.

and The problem isn't that Black is overconcentrated, it is that Black has weak points at P-03 and R-03. A White stone on either point would threaten to connect to White's strong stones.

O-06. It is important to get access to the center, to bolster your own stones. Also, this play keeps the two White groups separated. Divide and conquer, remember? Yes, P-05 is another weak point, but that cannot be helped.

A few comments on game 4.

Bill Spight wrote:A few comments on game 4.

Thanks, Bill!

Endgame is a great thing to improve and something that seems to be neglected at low ranks - I remember being surprised at how many of my games came down to a few points at even the high ddk level - and how easy it was to pick up 6 or so points without too much effort. That said its something I still need to work on - so it may be one of those areas that requires continuous improvement.

Re: auto text on igs - if your opponent says hi but doesn't play a move - say hi back - I lost a game as white for not giving a salutation in the 1st minute (even though no stone was played). That or it was a bug in the iPod igs app.


Ps ... game 4 ... K *cough* 16 *cough*

S2W wrote: Ps ... game 4 ... K *cough* 16 *cough*

Yeah, I saw it this morning when I was reviewing the game. That would've changed things badly. Amazing how blind I still am to ataris.

Re: The end game
I think it's much harder than the rest of the game, at least for me, right now. It's like looking at a foreign language when I try to read a yose book. But I'll work on it.

Thanks for the tip to autotext -- I dind't even know it was possible. How do I set it up?

Good to meet you, S2w!

Good to meet you too!

Re: auto text - to be honest I'm not sure - I play on my iPod (while cradling a sleeping infant in the other arm - now that's a real man's handicap) - where it just happens automatically. Chatting used to crash the app so I'm a little scared of it.

Yes - the introductory yose lessons I've seem tend to devolve fairly rapidly into obscure counting ... And then I wake up

I found that the things that have served me well so far (ie to barely into sdk) are:
1. Sente Sente Sente (maybe think if you want to play ko first)
2. No more sente? Reverse sente! Reverse sente (a gote move where your opponent would have sente) is twice as big as you think it is.
3. Monkey jump! Learn it, use it, watch your ddk opponents run in terror!
4. Jumpy monk! Not as common as mj but 10x as fun. (Watch high sdks run in terror)
5. Mutually Assured Destruction worked for the yanks and Ruskis - now you can use it too! Mutual damage http://senseis.xmp.net/?MutualDamage ie in response to a sente move - play a sente move elsewhere with a more painful continuation to stop your opponent getting all those sweet sente moves.
6. Ko, lovely ko.
7. Sente

Ps. There's also probably 0. Make sure your groups are alive and your opponent's are too. But I like to ignore that one.

The title of this post should be: I haz rank! (sort of, with a ?-mark)

Go Training for today is complete, I guess.

1) Tsumego: 64 (these are from "Basic" and "Easy" on Tsumego Pro.
2) Tesuji: 26 (darn, I should do 10 more for the even hundred, but I am just too wiped out)
3) Long ladder reading drills - 15 minutes. Today was the first time I could read the ladder across the board more than once. Usually I get it the first time, and then my brain is too tired to do it until I take a break and rest. I got it right 4 or 5 times. I lost track of it many more than that, but at least I am getting halfway across the board before I'm lost.
4) Joseki for about an hour, maybe two. I reviewed all the 4-4 joseki I've learned so far, and tried to figure out when I would/wouldn't use them on a board. Hard going. Still can't see the shape before I play it.

I really wanted to watch a lecture on Yose or try to read a Yose book today, but did not get around to it.

But I did play games, and online, even! And in real life, too! All of them with people and not computers!

Game 1
I played another ranked game on IGS and won! I now have a 17? kyu! I'm way to excited about this. I realize I could get busted back down to BC soon, but it's pretty cool to have a sort-of rank.

I remember surprisingly little about this game. I will have to review it again, tomorrow, when I am awake and I am not seeing little Go stones dancing before my eyes.



Game 2

I then went out to eat with a friend of mine and gave him a teaching game. I felt weird doing it because I know how much I DON'T know. But someone has to show him the ropes. However, I may have scared him off. As he was sitting there he saw the ocean of moves and the vast history of thought about the game opening before him, and it intimidated him. We will see if he comes back.


Game 3 and 4

I played my first ranked games on KGS against a 6 kyu. It was kind of weird: no handicap, but also not a teaching game because it was ranked.

The guy was nice and very friendly, and he definitely took it easy on me a couple of times. But he completely destroyed me, as anyone should expect. He was nice enough to hang around after each to give some variations and comments, which was great

No KGS rank for me yet, of course. Not really excited about it, except it will make finding games easier.

KGS Game A


KGS Game B

S2W wrote: 1. Sente Sente Sente (maybe think if you want to play ko first)
2. No more sente? Reverse sente! Reverse sente (a gote move where your opponent would have sente) is twice as big as you think it is.
3. Monkey jump! Learn it, use it, watch your ddk opponents run in terror!
4. Jumpy monk! Not as common as mj but 10x as fun. (Watch high sdks run in terror)
5. Mutually Assured Destruction worked for the yanks and Ruskis - now you can use it too! Mutual damage http://senseis.xmp.net/?MutualDamage ie in response to a sente move - play a sente move elsewhere with a more painful continuation to stop your opponent getting all those sweet sente moves.
6. Ko, lovely ko.
7. Sente

Ps. There's also probably 0. Make sure your groups are alive and your opponent's are too. But I like to ignore that one.

I'll look these up

Ko... When I get bored when I'm studying josekis, I often chase them down blind alleys, and up ko fighting myself for a full ten minutes before I remember I'm supposed to be learning something useful.

I've Ko fought a lot at the Go Club, but I don't think I do it hardly at all online. I guess I'm afraid I'm going to lose focus, or that I have more defects than my opponent does. Also, I've seen a lot of people try to start a ko near the endgame. Being so bad at Yose, I definitely don't want that!