The Ladder to Shodan

Been a while...

2007-06-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

..since I updated this blog mainly because the household has been taken over by wedding fever as two of my sons are getting married this summer. Wife is in heaven and I am always in the way :-(

I was looking through my GO Library, rather a grand title for such a small collection of books but like with my ranking one must have ambition, and noted that 2 were more battered and careworn than the rest. It must be that these are the two I refer to and read most often..indeed some in my library are in virtual pristine condition...showing a lack of something on my part. My most read books are 'Lessons in the Fundamentals of GO' and Davies' 'Life & Death'. Whereas the cleanest copy is Tesuji by Davies..this I am finding really difficult and have adopted a policy of looking at it as though iyt is providing arrows in my GO armourary but I as yet cannot fire them.

My rank seems to be stabilizing at about 10-11kyu on KGS. One disappointment is that I had hoped to find a mentor who would play with me one evening a week on a regular basis and perhaps review a game a week..this has not proved possible. So as a fall back I have been creating study situations based upon fusekis or shapes that occurred in my games and trying to use the KGS Teaching Room as a forum to get people to advise. This has proved quite successful but it is not the same as having a mentor who gets to appreciate your strengths and weaknesses and hence can identify the areas where most benefit can be had from a lesson, or point me in a direction to concentrate my study.

There is good news on the widening of the GO community in that I managed to generate some interest at work about GO and one person is becoming quite keen whereas 2-3 others are showing (luke)warm interest. I have also tried to teach, or at least to give some tips, to other players on KGS. I feel somewhat wary about this as I am not strong myself but I have found that if I keep to the very high kyu players then at least some of the basic principles can be explained.

The Kisei Clan

2007-05-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

The Kisei Clan is making progress and posted below is the last weekly progress report that I issue.

On a more personal front, all this playing in the Battlefield may be making a little difference to my normal play as I have managed to raise my KGS rank to 10kyu...holding it, never mind improving on it, will be a real challenge for me.

Welcome All,

...and in particular a special welcome to our latest, and final, recruits, reenamuras and Koreangrl8. This brings our strength up to 23 with currently 22 players having taken to the Battlefield. Recruitment has now closed and so it is down to us.

The most active player this last week has been mb76 who completed 14 games and took his contribution to 41 games, making him our leading contributor.

A number of the Clan were active this last week and I am pleased to tell you that we have now reached the 250 game qualifying mark so we can complete in the Brawl at the beginning of August. So far, only V3 and ourselves have reached this landmark. Whilst we have reached the mark I hope that you will all continue to play and keep the Clan to-gether

The gaols are empty this week...no instances of Civil War, missed tags, bad time settings have been noted..perhaps we are all learning, but remember to add Koreangrl8 and reenamuras to your buddy list to help prevent disasters.

This weeks STAR player is reenamuras who has opened his account with 2 straight wins..congratulations!

I looked into getting a KGS room for the Kisei Clan but that proved not to be possible... I am tols that we should use the Battlefield Room and indeed there is a cleanup underway whereby the admins are trying to delete dormant rooms and reduce the total.

However, we may be getting our own web page as two of our number are looking into this in their spare time...when I am not chasing them to play more Battlefield games :-)

Finally, good luck to both Benwahwah and Prodigious who are competing in the Iwamoto Tournament. And indeed I know that Benwahwah has scored a resounding win in the first round. If there are others of our number competing in this tournament please let me know and I will follow your progress and the Kisei will cheer you on.

