Life In 19x19

Ready for the Nordic Go Academy Summer Camp! My next posts quite likely will deal with it, so probably my "numbers of the week" will be delayed for a while (the daily tsumego and lessons will have precedence over Anki)

Take pictures while you're there.

Abyssinica wrote:Take pictures while you're there.

Sure I will!

Okay, been here in Finland for the past three days already. First day, arrival, eating something at the airport and picking up two fellow campgoers (Desirée coming from Austria and Nick coming from Canada, via Copenhagen.) Then we took a couple buses until Juri's place were we relaxed (no go, even if given the opportunity) getting to know us and watch some movie. Later in the day Lukas joined us, and we kept the talking until quite late in the night (accompanied by a few chapters of the Mahjong equivalent of Hikaru no Go, a series called Akagi, we had quite the laugh there.) After sleeping just a few hours, wake up, shower and another couple of buses until the camp area. We got to see the awesomely remodelated sauna building. So awesome we are (almost) spending more time in that building than in the main building.

On Saturday we had no official teaching or games. I sneaked a couple of friendly games, playing with a Finnish quasi-begginer (he has been playing for 3 months and he already plays quite well, specially given the fact that he doesn't play that much online) and later in the afternoon I played Johannes, a fellow NGA member in real life for the first time (he crushed me ) Also we got to inaugurate the NGA sauna season We were given our tsumego assigment, and early to bed (I was feeling rather tired already.)

Today, first lesson (I attended Juri's shape session, even if aimed for somewhat lower than my rank) and game (I played fellow NGA student Roel, he's from Belgium.) It wasn't a brilliant game from either side, but he made the largest mistake and had to resign. In the afternoon we visited the local "go shop" (actually, you order stuff and go pick it there, but we could take a look at the place) and I purchased a gorgeous 9x9 board with legs and bowls. Then I found out that the maker of my beautiful 19x19 board is the same guy. Neat, now I have a set

After dinner (we had shepherds pie for dinner today,) some sauna, tsumego turn in (I turned in most of B and all of C tsumego... B are quite a bit hard and C are quite a bit too easy) and now some people play go, some mahjong and some more (specially the German duet) are about to go watch the World Cup match.

More news soon!

Sounds really cool! Maybe I have the chance to join someday (next year?) =)

SoDesuNe wrote:Sounds really cool! Maybe I have the chance to join someday (next year?) =)

I'd definitely love to meet you there (or somewhere else would work, but this is being awesome so far, and we have 2 other Germans already here, although for now I haven't tried to test my rusty knowledge of Deutsch mit ihnen – or was it Ihnen? – )

Feeling tsumego-tiredness, Törmänätor style

Friday is here already, meaning the camp is coming to a close. Today was the last lecture, and tomorrow we have an EGF C-class tournament with 4 rounds (IIRC, -2 reduced handicap.) I think it has been very worthwhile, and that actually my reading ability has gotten up a level since even this Sunday.

As commented above, we've had Törmänätor-flavoured tsumego levels (a pun with Finnish pronunciation of Antti's family name, since he compiled the tsumego packages.) Supposedly, on first day, levels were supposed to be:

• A class: Dan
• B class: 1k-5/6k
• C class: lower than that

Juri decided to in addition print Cho Elementary and Intermediate for people finding C difficult. I was supposed to do B, but after day 2 it was clear the ranks/class had some kind of shift...

• A class: high dan
• B class: 2d-2/3k
• C class: lower than that

So, I started to do C and whatever I could manage from B. C class problems are relatively common shapes, but not straightforward ones (they are considerably harder in average than LCH's tsumego books up to 3, which are the ones I've checked, for instance.) But of course, we are here to do this, so I've spent up to 30 minutes in reading B class problems. Even then, some still leave me puzzled, but some I read. And this stubborness seems to have already made my reading much, much clearer. Let's hope I can keep this flow when I'm back home!

I remember a similar experience when I was in the NGA.
I could easily solve the B-class Tsumego and even got a discount for the next month because I got the highest score. Then I decided to go for A-class Tsumego and I was lucky when I could solve one or two ^^

My tip for keeping up the flow: Do less but keep it consistent.

SoDesuNe wrote:I remember a similar experience when I was in the NGA.
I could easily solve the B-class Tsumego and even got a discount for the next month because I got the highest score. Then I decided to go for A-class Tsumego and I was lucky when I could solve one or two ^^

My tip for keeping up the flow: Do less but keep it consistent.

Totally. I think I'll do 1-2 hard ones per day in addition to my usual easy anki decks.

As for NGA comparison, the easiest B class problems of the camp are among the last 3-5 of an usual NGA B-month assignment. Which are always the real hard ones :/

I'll make a write up about the camp sooner or later, but for now, here is the legged 9x9 board (with bowls) I got while in Helsinki. The first two games on it were against Cho Mikyung 8p from Korea (I lost both, first one normal with komi, second one with reverse komi.) She said a couple of my moves were good, but I was a little too aggressive in the second, with a more normal defense I may have won.

In the picture, we were reviewing one of Go Seigen's 9x9 games with Reino, Jeff and IIRC, Marcus.

What an interesting position for black to be alive in since white has 0 ko threats.

Yup, endgame position actually. This is a game between Go Seigen and Miyamoto Naoki, supposedly played to decide correct komi for 9x9. They alternated between B and W, and both won as black by 4 points.

I haven't yet taken time to review this game (actually, my list of "for review" in 9x9 is currently sitting at around 60 or so games, so...) but I found it quite weird. It would have been nice if I could say I read everything from move 17 onwards, but no. I just 'knew' the white group on the left was way too thin for a strong attack, the rest just followed from this.