Life In 19x19

Hey, I'm often lurking around looking for games to review.

I hope you don't mind the critique. Last comment is on move 163. It's heavier on sequences than I usually do.... the lower right life and death stuff is probably very wrong. Maybe someone can correct that.

Many thanks to you for the review, emerus! I don't mind good critic like yours at all, I'm always happy to hear from strong players what I can do better in the future. Although I have to admit that I'm happy you found a move or two that you liked, too.

It's interesting to see that some of my moves are too harsh, I'll have to pay attention here in the future so that stronger opponents won't take advantage of that. Although I must say that I have huge problems telling too much from too slow/passive. It's always been that way and it never got better. I'll have to find a way to deal with this (any ideas here?). In this context it is also funny that you suggested quite a few moves that I'm too afraid of to play, especially in the opening - like D5, I doubt very much that many of my opponents right now would play so peacefully and I'm always at a loss of what to play when the crusscut comes. That's why I usually avoid that move whenever the opportunity arises, although that might be the wrong approach.. ^^; I guess reading well plays an extremly important role here. I gotta work on that so I can stop to be afraid (or be less afraid ).

I think it's better to be too harsh than too passive. If you're too passive, you'll sometimes play a game where nothing happens and you learn nothing. But if you're too harsh, all of your games will be adventures.

If your moves are too harsh your opponent's going to be able to directly punish it once you get up the ranks enough, wheras passive you'll just get outplayed more indirectly. A lot easier to have the lessons hammered in on the first than the second I think.

PeterN

I guess you are right, Shaddy and PeterN. You have to cross the border at times to know what's still ok and what doesn't work - so you can punish your opponent if he plays like that, too.

I already put your advice into action (although I didn't want it to be as fierce as it turned out in the end ). A few minutes ago I finished a quite unhole Christmas game of Go with lots of cut'n'kill. Thankfully, it was my opponent who got killed (although I did most of the cutting thingy). He sometimes (especially when it came to game-decisive moves) played very passively, which allowed me to take more than I should have gotten out of it. A neat example for what Shaddy and PeterN said above (although there are a lot of mistakes in my part in that game, too). Still, im kind of.. proud. It is one of those few games in the last weeks that I could really see all the tsumego sessions pay off. Immediately seeing the vital point for killing his center group alone was.. more than great. I'll enjoy that feeling until another game gets my feet back on earth again, maybe together with another serving of tsumego.

Although it is another won game, maybe one or two of you would like to see what I'm talking about at all (comments and critic is, as always, welcome):


Oh, and as a nice bonus and a Christmas present for myself I got my KGS 4k back after this game!

Merry Christmas to all of you, wherever you are!

Ember

Ember wrote:im kind of.. proud. It is one of those few games in the last weeks that I could really see all the tsumego sessions pay off. Immediately seeing the vital point for killing his center group alone was.. more than great. I'll enjoy that feeling until another game gets my feet back on earth again, maybe together with another serving of tsumego.

What a great feeling when it feels like you're studies are starting to click! Those are the times to remember.

Hello everyone,

first of all a big sorry to Shaddy and to emerus! I read your comments and posts a while ago already, but being home over christmas has kept me pretty much completely from doing anything related to Go.. But both comments were very much appreciated and I want to say: Thank you very much!

Weekly Update #5
First of all I wish all readers a happy, healthy and successful new year! I hope that you won't break the resolutions you made and that you'll play many enjoyable and / or exciting games of Go this year and, of course, get stronger as well.

After one week without an update there's at least a little bit to report now. This time of the year is a classic time to make resolutions so I decided to make one concerned to Go: I already said that I play way too little and that's why I decided last week that I shall be playing 400 games this year on the 19x19 board, be it free or rated games, games played online or at the club. I excluded the small boards because it might be a cheap way to get a large number of games quickly and because playing on smaller boards emphasizes tactics over strategy and I want to improve in both aspects. (Surely not only) For me, that's a really tough number and I'm not sure if I'll get there, but starting from next week I'll do my very best. I don't know yet what will happen if I get to play them all or if I don't reach this number of games, because I couldn't imagine neither a reward nor some kind of "punishment" (any ideas?) that fits the occasion yet. However, I won't think about too much for now but instead concentrate on playing the games first. I'm sure that in the course of doing so something will come to my mind. And if it will be "only" improving a stone or two I wouldn't complain either. This decision will also bring up some statistics and I must admit that I really like them. ^^; That's why from now on I'll provide them at the end of each weekly report. If you have any suggestions of what else might be interesting to track there, please let me know.

