Ian Butler's Go Journal

[Bill Spight]

Unless I have goofed, Black played correctly to get the last play.

Cool, interesting. So locally it wasn't the correct move, but considering other endgame moves, it was better. Amazing. Glad to see my variations were not so bad

Actually, I did goof. I just checked, and I miscounted. Your play is correct.

[Ian Butler]

So so so.
I'm getting more and more back in shape and I think I might be back at the level I was before I took a break.

Some things I've been trying to improve these last few days and hoping to keep doing for the future:

- Online play: use more time. It's better. I play slower and read things out. Still only about half compared to irl, but it's better.

- Enjoy every aspect of Go. When I feel like doing tsumego (it's fun!) I do that. When I want to play, I play. When I don't want to, I don't do it. It sounds so easy but I used to force myself to do things at a certain time when I didn't feel like it.
Especially playing online. Now I play less games, perhaps, but I play them seriously, review them AND play them with much more motivation than before. I actually get excited about playing.

- Taking it easy. More and more realizing Go is a long-term (lifelong?) hobby that I needn't rush through. You're never done learning it so why should I rush? It's a bad habit I have from other hobbies where you can, in fact, reach the "finish line". Then I speed through it and "complete" it (like reading a book). But I realize now that I'll never be "finished" with Go, you can never reach a summit in Go, because it goes on endless. So why should I rush anything? I'll get better as I get better.

- Endgame is fun and mostly screwed up because it's the end of the game and the concentration or patience is gone. Whenever I review a game I played after taking a rest, I cringe at some of the moves in the endgame. Keeping a cool head throughout the ENTIRE game is not easy.

- Go is like an RPG. You have like 20+ skills, each with their own level you can train. Then you have your overall level, your ranking. Yesterday I finally learned more about double hane (when it's more effective, when not...). I realized this might not impact my overall level much atm. But it does increase my "double-hane" skillset from 20/100 to 40/100 ( ) or something. If other skills go up slightly, too, your overall level goes up one point.
Playing someone of about the same overall level can be highly interesting. Because that person might have totally different skillsets. Maybe he has 60/100 fighting compared to your 20/100, but less in other areas.
I like RPG's, it makes me nostalgic.

Lastly:
- Even though I've always tried not to care too much about rank, and mostly succeeding, I've taken another step in not caring about it. And that's important to me, because I want to care 0%, and I still care 10 or 15%.
Right now, though, I am constantly looking for better players to play, even though I keep losing. But it keeps me sharp and makes me better. It doesn't do my rank a lick of good, but I don't care. I wouldn't want to play weaker players just to keep my rank.
The only time it makes me care a little, even if I don't want it, is when I do play even players. Then sometimes I get a bit "scared" of losing. Maybe not directly because I'm afraid of my rank, but because then I'll feel: oh no, I should've won this game because we're the same rank. Which is stupid because same rank means 50% chance of winning. So still need a little attitude adjustment there!

[Ian Butler]

It had been a long time since I replayed Pro Games and I found that it was more enjoyable than ever. I understand more about the moves now because I'm stronger.
And testing how many moves I could recreate after replaying it once was also interesting. I memorised up to 32 moves (next 10 or so in wrong order so doesn't count), just by going through the game once. I think I memorise more moves than before because I understand the moves more and they tell a story, rather than just a place on a board.

BTW, it was an incredible game of Nie Weiping vs Takemiya Masaki

To be fair, I understood the game a lot more because it was commented by a Dan player. But I've also learned you can only understand the commentary if you understand why it is so.

But what a beauty of a game! Weiping completely denying his opponent to build a moyo and black therefore being constantly behind on the board.

[Ian Butler]

I was just completely humiliated in a game against a 3 kyu

Basically there was a joseki that I didn't know and I clearly made the wrong decision. My group died. 28 moves played and game over.
Oh well.

Only one thing to learn from this game: I'll be looking up the right joseki variation because it also popped up in my previous game (there I made a decision where I lived - but too small. I tried something else today, but clearly wrong answer)

[Bill Spight]

@ B-16

But is horrible.

Game edited for SGF correctness.

[Ian Butler]

@ B-16

But is horrible.

Haha tell me about it. I looked up the joseki after this failure and B16 is correct.
Last game I did E18 for and lived in the corner. Which wasn't optimal but not that bad either. Not sure if that's joseki though, probably not an even result enough for it being joseki.

[Bill Spight]

Added a few variations.

[Ian Butler]

Thank you kindly, Bill.


Planning! (a new theory)
It's funny. I like making plans and doing some planning, but I am just terrible at carrying them out.
I seriously doubt, for example, I'll fully carried out any of my big plans laid out in my study journal(s) here on the site. However, I do keep busy and so far I've been improving. But it's not thanks to my planning, let me tell you that

Anyway. I was thinking up a new way of "planning" a study of Go. I wish I could tell you this time I'll stick to it, but planning is half the fun and if I don't make it, I'm sure I'll do a worthwhile alternative anyway.

