Enriching My Love of the Game

Level Up Series

2010-11-13T11:29:00.002-05:00

In the past week or so I have completed books 1, 2, and 3 of the Level Up series.

I downloaded all of the answer PDF files available for the books and installed them on my iPad under the iBooks app. This makes it easy to check my answers. I go through a book one time without looking at answers and then I go through it one more time checking one page at a time against the PDF file.

I am currently working my way through book 4 of the series.

I notice that books above level 10 are currently available, but they do not appear to have PDF answer files ready for those volumes yet. I hope they will by the time I work my way through volume 10, which is as high as I have purchased so far. I won't buy any higher until the PDF files are available.

While answers to books 1 through 5 appear to be really easy, I imagine that above 10 the answers will be harder.

I am really enjoying these books.

Audio Go Lessons I Have Been Watching Lately

2010-09-19T14:57:00.002-05:00

I have been concentrating on the Basic Course lectures in the past few weeks.

Recently I watched the following lectures:

All About Eyes Lecture 1

All About Eyes Lecture 2

All About Eyes Lecture 3

Efficiency For 30K - 10 K Lecture 1

Efficiency For 30K - 10 K Lecture 2

Efficiency For 30K - 10 K Lecture 3

Double Atari Lecture 1

Double Atari Lecture 2

Double Atari Lecture 3

I Am Moderating All Future Posts

2010-08-03T08:16:00.003-05:00

It came to my attention that someone was spamming my blog. I had seen a number of foreign language posts in the past and left them because I assumed that someone actually had something worthwhile to say even though I could not understand it myself.

Today I found over 20 comments on my most recent post, which is months old. Many of them have links to obscene web sites.

It is a sorry thing when one has to moderate her blog to avoid such things. Please do not comment to this blog simply to agree with me on this point.

Thank you in advance for your patience when you make a comment to a future blog post and must wait for it to be approved.

Maryland Open

2010-06-03T08:16:00.004-05:00

I played in the Maryland Open last weekend. I played four games, winning two, and losing two.

I wasn't too unhappy with my results, since my losses were both less than ten points, and my wins were close to 20 points. I was pleased that my victories were more decisive than my losses.

Upon checking the KGS ratings of the two opponents that beat me, I found that they are 5K and 6K on KGS compared to my own 8K, so I feel as if I performed well against them. I did feel rather pushed around by both of them.

An interesting reunion occurred during the third round with an opponent who remembered me from the San Francisco congress eleven years ago in 1999. We had played that year. He must have been a mere child at the time since he is in graduate school now. That was eleven years ago. I was quite frankly surprised that we had progressed at the same pace given the difference in our ages. He recalls that we were both about 15K at the time of our previous game. Now he is 10K and I am 9K. Our game at this tournament was interesting in that he was way ahead, but I managed to isolate and kill a number of stones leading to my victory. He tells me that something similar occurred eleven years ago, and even pointed to the area of the board involved. I was impressed that our game had been that memorable for him.

I had my iPad with me and I recorded my games with it. But even more interestingly I played a 9x9 game with another iPad owner over the internet on KGS while we sat across from each other at a table at the Maryland Open. We accomplished this through the use of remote desktop software. I was using LogMeIn Ignition. We both have 3G iPads so we could log in to our home desktops (both 24" iMacs) even though we did not have wi-fi access at the playing site. I won that 9x9 by 1.5 points even though my first move was an obvious miss click.

March Audio Go Lessons - My Watch List

2010-04-01T13:00:00.004-05:00

I purchased the year long subscription to the Audio Go Lessons web site at the middle of the month in March.

Following is a list of the Lessons I watched during the month of March:

Step By Step Series Lesson 1

Step By Step Series Lesson 2

Step By Step Series Lesson 3

Typical Mistakes Lecture 1 Level 30k - 20k

Important Stones Lesson 1

Important Stones Lesson 2

Efficiency for 30K - 10k

Invasion Lecture 1 30k - 1k

Important Stones Lesson 3

Efficiency for 30k - 10k Lesson 2

Some of these are lessons I had previously purchased, and which had since expired. It was good to go back and view some of these lessons again. Some of these lessons were new to me.

If I continue to watch lessons at this rate I will be able to watch twice as many videos in one year as I could have watched if I had rented them one video at a time, and I can go back and watch them as often as I want for a full year rather than a full month.