Tsumego and a too actve mouse

2007-04-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

If I am going to have a teacher then I need to get a firm rank..so I have abandoned F games and played some R games..with disasterous results...a combination of exceedingly sloppy play, followed by a desire to put things right immediately, which caused me to rush, led to a rapid drop to16kyu following the loss of 3 straight games. The following night I could not get an opponent on KGS so played on IGS and managed a win..despite my best efforts to throw away a winning position. To-day, I played again on KGS and chose a slow game, then immediately followed my opponents speed GO, throwing away advantage after advantage, missing ataris both on my own groups and his and ultimately winning by 28points ( he was 14kyu ) courtesy of a successful invasion which lived. I think I expended 7 minutes in total..and I was supposed to be playing slow, thinking and cutting out silly mistakes..it was as though I had a hyperactive mouse!
But some good came of all this , apart from establishing a solid rank at 14kyu, in that my opponent attached to my hoshi stone on move 6, something I have not encountered. I raised this topic in the Upper Valley GO Club where FlameBlade not only kindly reviewed this opening position but the game as a whole. There were a number of tsumego positions which occurred during the game and afterwards he took me through a lecture he had given on the fundamental principles behind tsumego. First look for space and after that look for the vital points. Having FB go through with me these principles really helped and was far better than just reading the sgf files. When you have a direct teacher you have to concentrate because there is only YOU to answer the questions raised. This is the second time where iI have gained some fundamental understanding out of listening to the helpful advice from Upper Valley...thanks to them all for having patience with an old age pensioner Brit.

A change of name

2007-04-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

As the Shodan year is over I thought that a new name for my ramblings was in order. So, as I see that there will be many steps to improvement then I will steal a thought from Makara, and rename this Blog as ' The Ladder to Shodan '

I have already had some responses to my offer to run again a Clan in the KGS Battlefield. Indeed two new recruits have offered to join so we have 6 members currently signed up; but more are yet needed to make an entry viable.

Interested.?

Then drop me a message

A New Year and a New Target?

2007-04-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

For me the GO year commences about now and it is time to look ahead and consider whether I want to set a new target.
But first to summarize the closing events of the year past. Last night the GoDiscussions Battlefield Clan which I formed ( GDS or the GoD Squad ) managed to make it through to the last 6. There were a total of 24 clans of which 11 qualified for the battle royal and 9 turned up to fight. I was non-playing administrator, which has dramatically increased my respect and understanding for all tournament directors..it was like herding cats! And over the internet you cannot stop people going Absent Without Leave!! We drew the first round 2.5-2.5 which was good enough to get us through to round 2. Here we met a Dan Squad and we were comprehensively out gunned ..though we did manage to score 1 point. The Clan has now disbanded but if there is sufficient support then I would be prepared to run it over the next period.

Karpov, a great chess player, when asked by a mortal, ' What should I study to improve? ', answered, ' what do you study now? '. 'Opening Theory' came the answer. 'You should be studying end game theory ' said Karpov. 'Whilst not as glamorous as Openings, it makes a world of difference to one's results.'
In GO, the same is true of Tsumego. I find they can be hard and frustrating, but I MUST persevere. I use the Korean Academy problems together with 1001 Life & Death, and aim for 9 a day..but that is just the 'one move problems'...I expect the strike rate will decrease as the problems increase in complexity. I wonder if there is a guide on how to approach these things...I have Life & Death by Davies and so use that to give me the idea of living shapes.

I must also now firm up my rank, it currently stands at 10kyu? on KGS which I believe to be about 2-3 stones optimistic. I have played few rated games for a while now as focus was upon the Battlefield qualification ( all games are Friendly ) and it was suggested that it would help to remove an attack of GO anxiety. But now I feel ready to move on, or perhaps backwards first if my gut feel about my ranking is correct.

The real question is whether to formally enter the Shodan Challenge, take up the offer of a new mentor and map out a Training Programme for the year ahead. I feel that if I do seek a mentor then I am honour bound to keep my side of the contract, play ranked games, play in some tournaments and back it up with a regular study programme.

My mentor last year was very understanding and introduced me to a lot of techniques and I didsnot really repay his effort by more tournament play. This year I will burden someone new :-)

On that latter point, NannyOgg kindly invited me to join the Upper Valley Go Club which meets on KGS and in 'real life ' Whilst attending the Club in person is impractical,( a return trip of approx 10000 km makes my local trip of 140km seem a doddle! ) they do put on some study sessions which look really useful, even though I do have to rely upon the SGF files and have conversations with myself ( nothing new in that says my wife :-) There was an interesting session on 'fast and slow' and then 'light and heavy ' which I found really useful. I need now to try and get the next lot of files.

