Life In 19x19

daal and I played our first game today, here's the sgf with a summary of the review. I (and I'm sure daal as well) would be happy to hear other players' comments!

Sennahoj wrote:daal and I played our first game today, here's the sgf with a summary of the review. I (and I'm sure daal as well) would be happy to hear other players' comments!

althought black lost, black played better in the opening than white. Most choices black made were 100% accurate. very impressed... until the breakdown at the end.
i think it is due to lack of experience but am sure he will improve.

enjoyed it. thanks.

I feel a little silly even offering, but, if there are any complete beginners who would appreciate the tutoring of a 14 kyu, drop a line. I don't know, maybe there can be some benefit to studying with someone a little closer to your own rank (along with a more serious, stronger mentor) simply because a weaker player may better relate to your own struggles and misconceptions. I certainly still recall the feeling of being confused by stuff like life and death and what sort of things helped me come along.

Joelnelsonb wrote:I feel a little silly even offering, but, if there are any complete beginners who would appreciate the tutoring of a 14 kyu, drop a line. I don't know, maybe there can be some benefit to studying with someone a little closer to your own rank (along with a more serious, stronger mentor) simply because a weaker player may better relate to your own struggles and misconceptions. I certainly still recall the feeling of being confused by stuff like life and death and what sort of things helped me come along.

I remember when I was first introduced to the game by some co-workers, and we were all just establishing our ranks, around 28-25 kyu. Then a new employee started who was 14 kyu. We were in so much awe, and bowing down before him -- until we learned later that our CEO was actually a 1 dan, but wouldn't play us, because he only played blitz, and we played really, really slow (only a few moves per day, and we even had our own board and stones in the office -- this was back when DGS was first released/started).

Joelnelsonb wrote:I feel a little silly even offering, but, if there are any complete beginners who would appreciate the tutoring of a 14 kyu, drop a line. I don't know, maybe there can be some benefit to studying with someone a little closer to your own rank (along with a more serious, stronger mentor) simply because a weaker player may better relate to your own struggles and misconceptions. I certainly still recall the feeling of being confused by stuff like life and death and what sort of things helped me come along.

I never received a rank until I needed one to enter my first tournament. I was assigned 10k and did okay. But before that I helped new people in the club and was helped by the stronger people. My point is that rank is totally unimportant: everyone can help someone.

After having given my protégé (that word sounds really silly now that I try to use it, but "mentee" and "mentoree" hardly even look like real words to me...) a few offline game reviews, I played my first game with him last night. I gave him an inadequate handicap of 4 stones (our difference on OGS is 7 stones) and the game was very difficult. My idea with this mentoring system, was basically to put Bill Spight's maxim of playing stronger players and reviewing with them into practice. Although I am significantly stronger than Saint Ravitt, I feel quite incompetent reviewing, and I don't have a really good understanding of how and why I won this game. I hope that the experience is nonetheless valuable. (I certainly appreciate the opportunity to play games with Sennahoj, and I would encourage more people to sign up! Here is the game with my sparse comments.

I've added some comments to the game, but there is too much to comment on at once.



You may want to try a higher handicap until you leave enough weaknesses behind that black takes advantage of some of them. Once it's high enough, black will hopefully stop being afraid of the white stones and try to take advantage more often. It may not always work, but the attitude is the important thing.

A few thoughts from the losing perspective.

Joelnelsonb, a quick comment: try to pay more attention to connection and separation of groups: Go is a topological game. You started with 4 non-surrounded groups. After f16 your corner got surrounded. After c9 you split your left group into 2 so you had 5 groups. It's generally a good idea to not have many separated groups. So try to keep white with many separated groups, and yours connected.

@joelnelsonb - regarding your two questions, at move 64 if you play q1, I play t2. At move 90, yes, after b11, I don't see a way to kill.

I had a nice game with Shaddy this saturday. This mentor program is awesome

I put my name down as a mentor if anyone is interested in learning from me.

I think this is a great idea, and I would love to see more people involved in it. One on one instruction is the best way to learn anything. And it makes the most sense to build a long term relationship with your teacher, so they can really learn what your strengths and weaknesses really are. A la carte teaching games are great, but I often find the reviews to be less than enlightening, sometimes rehashing all the reading errors that I already know I made, or else venturing into the nebulous areas of go knowledge that go over my head.

I'm offering myself as a mentor too. I think I cannot confidently mentor anyone better than 6k.
However, I don't necessarily want to play games with the student.

Program: weekly or biweekly checkup.
- player must play serious games
- player must review own games (but not too long)
- player must do L&D
- we'll discuss the next idea to implement

Idea: long term improvement AND short term improvement for long term and short term motivation

Short term improvements include:
1. Mentality and playing conditions
2. Time management
3. Win by connecting your groups
4. Win by killing the opponent's isolated groups
5. Win by playing thickly and be better at the endgame

Long term improvements include
1. Basic Technique (haengma)
2. L&D
3. Advanced techniques (tesuji)

Anyone who wants to study the opening, I'd recommend to have Bill Spight as a mentor. I am not qualified for that.

If Bill would want to mentor me, that would be interesting, after all these years.

Hi, Dieter. Thanks for the vote of confidence.

I am happy that L19 mentoring is happening. But as for myself, I am unable to make any new commitments in the foreseeable future. I expect to continue commenting on L19 games on a haphazard basis.

I've decided that I would really like to take on a student of Go. Firstly because of the saying "it is learned through teaching" but also because I just love to teach. I'm a new SDK so anyone in the DDK range will work but preferably someone in the 18 kyu or lower range. Let me know if you'd be interested in working together or if you know someone who might be. Also, I had the opportunity to work with Daal as my mentor and feel that some very good things came as a result. Our schedules, however, were not very compatible and we discontinued our studies together. This being said, I would also love to find another mentor to work with by playing teaching games and offering games for extensive review. If anyone feels that they would enjoy this opportunity as well, please contact me and know that you will not be obligated to do more than you're available for.