So the new idea was to organise the "workload" into four categories:
- Daily-Work
- Weekly-Work
- Rotation Reserve
- Thematic Study

Daily-Work
This is everything that "has" to happen daily.

1) tsumego (min of 10 minutes)

Obviously a small amount of things, because otherwise it won't be realistic on the longer term.

Weekly-Work
This is everything that should be done a few times weekly, preferably.

1) playing games (& reviewing them)
2) further study of basics through Jump Level Up
3) 1 or 2 items of the rotation reserve or thematic study.

Rotation Reserve
Everything that should be rotated into the Weekly-Work, with variation as needed/wanted.

1) strategy books - for inspiration
2) joseki study - note study not memorisation
3) game reviews of other players
4) replaying Pro games (slow or fast, commented or not)
5) books on Tesuji
6) Other

Thematic Study
The things that can be inserted into Weekly-Work or even Daily-Work, but ONLY TEMPORARY.

1) A particular area in need of desperate attention. For example: a few weeks of endgame study after some terrible endgame mistakes in games.


Anyway, like I said. This is just the theory. It would work well with some kind of whiteboard to keep track of it throughout the week, maybe even with a real planner to fill in at the start of each week or something.
Will I do it? I might, I don't know yet. Only thing I know is that I want to start doing tsumego daily again, and do all the other stuff enough to keep making (slow) progress, but also keep it fun, light and interesting.

[Ian Butler]

Another game!
I feel I played this one relatively well. Winning against an 8 kyu OGS is a big deal for me, since it's been months I've been able to achieve that.
So I'm pretty happy with the result and the way I played it.

Also I decided to stop playing "fear" moves. Instead I try to be more assertive. Sometimes that'll end up being bad, because I leave more weaknesses, but then I'll learn from it. You learn less from being too defensive.
This game has a few examples of this in it. One is clearly a mistake.

[/sgf]

[Ian Butler]

The post above also reminds me: I fear my level of analysis might not be as good anymore. The last game, I even reviewed with Leela but I have a hard time finding my real big mistakes, so if I cease to find those, I'll probably stop improving. So I need to up my reviewing, I think. Anyone with good tips for doing that?

[jlt]

You did find several mistakes in your game. Isn't that enough? It's probably easier to find mistakes in games that you lost, or in games where you weren't always leading.

[BlindGroup]

I'm not sure if this is a helpful suggestion or not. So, hopefully, others will chime in. But one thing that I noticed as a recurring theme in your games is the L-groups -- not always but frequently around 3-3 invasions of the small and large knight 4-4 enclosures. In the game you just posted to this thread, the group on the bottom right is the L+1, for example.

I wonder if you might gain from spending some time specifically looking at the L-shapes and the 3-3 invasion joseki for the 4-4 enclosures. I started to do this around your level, and it seemed to help a lot. I found the treatment of the L-groups in Cho Chickun's All About Life and Death very helpful and from it, created a series of problems that I loaded into easy go to practice with. If you buy or own the book, I'd be happy to share those SGF's with you. You can also find references for free on the web.

[jlt]

Maybe the L+1 group was not killable because of the P4 cut?

[BlindGroup]

Maybe the L+1 group was not killable because of the P4 cut?

I played it out a little bit with Lizzie. If he had haned to play P1 at , I think it works, but it turns into a very complicated fight. Additionally, white is able to develop the cut into a center group that eliminates the value of black's influence. So, black would win the battle but lose the war as they say.

One of the things that I learned studying this position in pro games is that very often there are bigger moves than killing an isolated corner group. I was stunned by how long the pro's would usually wait to resolve those situations. In this case, something like P6 at serves multiple purposes -- it protects the cut, it confines white's side group providing influence towards the center, and it threatens to later kill the white corner group. So, even if A wasn't a threat, I think P6 might have still been bigger than losing sente to kill the corner group.

[Ian Butler]

I'm not sure if this is a helpful suggestion or not. So, hopefully, others will chime in. But one thing that I noticed as a recurring theme in your games is the L-groups -- not always but frequently around 3-3 invasions of the small and large knight 4-4 enclosures. In the game you just posted to this thread, the group on the bottom right is the L+1, for example.

I wonder if you might gain from spending some time specifically looking at the L-shapes and the 3-3 invasion joseki for the 4-4 enclosures. I started to do this around your level, and it seemed to help a lot. I found the treatment of the L-groups in Cho Chickun's All About Life and Death very helpful and from it, created a series of problems that I loaded into easy go to practice with. If you buy or own the book, I'd be happy to share those SGF's with you. You can also find references for free on the web.

You know what, man. That is actually very helpful of you. L-groups have been a blind spot for me, I realize now. I've studied them way ago (when I was barely ready to understand them) but never really put it into my games, and so the info has gone lost a bit.
I'll take them up again, I have an old print of the Cho Chikun book 'All About Life and Death', but I'd definitely appreciate the SGF files you have!

Thanks a lot.

Also, even if the group was killable, I still think (like you said, too) my move was better globally. Still, knowing I could kill that group is worth a lot and something you should know at SDK. But in this case it was a worse alternative than my move, I believe.