Tsumego: I only did a small number of tsumego. I continued with Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of Life & Death Vol. 1 and went back 200 problems or so from where I think I was last time, so I'm back to about the 300th problem now. I had some difficulties with some of the problems but I hope that once I pick up the routine again it will be as easy as before.

Studying: I only read a few pages in Attack and Defense last week, so I can hardly claim that I studied. But that will change because next week Guo Juan's group classes will start. I'll miss the first lesson because I'll be in Madrid at the Kisei event (anyone else of you coming there?), but I do not intend to miss any more of the lectures. I hope it'll help me to study more and, at least as important, to find out what to study first. I already have a lot of books and feel weak in a large number of areas, but I honestly have no idea where to start my studies.

Playing: I played 2 games this week and reviewed them both with a stronger player. That's not as much as I should have played (when I think about the average number of games to play per day), but as I'll be participating in a few tournaments this year I can afford some days without playing (I'll always have to consider that in the course of the year, though, and keep an eye out for not slacking up too much - that's why I put the number of days that already passed and that remain in the statstics as well).
I'm happy to report that I already reached a first remarkable landmark for me, I beat a KGS 3k without handicap stones! (I'll add these kind of small successes to my statistics and by the end of the year I hope I'll have a large paragraph of smaller and larger landmarks I can celebrate and get some fresh motivation from)
Although I'm really happy about this win (even though it was "only" a free game), I must admit that he played very strangely sometimes, e.g. once killing 1 stone instead of playing a large sente move. It was a fighting game from the start and I made a few mistakes (guess what! ) but he made at least as many and I think that his mistakes were way more costly for him than mine were for me. In the end he resigned after about 150 moves when I had killed two of his groups and was leading by maybe 60-70 points (my guess, the KGS score estimator said something of about 80 but that was too much in my opinion). I'm ashamed to say that I had no territory that didn't contain (or hadn't contained) at least one of his stones.. I guess I'll have to work on being able to pull the plug at some point, another opponenty might have had the chance to maybe stage an upset and turn the game around again..

Next weekend I'll be playing the first tournament of the year. I don't have any high expectations because I didn't study a lot in the last weeks, but I'm really motivated to give it my best shot because it annoys me that I'll have to play as 7k again (the rank is strictly connected to the EGF rating and because mine dropped so much after the last disas tournament, it's 7k again..). Maybe that's not the best attitude because wanting to win (or even wanting to play the best you can) can make you play worse, but acquiring a better one and keeping the emotions under control is still on my "have to work on"-list.

Next sunday there won't be an update because we'll still be in Madrid (I honestly cannot put into words how excited I already am that we're going!!), so don't expect anything before tuesday at least. But, if you are interested in it, I'll post a little report on the event and maybe a picture or two as well if you like. Just let me know!

I wish you all a splendid week!


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+++ Playing statistics +++
Date: 5 January 2014
Games played/to be played: 2 / 398
Days passed/to come: 5 / 360
Games won: 2
Games lost: 0
Jigo: 0
Winning percentage: 100%
Landmarks: First win against KGS 3k on 5 January 2014 (unrated game, own rank: 4k, color: black, no komi)

A little mid-week report:

Since the last update I was able to play one game each day, which is basically what I need to do to reach my goal of 400 games this year (plus playing in a few tournaments). The quality of the games wasn't that good because I played very late in the evening and I was tired, but the good thing is that I didn't fall back into thoughtless clicking. Instead I used my time and reached byoyomi in all games (all were automatch games on KGS with 20 minutes main time and 5 byo periods à 30 seconds - the standard stuff). So far, this year I played 4 games, winning 3 of them.
Because I like statistics (did you read the last post? ) I decided to track the progress of my goal to play 400 games in 2014. For this I created an Excel worksheet in which I write down each game I play Excel does all the rest. I like Excel! Here's a picture of the first sheet:


