Life In 19x19

I'm currently 8 kyu Canadian, and about that strong on KGS. Canadian ranks pretty are pretty much the same as KGS ranks, if you play seriously all the time on KGS, from what I understand. But I play too seriously, so probably need to forget about my KGS rank, so it might differ. I decided to give a good try at making shodan by July 1st 2013. I probably won't make shodan by then, but I'm giving it a go. Ha.

Reasons why I probably won't make shodan include: the fact I'm a father of two boys, 10 and 5, working on adopting two more children under 5 and all the bureaucratic and political nonsense which that can involve; I'm 40 years old and don't learn things as fast as I once did; learning things that don't come easy, like Go, is something I'm only now learning how to do.

Strengths that will make significant growth likely, and making shodan within my time frame vaguely possible: I enjoy Go problem books, and have ordered the whole Get Strong at Go series; I'm not currently employed outside the home, so my timetable is my own; and, last but far from least, I love Go.

In some ways, Go has done as much for me as my spiritual and physical practices of Zazen and Taijiquan. There is no Go here, except for me, so I'm driven to become at least Shodan, so that I might be better able to bring a Go community to the Yukon. Hopefully after July next year; if not, soon after.

Any help, from anyone, is welcome. I am reminded of old Zen master Joshu, who set out to wander saying, "I will learn from whomever I can, even if my teacher should be a child of five; I will teach whomever I can, even if my student should be an elder of eighty."

Welcome. I was actually just looking at Whitehorse in Google maps yesterday or the day before.

Todd, welcome.

Once you get to the low SDK range I think doing the problems really is the only way to get better. I do them a lot when I'm in the bathroom and on the train to and from work, and as a wind-down before bed. Stealing moments here and there seems to be working well enough, if slowly.

And playing games, of course. That can often be much harder to find time for.

Thanks for the welcomes! The books arrived today! I didn't have a lot of time, but I read the preface and little glossary at the front and did the first eight problems. These books are great! I was working through GGPFB3, but I was getting tired, really. They've been good and helpful, but there isn't a lot of instruction or explaination, so it can get to be hard work once you start getting problems that are actually going to take a minute or two to actually read through and solve. It's good reading practice, really. But these books, oh, they're golden.

I opened the first volume, Get Strong at the Opening, read the preface, then there was a short list of terms. Okay, right there, my ideas about just what a moyo was and what sabaki meant were already modified. And that's just the warming up for the problems! Once I started the problems...let me tell you how I've been going through Graded Go Problems first.

In GGPFB, I've gotten to where I usually read through a page of problems, which is usually about six at a time, and then I'll flip quickly through the answers, going back if I misread any. I'll do that for a few minutes to an hour at a time, quitting when I start to make stupid mistakes or just can't push my brain through another variation. Or when I'm just not having any fun anymore, honestly. Anyway. I started out doing the same thing with the first page of problems. There were only four problems on these pages. So, I did the first four, and thought maybe I'd do four more, so I turned the page. But the answers were on the back of the page. Okay, that's nice. But then, finally, I understand what I'm looking at here. The answer section for the first four problems was a few pages long! It explained stuff! You get a problem, then you get not only an answer to check, but an elaboration about why the answer is correct, and, in this case at least, an explanation which led to concepts covered in the next series of problems! This is indeed an instructional text, using problems as the driving force. So first impressions: YAY!

I've done Janice Kim, and she was fine for beginners without a clue (which I was), I've dipped into Elementary Go, of which I still like Attack and Defense, though I haven't read it for a while, but this is much better than even Tesuji, really, for someone like me anyway. And there is Get Strong at Tesuji to look forward to in the series!

I think these books are also coming at the right time for me. If I'd started to read them at 15k, that'd maybe be too soon. Not for everyone, but for me. I think that, from what I've seen so far, they'd be hard work at 15k, but I think at 8k, they'll also actually be fun. And this really is all about enjoying our Go time, too, isn't it? Or we should just give up the game, and find something else.

I made Go work once, and I quit it. It shouldn't be work. It can be hard! But it deserves to be approached and engaged in, in all aspects, with joy.

Oh, in respose:

Numsgil wrote:And playing games, of course. That can often be much harder to find time for.

Yes, finding time for serious games can be hard. That's why I joined the Canadian Go Association's Internet League. It's nice to have a serious, 45 min + 25/10 game to look forward to, which frees you up to maybe play around some more with quick games so you can learn the dirty complications some folks love to spring under time pressure.

And thanks to everyone for the welcome.

