A little background on me and my Go:
I'm 28, married, and I have a young 20 month old son. Family responsibilities and my job keep me from any real serious study of Go. I have zero budget for Go, and so don't own a proper board (I have small plastic "stones" and a cardboard double-sided "board" with 9x9 on one side and 19x19 on the other). I don't own a single Go book. Despite that, I love the game. I play when I can, and I'm always finding new ways to enjoy and appreciate the game.
So, what WILL you find here in my journal? I think what I want to share are the things that inspire me to get stronger: games, positions, ideas.
There are a thousand paths of Go. I will walk my own path; I will gain strength through appreciation of the games I play (and replay), the people I teach, and the beauty of stones working together in new and interesting ways.
It will take me longer than most to gain strength, I think, since I'm not able to devote as much time ... but it doesn't matter. There is no race. I will set goals and milestones, of course. We'll see how well I progress towards them.
So, let's get going!
GOALS:
In the short term:
- Make it to KGS 1d this year
- Find a set of pros who's games I enjoy playing through, and begin memorizing them
In the middle term:
- Find the time to go to a Go Club regularly
In the long term (ambitions; reach for the clouds):
- Participate in large (national/international) tournaments
- Become one of the top players in Canada
- Become Canada's representative and the WAGC
Note that my long term goals are in order of achievability: first one is believably possible to achieve ... next one is possible, but unlikely ... last one is almost impossible ... but a man can dream, right?
CURRENT STRENGTH:
I am slowly but steadily reaching towards 3k on KGS. In the last few months, I've found that if I don't just rush through game after game it takes a little longer to reach the next stone in strength, but the strength gain is steadier instead of bouncing up and down on my rank graph.
CURRENT STUDIES:
I've posted about this in other places ... The recent Fujitsu Cup Final between Kong Jie and Lee Sedol was posted on this forum here ... and I loved the game. I decided it was finally time for me to try and memorize a pro game. So, I did.
There are mixed thoughts about when a player should try studying and memorizing pro games. I believe you should do it when you begin to enjoy the process. If it's tedious to you, don't do it.
For this particular game, there are moves and sequences that stand out to me and excite me. For instance:
This is a great example of a strong solid group (
) as one strategy and a loose framework ( 
and 
) as another. White needs to invade before Black solidifies, and does so with 
There are so many ideas in the game that I can grasp and examine. And I enjoyed (and still enjoy) playing through the game.
PLAYED GAMES:
There will likely be more posts about games like this than anything else in this journal. The game I'm going to share with you right now is a game I just finished on DGS ... which ended with TRIPLE KO.
Perhaps I could have still won the game if I'd let my group be captured, but it would be a tough endgame to work through. My counting and my endgame are not up to the task. Since I'm not all that worried about my rank, I resigned the game. Here's the SGF:
I only included up to the start of the triple ko. Note that Black has the liberties to fill ONE of the 4 kos if he so desires, but cannot fill more than one, leaving the triple ko position. I personally believe there is nothing on the board that would allow either player to give up the triple ko and still win the game ... but I'm not necessarily strong enough to identify all possibilities.
Hope you enjoyed my rant. Please, all comments welcome.
@ 
as a 3-4 stone. This means that, depending on 
, I can play for different variations of Chinese Fuseki, or switch up into Orthodox like what happened in my game with Kirby.