So, am I up to the Challenge ?

Stock Taking

2007-04-01T02:08:00.000-07:00

Well, time to take stock.
The year of the Shodan Challenge is over and I have not really achieved the target that I set myself, that of reaching 15kyu BGA . I only managed to attend one tournament where I scored 2/3 and elevated my rank to 18kyu. The reasons for not attending more tournaments are various and centre around the distances involved..but that is an excuse. I think the real reason is apathy. I also failed to attend a 'local GO Club as often as I intended, again the 140km round trip on an evening after work deterred me.
On the more positive side, my KGS rank has risen to around 10kyu and I seem to hold my own at that level. I went through a period of 'rank anxiety' and NannyOgg's suggestion of ignoring it entirely and just playing Friendly Matches certainly helped. Many people over this last year have helped me out; kamper has provided advice and shown me a number of tools and techniques which are now slowly creeping into my GO armourary. VincentV has played many 9 stone games against me, and actually getting promoted to 8 stone handicap when I at LAST beat him is possibly one of the highlights of the year! Javaness has always been ready to spend a few minutes when requested explaining a position I did not clearly see and maproom reviewed a game of mine and gave me a valuable piece of advice to STOP playing 'ghost moves' as an alternative to reading out the tsumego and trusting my judgement.
I have formed and led a Clan in the Battlefield and that certainly increased the number of games played and indeed the opportunity to play in a friendly competitive environment certainly increased my enthusiasm. I have spent probably a little time every day doing something GO related, whether it be studying tsumego, playing on turn based server like LittleGolem, playing on KGS or, more commonly, chatting in the British Room .
There are many others who have helped me this last year and thank you to them all.
I may not have completed my self set Challenge, but I have enjoyed the experience and made many 'virtual ' friends in the process.

BGA Membership in decline

2007-03-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

I received my notice of the AGM for the BGA the other day and noticed that the membership has been declining. Indeed they have lost 15% over the last 2 years, or 100 people in two years if you do not trust percentages. Along with this notice was a reminder that my own membership would be expiring soon and an invitation to renew. All this made me think and I started a couple of news threads, one on GoDiscussions.com and the other on GoTalk, a mailing list used by the BGA. Both threads were the same topic... Why did people think that the decline was taking place and what should be done to reverse it?
The other side to this question is why join the BGA ( or any national association ) in the first place.
For a player like me it is not a cost effective way to spend money in that I rarely attend tournaments so the discount is meaningless and I would need to stock the Bodelian to reap the reward in book discounts... so why join ( or renew ) ? Out of a sense of 'the right thing to do ' perhaps.
Anyway, the discussion threads evoked a considerable response and a raft of suggestions to make membership worthwhile. It should be said that a similar thread on GoDiscussions was also raised by someone else with respect to the AGA. Whether any of the suggestions will be acted upon remains to be seen.

As it stands I am now actively thinking about whether to renew, as opposed to renewing automatically.

What does my readership think I should do?

I have posted a POLL to monitor feelings

Frustration and despair

2007-03-10T13:56:00.000-08:00

Will I ever be able to play a decent game of GO?

I seem to have a great ability to lose WON games :-(

My latest disaster came against an 8kyu player who gave me 2 stones and the 'nearly final ' position is shown below with me ( Black to move)

Should I play one of the dame points or just Pass... an 8kyu scalp would be very good for me. Think... and then I timed out.
The game was lost, whilst on the board I believed I had won.
But the rules are the rules and so it was no-one's fault but my own.... age is catching up rapidly and I think the brain is showing signs of indecision.

A mixture of frustration and despair engulfs me.

Mulberry Bowls..the journey commences

2007-02-25T11:35:00.000-08:00

A trip to deepest Somerset resulted in discovering the raw material for my mulberry bowl project, but as can be seen above the wood was a little on the large side for my needs. And so to step 2 where a little trimming could be done.