Great story! I look forward to reading about your improvements

I've been sticking with GSA The Opening. Only made it through about 36 problems, but I keep re-doing the last four or so every time I pick the book up, because it's really helping, but some of it takes a bit to stick in my head.

I played my latest league game. From my usual odd openings, I moved into a sanren-sai as white against my partner's low (I think it was low? we'll see) chinese opening. I just let things develop naturally and tried to make nice moyos. I ended up making a nice light invasion that sewed up a giant moyo I carved across most of the board, and won by 19.5 points.

It was the most peaceful game I've played in ages. Beyond the light invasion which helped me make ... do I say I made sabaki here? Not sure if it applies, but it worked nicely. Anyway. Beyond that, and a gentle shoulder hit which previously traded third-line territory to black for a nice wall, I felt no need for complications and so stayed away from them. The only worry I had was towards the end, because I figured my opponent must also think he was winning or he'd be throwing something complicated at me. He said that wasn't the case, but it still ended up being a very quick and gentle game. Probably some of that was due to the kindness of black in places, but the ease I felt is certainly also due to an increased understanding of the opening. How do you think I'm doing in the opening?



Sorry for originally posting this as a new post rather than a reply, if you saw it. I'm learning.

Todd, you need to open up the sgf in a txt editor and paste the content of the sgf file inside the sgf markers in order for it to show up on the forum correctly. Pasting the link to the sgf download inside the sgf markers will not work.

Edit: Sorry, it just didn't show up, so I thought you needed to do something different.

Is this a recent change? We've always been put the link to sgf files directly in the sgf tags. I did it last week.

It worked fine for me. I can scroll through my game just fine. Can no one else see the game and scroll through it?

Putting a link inside the sgf tags is exactly what your existing documentation says to do. It does mention putting the text of the sgf inline as well, but it clearly shows a couple different ways to put a link in the sgf tags.

Here's the link: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=833

That's the "how to post an sgf file" post stickied to Introductions and Guidelines.

Ah, there was some strangeness. I linked to a file that wasn't attached, which I actually deleted. For some reason, it was already loaded for me. My fault: I originally clicked to make a new post instead of a reply, so I deleted everything and started over...except for the filename in my clipboard.

Pardon, please, I'll try not to make too many more mistakes for a while!

Did I get that game above sorted out so that everyone can see it? I hope so, but I don't have a game to post today to try again.

Been working on gsa the Opening some more. I had no idea I was quite so clueless. I hope I'm retaining enough of this to improve a bit.

Won my first KGS auto-forfeit from some guy. It's annoying, really: does he have a bad connection, or was I really beating him so badly he got frustrated and left.

Maybe I will post it, since I don't know the answer. Here's hoping it works this time.

It was really still the opening, maybe thirty moves in, and in a handicap game what's more. Was I really making it that hard for white already? I doubt so, but he did take off on me, so, with my new appreciation of how little I know about the opening, it's hard to know for sure.

Too bad it was cut short; the real game had not even started yet.

Thanks so much for the variations. The first one is especially helpful in just what I'm trying to learn right now, how to direct play in the first few moves of the fuseki. The last variation there also feels much more telling for black: if I scared white away with my move, your variation would have him running in terror.

So, I've made it through the first 100 problems and explanations in Get Strong at the Opening. I haven't been actually playing enough Go, though, so I joined the ASR league on KGS.

My first game there I was a bit rushed, but I would have lost (albeit by less) even if I wasn't. It was against a 5k player. ASR games are always even. So, I lost. But, I felt like I knew what direction I was playing in during the opening. A few key points, I put off playing because I was behind, and my opponent beat me to the exact places I was looking at! I was a beat behind trying to make up for a botched corner early in the game by stretching out my urgent moves ... which feels like the right thing to do, but thinking about it, isn't all that bright. I should try to play solid Go, NOT try to win. But he annoyed me a little and I really wanted to win.

My opponent claimed I should better spend my time at tsumego than studying fuseki. He took a lead because I misread a tsumego, yes. But I've done tsumego. I'm okay at it. Some time away from life and death problems will make me a little rusty if I don't play more often, but tsumego is something I'll always come back to studying. But when I played without any real understanding of fuseki, which I feel I'm gaining (slowly), I would do wonderful in tsumego, kill off even two nice fat groups, and still lose because I didn't understand the direction of play. Tactics win battles. Strategy wins wars.

My fuseki still sucks. But I'm starting to understand why, and it's certainly better than the fumblings around the board that previously passed for my opening. The game becomes more fun; how can that not make me stronger?