The small diagramm on January is only there to check if the data is processed correctly (the real overview with one such diagramme for each month is on the second sheet (I don't include a picture here now because it wouldn't be very interesting now). It is a very comfortable way for me to track my progress and to break the huge number down to about 33, 34 games per month (the red line in the bottom left diagramme) directly made me think that it is really possible to achieve this goal (for me. I know that others play WAY more - but when I think about it I've had two busy years in which counted together I might have played less than half this number. So you can see that this will be a real challenge for me. ). And it is kind of motivating to see the played games column go up each time, too. What do you think about it?

Considering the rest of my study routine, I haven't studied any theory yet but I did a few tsumego yesterday and today. Although I went back about 200 problems in Cho Chikun's Elementary Level Encyclopedia of Life & Death, I'm having a bit of a hard time.. I remember that there were a few tricky problems in the 300s, but I can't blame that fact for that I'm really, really slow with finding the right solution (at least much slower than before I stopped doing them for a few weeks). I'm also having more problems with clearly reading out the moves in my head. I hope that until saturday a little bit can be done about it if I continue to do them each day until then.

That's it for my "short" mid-week update. ^^; Until next week then!

I'm back from Alcalá de Henares where the first game of this year's Kisei title match was held and I'm still so excited about this weekend that I'd like to share some short comments and some fotos with you now. Because so much happened, I'll only post about the cocktail event for now and add another report about the days of the Kisei game this week if you want. I hope you'll like it! The usual weekly report that was due on sunday will be done later this week, too.

The first game of this years Kisei title match took place in Alcalá de Henares, a city near the Spanish capital, Madrid. Alcalá de Henares is the assumed birthplace of the famous Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quichote, among others). We arrived early on friday and after checking into the hostel we walked around the city center for a bit to get to know the place and the way to the playing site and the restaurant in which tonight's cocktail event would take place.


One of the ancient buildings in the city center. This one belongs to the the University of Alcalá de Henares.

In the city center there are a lot of very, very old and beautiful buildings so it is no surprise that the city center is a world heritage site. We knew that before we went there but what I didn't know at all is that a lot (and I mean a LOT) of storks are staying there for the winter (at least as long as it's so warm as it is now). I think I never saw so many of them (or their nests) in my whole life before (not only in one place, but as a total number). That's why it is not surprising that apart from Miguel de Cervantes, storks play an important role in the local merchandise industry.


One example of the storck activity around Alcalá de Henares. The weight of the nests is a huge problem here because it is a danger for the roofs of the old buildings.


The official merchandise store in the city center. Most of the space is taken up by storcks in different variations (plush toy, mobile and others). On the left there are some masks which I guess are referring to the work of Miguel de Cervantes.


In the evening, on the night before the first game of the 38th Kisei title match, the organizers of the event had arranged a cocktail event where Iyama Yuta Kisei and Yamashita Keigo 9p, the challenger for the title, were presented.

A lot of speeches were held, most of them in Japanese (mostly with Spanish, sometimes English translations) or in Spanish, among the speakers were someone from the Ministry of Sports and the mayor of Alcalá de Henares (no translation in English as far as I remember). I was happy that know some Spanish and could understand quite much from what they said, but for anyone who didn't understand neither Japanese nor Spanish this part of the evening might have been a little boring and/or frustrating. This unfortunately also included the respective speeches of the Kisei champion and the challenger, which were only translated into Spanish (at least they were translated but I doubt that the majority of the numerous international guests could understand that better than the original Japanese). From what I understood and remember I can sum up that both expressed how much they had enjoyed their stay in Spain until now (they must have arrived quite some time in advance because they also had done some sightseeing in nearby Toledo and Madrid before then) and how much they liked the Spanish food and wine (Iyama) and the "beautiful women" here (Yamashita). And, of course, that they would fight very hard to win the title and the like (which I guess is the standard stuff for every such event - but this time they definitely kept that promise as those who already saw the game and the result already know ).