And this is the end result. The log has now been seasoning for a few months and in the next couple of weeks it is off to the wood craftsmen for its initial turning.

I will post another image showing the grain, but for the moment, just imagine a pair of mulberry bowls hiding within this log.

Progress is slow, but there is still hope

2007-02-24T13:48:00.000-08:00

My rank on KGS is 11kyu but I have been ignoring attempts to improve it as I found that concentrating upon rank was beginning to remove the enjoyment from the game. There was a thread on GODiscussions about online GO anxiety and I understood what they meant. So, I have been playing Friendly games in the Battlefield off 11kyu and to be honest my results have been disappointing. Of more concern was a feeling that I was losing WON games, possibly down to playing what maproom characterized as 'Ghost Moves ' , the ' just to be safe ' move, when it was not necessary. Having had this pointed out, yesterday I determined NOT to play these moves and rely more upon my reading skills and the first time I tried it I lost a won game. The opponent invaded and I responded badly..the ghost move would have prevented any invasion succeeding. However the loss was due to my poor response to the invasion, played too quickly without thinking as I believed the game to be over and he was just making a useless invasion. To-night, I was adamant that no silly moves would be allowed and I would concentrate right up until the end; and had probably my best ever result in beating a 7kyu by 15 points playing Even. Nothing great I know, but for me a minor triumph and something to build upon.

Blogger Upgrade and Clan Progress

2007-02-14T13:16:00.000-08:00

Well... at last I have taken the plunge and upgraded my blog to the latest version..so if you see this then it has worked!

Meanwhile the Battlefield Clan now contains 16 members, 12 of whom are active to varying degrees.
I am playing at 11kyu and having a dismal run, partly, I convince myself , because some of my battles are played against opponents of [-] rank..and they all prove too strong. To-night for the first time I managed to get into a winning position and my opponent escaped!
Why do people do this..the game was only a friendly and if losing means that much to them then they should not be playing.

A Remarkable Discovery!

2007-01-26T09:26:00.000-08:00

As part of my plan to improve, I am following Guo Juan Study Guide, and though my adherence is not as tight as I would wish, I am training regularly. In particular, I am looking at 5 tsumego problems each day and perhaps this is beginning to bear fruit. The fruit comes in that I am being able to cope better with invasions which threaten life and beginning to repel them, for example see the position below.

Previously white A3 could have resulted in severe consequences, but this time I managed to repel the invader.

My opponent, a Japanese gentleman was a veteran of over 3000 games on IGS, and tried a number of invasions as above. He also tried, and succeeded in another move by playing W A11

I responded with A9 which was poor where as I now believe that B9 would have been much better. The result of this was that he was able to reduce the RHS by a significant amount.

Much earlier in the game, I had to mentally thank ChiyoDad for one of his earlier posts.

White had played at tenjen and I wondered how to respond. I realized that White's O10 moyo had to be reduced or the game was already decided. And I remembered that Chiyo had talked about a similar position resulting from the Saren-sei and how he had placed a stone just inside the sector line and then either ran or fought for life. But where to play? I considered L7 but was wary that it was too deep and so chose K6. The resulting running fight was long and hard..but I survived, so perhaps the teaching is having a little effect.

After this game it was pointed out to me that I am allowed to start tsumego fights in opponents areas as well as defending invasions. A remarkable discovery!

The GoDiscussion Clan is begining to establish, we now have 10 members but more are welcome, and whilst our Win:Loss ratio is not good ( ~25%) all active players have a win :-)

A current status can be found here.

The original intent was that this diary would run for a year and as January expires and April approaches, I must decide whether to continue with these ramblings.

The Battlefield Clan

2007-01-20T07:52:00.000-08:00

Following some threads in the GoDiscussions Forum, I offered to set up a clan to give the forum a bit of identity and spread the message that the forum preaches.

The Clan, which had its origins from this forum, is now operational and there are currently 8 members, comprised of stone troopers like myself and potential warriors at the 5kyu and better level.

http://www.bucko.me.uk/clans/?

shows our current progress and also shows current membership.