After the speeches, there was a toast...


... and the official part of the event ended with both players and some of the officials posing for a picture.


My most favourite picture of the evening (sorry to all fans of Yamashita-sensei here.. )

After the speeches many of the attendants took advantage of the opportunity to get a picture with Iyama-sensei or get a fan (or something else) signed by him (me included ). I must admit that I was so excited to be so close to my most favourite player that I didn't pay very much attention to Yamashita-sensei. But I can say for sure that if he signed fans, the number was much smaller than the one Iyama (very patiently and amiably) did.

After the end of the official part there were canapés, a jamonera with what I think was Pata Negra / Jamón Ibérico (very delicious!!) and a real sushi master who prepared inside out rolls with salmon, tuna and other things (it was the best sushi I had ever had in my life). The poor man did his very best to keep up with the demand, but he was fighting windmills here (no pun intended ), no piece of sushi he put on the plate before him lasted more than 20 or 30 seconds before it was eaten, sometimes only a few seconds. I also like to watch him prepare the sushi, from the way he did it you could tell that he was very skilled indeed.


The (supposed) Pata Negra at the beginning of the evening...


... and at the end.


The sushi master hard at work and hungry attendants of the event craving for more.

We had a wonderful time that night talking to people from different countries, seeing quite a few top Japanese professionals from close distance (among others, Kobayashi Satoru 9p (commentarist), Yamashiro Hiroshi (referee), Imamura Toshiya 9p and Goto Shungo 9p (board commentarists and players in simul games) and other professionals, like the former female Honinbo Ogawa Tomoko, were attending) as well as strong European amateur players, eating very good food, and, as you could see, taking lots of pictures. Although I only reported about one part of the whole Kisei event, I'd already like to thank the organizers of the event wholeheartedly for all the work they must have had to put into organizing this brilliant event!

Here comes the second part of my report on this year's first game of the Kisei title match event in Alcalá de Henares (Spain). If you missed the first part, just check out the last post.

Because there'll be even a few more pictures than last time, I'll seperate my report and put a few lines and the fotos on the pro-event, the amateur event in general and my tournament performance including the sgf files of the games in seperate hide-tags so you won't be bothered with what doesn't interest you.

Oh, and before I forget it: Do check out this picture gallery of the Kisei's sponsor, the Yomiuri Shimbun Newspaper (which has way better pictures than me anyways )

The professional's event: The first game of the 38th Japanese Kisei Title Match between Iyama Yuta Kisei and Yamashita Keigo 9p

The amateur's event: The Kisei Open Side Tournament

My tournament performance
With this, I conclude my report on the Kisei event in Alcalá de Henares. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it!

The report on my tournament "performance" includes most of my Go activity of that week (well.. apart from a very few games and some tsumego in the airplane), so that's why there won't be a special report on that. On sunday there'll be the next weekly report with one or two sgf files, too, and I hope you'll be back then.

karaklis wrote:I wouldn't say that your performance in Spain was extraordinarily bad. As far as I know a KGS 4k there is around EGF 9k (Example: our forum member RBerenguel), i.e. a few stones stronger than over here in Germany (and I myself am in the KGS 4k vs. EGF 7k ranges). At least this would perfectly explain your result of 1-3. KGS and EGF ranks should not be mixed up...

Righty. To be fair I wanted to enter my next tournament (Barcelona 14) as 7-8k (suggested by Antti & Juri as a more competitive rank for me) but I'll be 9k. I hope to show I should have entered as 8k

I think the 7-9k EGF area in Spain is roughly between 2-3k and 5-6k KGS, from previous experience, people I know and similar things.