We are the GoD Squad ( from GoDiscussions but we can change the name if so desired ) with the tag GDS

Whilst our current win:loss ratio in the qualifying games so far is poor ( down to my inability to read more than 2 moves ahead! ) we are making reasonable progress towards the qualifying target of a combined 100 games in total by April. To-day saw our first WIN thanks to fine play by Prodigious.
We are still in urgent need of reinforcements, both stone troopers to aid with the qualification process, and ideally some low kyu or dan warriors whom we can draft in for the brawl itself as well as fighting on the overall battlefield.

Anyone interested in joining, please contact me

Any one, at any level, is welcome..even if you can only play occasionally..your game contribution will help.

Game Record for 2006

2007-01-05T09:39:00.000-08:00

I have just looked up my GO playing record for 2006 on KGS . This breakdown can be somewhat misleading as it does not distinguish between Ranked and Friendly games nor does it distinguish between the size of the board used. In fact in 2006 I played far too many 9*9 games I think but I was seeking to try and improve my fighting skills.

In 2007 I expect to play probably fewer games but will be excluding the 9*9 variety.
I am also repeatedly told that my game, whilst becoming solid, is also becoming too defensive and hence I am missing opportunities to exploit the positions that I generate. How do I overcome this? A lifetime in business where I have built firm foundations before incrementally moving forward seems to have affected my approach to GO. I am tempted to just play some all out attacking games, cut at every opportunity, invade every 3 point extension, throw stones into large empty spaces..and just see what happens. Hopefully I may begin to recognise the tactics that work and improve by bitter defeat my fighting and attacking skills..but surely there must be a better way to combat this mental flaw?

From 2006-01-01 to 2006-12-31 (365 days).

Number of games played: 233

Number of wins: 88

Number of losses: 145

Average number of games per day: 0.64

Win ratio: 37.77 %

Number of games played as white: 101 (win ratio: 40.59 %)

Number of games played as black: 132 (win ratio: 35.61 %)

Number of different opponents: 192

First Audio Lesson

2007-01-02T11:20:00.000-08:00

I listened to my first audio lesson to-day from Guo Juan's GO School. It was the Opening Training Level A 1, the most basic of them all but I still found it very good and it showed me a number of principles that I was not aware of despite my reading of books such as Opening Theory Made Easy which I regard as a very good text. The lesson contained 20 exercises and like all lessons there were a few key things which have stuck in my mind. I am encouraged to study this lesson for at least a week, and at my age probably longer. Whether I will be able, or have the time, to study more than one lesson a week I doubt, especially with my pro game review and daily problem solving.
I also played a game with real stones on a real goban to-day, as opposed to the virtual world of the GO servers, and I was able to put some of the opening principles that I had learnt into practice...successfully as it turned out :-)

What a way to finish the Year!!!

2006-12-31T07:56:00.000-08:00

I actually managed to beat a 10kyu Even on KGS to-day and my rank has ended the year at 9kyu !!!!

A SDK man... and one which might just have some foundation of reality

I am tempted to retire now and kibbitz from a position of satisfaction :-)

As always, the result was a surprise to me, especially after I threw away 2 groups due to downright stupidity :-( Now in line with my new study programme I must review this game and spot my errors, and perhaps then get someone to comment on my review showing all the possibilities that I missed.

A Happy New Year to all my readers :-)

First steps on the new plan

2006-12-30T04:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I have started my training plan in line with Guo Juan study guide shown in the last entry. So far I am keeping up with the 5 tsumego problems per day and using Level 2 of the Korean Academy as shown on GoBase. I might intersperse these with , say, 10 problems from Level 1 to keep reinforcing some of the basics.
I have also been studying my first pro game. I took the Ota Yuzo (W) v Honinbo Shusaku game played in Round 8 on March 7, 1853. The intent is to study this for a week and I have memorized the first 15 moves as instructed. I chatted about this in the British Room on KGS and was very grateful to receive an explanation of the ideas and variations around many of the moves from Prodigious...thank you; I suspect that not only I, but the other participants in the discussion also benefited greatly from the Prodigious contribution.

My game for next week will be Lee Changho (W) vs Gu Li which was played in Round 3 of the Chunlan Cup on 28.September.2006. I chose this because it is also the subject of an audio lesson.

I am unclear as to what is my best approach to choosing these pro games.. something relatively straight forward like Shusaku or Takagawa; or whether to look at modern pros which are covered in the audio lessons... but the Prodigious contribution showed just what benefit there could be had from having an 'expert' by your side.

Steps to Improvement

2006-12-28T06:32:00.000-08:00

As a Christmas present to myself I have bought 10 credits for the Guo Juan audio lessons with the aim of making a concerted effort to improve my play during 2007. My intent is to try and follow her study programme and complement this with a weekly Teaching game.

The programme consists of the following for 30k – 20k players. Whilst I am currently ranked at 18kyu on BGA it is recommended that I should still follow this programme to ensure the proper basics are in place.

................................................................................................................................................................

1, Study the 'Step by step course,' but please do not go too fast. Take at least a half month to study each lecture.
Play as many games as possible, and try to use the things you have learned from the lessons. Solve life and death problems, 5 problems each day.

2, Each week, take one 'Opening training' lecture.

3, The 'Important Stones' lectures from Jennie Shen 2p are very interesting. The 5 lectures will help you see what is important, so that you avoid killing or saving unimportant stones.

4, Study ‘Typical mistakes’. At the moment we have only one lecture for 30k-20k. In the near future we will add more lectures on this subject.

5, Study ‘Common Opening’ lecture 1.

6, Watch some pro games, but not too many. One game per week would fine. You can replay these games before you watch our audio lecture. You can find the games on Gobase or MasterGo. Try to remember the 1st 15 moves, to see the flow of the games, and to learn memorizing games.

7, After your game, try to remember some moves. Think about what you have done well and 1 or 2 important mistakes. These are the mistakes that you yourself can see as you review the game. Try to find out why you made the mistake. Normally these are shape mistakes. You will learn a lot and improve from these reviews.

.......................................................................................................................................................................

For the problems I am using the Level2 series from the Korean Academy and the first pro game to study will be Ota Yuzo versus Honinbo Shusaku.

The family have descended for Christmas and New Year so it will be 1.January.2007 when I start the first lecture, which I thought could be Common Opening Lecture 1

If any of my readers has used this course and would recommend a different strategm, then please post. In particular I would be keen to hear if Step by Step lecture 1 would be a better starting point.

A missed opportunity and then a kill

2006-12-27T08:52:00.000-08:00

To end the year on a bright, well perhaps more of a flickering, light.
I played a game yesterday where I felt sure that I should be able to kill the White R17 group. But whilst I recognized that S16 was the key point, I was too cautious and played 23 at O17. This was an instinctive move and played rapidly..after the game was over I easily saw that the W cut at P17 failed.. I MUST read these things out.

Later in the game the following position occurred.

I recognized that the W E10 group could be struggling for eye space and so played the monkey jump a t A9 just to see what would happen. Again I had not read out the sequence but just felt that the W position might be precarious.

A few moves later and..

...Black C10 kills the group. For me this was very satisfying as it is the first time that I have ever used a tsumego move to kill, as opposed to being killed.

A bright end to the year :-)

Mulberry Bowls start their journey to fruition

2006-12-21T07:42:00.000-08:00

Well, my set of mulberry GO bowls took another step forward to-day as a friend has picked up the log from the wood merchant..... it still really needs a bit more time to season I am told but at least the process is underway and you will be able to follow a photographic journal of its progress to a stunning piece of hand crafted art.

There are some more images to come showing the lineage of this log :-)

Watch this space!

Psychadelic Inspiration?