@ karaklis: Wow, thank you very much for looking at all of the games and adding your thoughts! Even if you said you're not stronger than me (which we don't know because we never played before ) I think it is really interesting to read the thoughts of a player who is of similar strength. And I think you had some really good ideas there. ¡Muchas gracias!

karaklis wrote:game 2:
63/65: what if you had played s2 here? I think the white group is not yet alive. It would have allowed you to chase it a bit longer.

I don't know, at least 65 looks necessary to me because without it even if I got the vital point white could still escape and live. That's why I think 65 is a must, it forces white to live small. 63… well, this one definitely is questionable, I totally agree.


@ karaklis and RBerenguel: Thanks for telling me, I didn't know that the Spanish players at this level were so strong. Actually, it's kind of scary even, because the gap is so big (not only Spanish rank - KGS but also compared to German ranks). o.O Is this large gap a general tendency in Spain and also normal in the higher kyu and low dan ranks, too, or is it only like this around this level? (I knew there was an average gap of 100 EGF points between Spain and Germany, but this sounds - and felt - like more than that)



Weekly Update #6

Another week flew by. My Go resolution for this year and my remaining study schedule kept me very busy the whole week and I was able to play games, solve tsumego and study a bit, too (in Guo Juan's Group Class). On my way to work and home, I (mostly) did my tsumego dutifully and in many of the evenings I played a game. But sometimes I'm simply too tired to play and compiling the second part of the report on the Kisei event took me a whole evening to do, too, so I didn't play a(t least one) game every day as I should and practically didn't do anything after work than something related to Go (mind you, I have other hobbies, too, on which I hardly have spend any time this year). After each game it was mostly already quite late and I really had to go to bed, so more than one game was not an option, either. Honestly, this is very exhausting and I doubt that I can keep it up like this for very long (unless it gets easier after some time), so I might have to think about what to change. Playing shorter games? I don't really want that, because the whole idea behind it is not only about the number of games but also about the quality (if there is quality in a SDK game at all ) and thought put into each game. Reduce the number of total games? That would mean resignation after not even 3 weeks in and I'm not doing that! Maybe I'm overthinking it all too much again, I mean in case I really get behind, I can still catch up when I'm in vacation, so it should be fine in the end.

Concerning January only, I'm still doing well. I'd have to play around 34 games per month to reach my goal and up to now I played 20 (11 games won and 9 games lost). That means there'll have to be 14 more games in the next 12 days. Sounds doable to me, I'll hang in there! With February coming up, I can't slack down now, because doing it in only 28 days is even tougher (if for me not entirely impossible - I played 6 games this weekend just to reach 20 games..). Playing is still fun (most of the times) now, so I should take advantage of this attitude as much as I can because there'll definitely be weeks in which I won't be in the mood to do anything related to Go at all (which kind of scares me). For now I'm really looking forward to reaching my goal of 34 games until January 31 and to reach the first landmark of 50 games played in total. That Excel file I made to track my progress really motivates me because 400 is just such a huge number, but breaking it down in monthly bites (or even weekly bites of 8 games) and seeing that I get closer and closer to this goal or that is a great source of motivation.


Some rants on some of the games I played:

Yesterday evening I played a game against a hard-lining overplayer and lost in the end (after a short comeback) because he lived inside my territory. Such games really get me down because I KNOW that he is overplaying all the time and that there is a way to punish him for it. Still, I'm unable to find the correct moves (especially in complicated situations like these where there are a lot of variations) and this helplessness is really frustrating (although I must admit in this case that I should have taken more time to read in the decisive moments, too.. ). After a short review I have a rough idea of what I did wrong so I hope that next time I might get the better end of it (109 should have been at Q10 instead and if he cuts I should just play sagari at S10 and the group is as dead as a handful of McDonald's french fries; if he doesn't cut, Q10 still looks like a vital point). Here's the game:


This afternoon I played another KGS 3k (no handicap, 0,5 points of komi for him) and he played weird (I think).. He wasn't so much interested in taking vital points or closing his upper side but instead tried to kill the worm I had which was perfectly connected (although I'd have to take some of his stones if I couldn't get 2 eyes or a connection to another living group of mine). In the course of the game, the worm was connected (it ran in one line across the whole board XD) and he managed to live with a group of his that had looked very, very weak quite some time when he took five of my stones that I couldn't connect due to damezumari. But he got gote there and because he was a little stubborn, I connected some of my formerly dead stones by catching 10 of his (I'd also have taken 2 in sente, but I won't complain here ). Later he was pretty desperate and tried strange stuff in my territory which I ignored at some point and where let me catch even more of his stones (he must have lost about 30-40 stones in the course of the game). In the end he finally resigned when I was leading by more than 60 (!!) points. For your entertainment I'll include the game here in case you'd like to take a look:


Tomorrow evening I'll play the next game for the group class and I sincerely hope that it might be at least nearly as good as the last one I played for it. Although I made some stupid mistakes at the end (which fortunately were pretty small) and lost sente without any need at all at the beginning of the middle game (which was a lot bigger), I cannot remember the last time when I was so satisfied with a game I had played. Here it is:


That's it for this week, folks. Thanks for coming, thanks for reading and thanks for commenting! Hope to see you again soon! Any comments are, as always, much appreciated.

Ember


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+++ Playing statistics +++
Date: 19 January 2014
Games played/to be played: 20 / 380
Days passed/to come: 19 / 346
Games won: 11
Games lost: 9
Jigo: 0
Winning percentage: 55%
Landmarks: First win against KGS 3k on 5 January 2014 (unrated game, own rank: 4k, color: black, no komi), first win against KGS 3k in a rated game on 19 January 2014 (own rank: 4k, color: black, komi: 0,5 points)

Regarding the first game, I feel there is a certain element of passiveness in your play. If you can keep white under pressure more, he won't have time to pull fancy tricks.

Move 13: I might consider a more distant approach to be lighter. In any case, if black can get sente to make a shimari in the bottom right, black is golden.

Move 17: Black can tenuki from this. He will suffer a loss, to be sure, but if white spends another move to fix, black may be able to tenuki again to play on a grander scale. Black may also be able to jump into the center instead of fixing directly and try to take sente that way.

Move 21: Even Q5 puts more pressure on white.

Move 27: Consider O5 to take white's vital point. Also, you will probably have to give white something here, so consider how you plan to get compensation. A nice wall facing the top and white's low position there may be enough, including the invasion aji in the lower left.

Move 29: I want to pressure white from the other side instead of just running, because a move white makes to get out will induce you to support the black group on the left anyways.

Move 31: This move is too far away from white to make him worry about his group, so it gives white scope for action. This might be a good time to get a few peeps in from the right, and then think about moving out the F3 stone or threatening to rescue it from above.

Move 33: Why not O9, or something else more solid? Not sure this is right, but it's worth considering.

Move 35: Maybe consider just solidifying your gains with R10 or something? So far, white's been running on dame, which is a win for black.

With the following sequence, at some point black has to decide what he wants to keep and what he will give white, because he can't get everything. If black tries too hard, the position collapses. Even with the loss in the corner, though, this whole invasion sequence has not actually been beneficial for white. White got 10 points max, and black solidified most of his potential. Once black is solid, also, white has erased some of his own in the lower left.

Move 63: Is this move necessary yet? If it isn't, then it's almost a pass, and frankly, it's the middle game, but this move is only a matter of points even if white can cut. Even if there is enough aji there, it may be better to solidify by expanding at the upper left of the moyo rather than fixating on a few stones.

Taking the corner seemed like decent timing to me.

Move 79: I am looking at invading at J17 and trying to take advantage of white's move that way, or of just pressing white down. White has 38 points up top, assuming he just gets stones on the third line, and black's right side is much bigger than that, plus black has more territory or potential on the board otherwise than white, so he just needs to play calmly. This sequence ends with ugly shape for black, and more center potential for white, so I don't think I could call it a win.

Move 92: J13 or a reducing move look great for white.

Move 107: You talked about this sequence a bit, but if white connects at R10 or S11 or somesuch, how is he going to live?

I don't have that much to say about the fight that follows, other than to defend the right as S18 instead of making an eye directly, if it works.