2006-12-18T08:57:00.000-08:00

I am in the middle, though I would like to think nearing the end, of a very bad run..I cannot remember when I last managed to win a game. Most of my play is over the internet on either KGS or IGS servers..could it be that the 'screen ' is giving off bad vibes? I only ask as on a gardening programme the other night about the medicinal properties of plants, the cactus, Cereus peruvianus, was mentioned and this is reputed to give off something which counters the effect of the brain concentrating upon a vdu. If you explore the properties of this cactus you will also discover that it is reputed to have psychadelic properties. I quite like cacti anyway so now my den contains a specimen of this mystical plant..expect some unusual moves from me in the future :-)

I have also decided that I am in urgent need of a weekly regular teaching game in order to inject some consistency into my play...deciding is the easy bit..now to find a willing and able teacher.

Training for a Tournament

2006-12-08T08:55:00.000-08:00

I often puzzle of how best I should be studying..whether there is a plan, whether I need a plan , or is it just a free form exercise with a mixture of random reading, problems, game watching and playing, and indeed whether the playing is blitz, medium , free or ranked.
I raised this topic with the organizer of the BGA Shodan Challenge and suggested that he should ask the mentors about how they approached their task..indeed for me, a mentor perhaps playing a few games with his pupil and then assessing his strengths and weaknesses, before embarking upon a tailored approach seems a good way to proceed. I await the results of his questionnaire and hope to gather some insights on how I can best be helped to improve.

But, with a tournament in mind then one feels that there should be some sort of more organized approach..shouldn't there?

Nanny has just raised this precise topic in her latest blog..but again no idea of a solution was proposed.
What made it topical is that I have a friend ( ~16kyu) who is entering the London GO Congress, possibly the biggest GO event in the UK, for the first time and feels that as his current tournament record is patchy at best, should he have a training programme for this major event? Or is it study tsumego, tsumego, tsumego as that is the real key to progress?
Any views?

An ugly win in a beautiful game

2006-12-02T23:50:00.000-08:00

By the vagries of the KGS ranking system, I seem to have moved up to a transitory 8kyu..something that I just cannot believe. Yesterday I played at this elevated level against a 10kyu opponent and hence had to give him a 2 stone handicap. Whilst I thought that I played the opening moves reasonably strongly I went astray during the middle game, mainly because I tried to save 2 useless stones and in compensation got my beautiful moyo cut to pieces. I recognized however that the cutting snake of stones cf my opponent contained a potential serious weakness near his tail, but one that could not be immediately exploited. As we reached the closure, I played a monkey jump to reduce him slightly, but here again made a silly mistake which meant that my monkey could die. He responded, played a wrong stone and suddenly his major weakness was exposed. I did not miss the chance, played the killer stone, his snake died, my territorial moya was resurrected and, after some thought, he resigned.
The win feels ugly and yet I had a glimpse of how the flow of stones could be beautiful.
And somehow, the target to reach 15kyu BGA seems no longer important.

Was it a real win or somehow a win by default?

The final position is shown below. I am WHITE.

Passing the baton

2006-12-02T10:10:00.000-08:00

We, the British, have a new GO Champion!
Bei Ge to-day defeated Matthew Macfadyen in the final game to win the series 3-2 and surprisingly ( well, at least to me ) all the games were won by the player playing White. The final match was very much a fighting contest and all the basic rules (that I have been taught ( develop corners then sides then centre ) were ignored! I have noticed this also in the professional games that I replay from the championships recorded on GOBase.
Matthew has been a great champion for many, many years and it will be interesting to see if he decides to enter the Candidates and then the Challengers next year. It may well be that he decides that now IS the time to pass the baton on and if so no one would blame him for he has been the leading light in British GO for more than two decades.

Shoots of improvement or understanding?

2006-11-24T11:07:00.000-08:00

Played a game today where I put my opponent in a ladder. He played distant from the point of conflict giving an indirect threat to another of my groups. AND I recognized that his move was a ladder breaker and so played to restore the ladder nearer to the point of action. A first for me! I had read in Shape Up! that high kyu players suffer from having their stones ' theoretically ' connected, playing elsewhere and then forgetting the danger when opponent alters the local conditions near the connection, ending up losing the group. It has certainly happened to me!
So perhaps to-day was a first glimmer of the shoots of enlightenment.