I'll make it a point to report on my usage for the month of April.

I Subscribed To Audio Go Lessons For One Year

2010-03-16T12:18:00.004-05:00

Guo Juan has offered a new payment plan for her audio go lessons web site, which can be found at her Internet Go School. For 99 Euros you get a full year of unlimited access. I decided that this was an attractive plan for me because it meant that I wouldn't have to worry about access on individual offerings expiring after one month. 99 Euros is significantly more than I would have paid in the course of a year to watch individual titles if I had rented each one separately. However, now that I will be trying to get my money's worth, I will probably watch many more videos. I won't have to ask myself if I want to bother to spend the single Euro for a particular title. It's really nice not to have to worry about the videos expiring after a month.

My first order of business is to go back over the easiest Step By Step videos that I had watched in the beginning. Those are excellent videos that I might otherwise not have bothered to rent again.

NJ Open Round 5

2010-03-03T13:24:00.007-05:00

These pictures were all taken by Don DeCourcelle.

This was an incredibly peaceful game. Not a single stone was captured during the game. The final position has one dead stone of each color near the center of the board. This is not unusual for me since I am basically a very peaceful player.

The first image is a picture of the board just before scoring. I played black in this game and the bottom territory is worth 49 points. After confirming that fact, we simply removed the lone stone on the first line and placed it elsewhere, and didn't bother to arrange that area any further.

Here I am with my gray hair pondering the board. Don posted these images to Facebook, and I find it amusing that I had made an appointment to color my hair as a reward for reaching my goal weight about an hour before I saw this photograph on Facebook. Seeing it only confirmed the wisdom of my decision.

This is my worthy opponent Iris Lin, who had won all four of her games in the New Jersey Open before our game.

Here is a graphic representation of the board position that Don made for me.

New Jersey Open

2010-03-03T13:20:00.001-05:00

I played at the New Jersey Open again this year, and had a great time.

Many of my old friends were present. One old friend who had been conspicuously absent for years made an appearance. Don DeCourcelle, who hosted the New Jersey Yang Workshop for two years, made the NJ Open his first tournament in his return to the go scene after an absence of at least five years.

I played at the rank I "earned" at the Hoboken tournament last year, which is 9k. I was very close to 8k and would like to have played at that level, but I know that the AGA has a policy against one stone self promotions, so I didn't try to push it at registration.

I came to find that, as last year, they were lax in enforcing the policy against one stone self promotions. I found this annoying. I guess it doesn't pay to know and follow the rules.

I went 2-3 and solidified my rating of 9k achieving a revised rating of 9.11 with a sigma of 0.48.

I took my Macbook with me to the tournament and used it to record my games, which drew some attention from the younger set. During the fist game I carelessly misplaced a stone, and recorded only up to the point where it mattered. With the remaining four games I was much more careful and recorded up to the last move of these games. I actually think that recording hurt my games rather than helped them, but at least I have the game records for analysis.

I have already had Yilun Yang review Round 2 and Round 3. I will have him review Round 4 and Round 5 during our next lesson.

Round 1:

I played white against a Chinese Opening. I won that game by 13.5, and did not find myself feeling under pressure during the game at all.

Round 2:

I played white again. This time it was a very close game which I lost by 0.5. I was able to pinpoint a totally unnecessary move on my part which cost me the game. I was so ashamed by the offending move that I was tempted not to show it to Mr. Yang because I knew what he would say about it. I showed it anyway, and he said exactly what I expected, "This is a 25 kyu move." I definitely didn't deserve to win that game. I did take comfort though in knowing that I was playing at the right level by coming in so close in spite of such a terrible mistake.

Round 3:

This game was with a young girl who I had played at the Oza two years before. She had won all her games when she played me, and I think she may have gone on to win the rest of them. I lost this game by 14.5. I was surprised, however, when Mr. Yang reviewed it I was told that I should have won the game. I made some bad errors that prevented me from doing so, but apparently I started out well. This game was the third game of the day, and I don't really like to play more than one serious game per day, so by the time this game was under way I was exhausted. I actually stood for this game to remain focused. It probably worked against me though by making me even more tired.

Round 4

I was refreshed the next morning, and this game I had high hopes of winning. Early in the game I captured quite a large group. Unfortunately my opponent fought back valiantly, cutting off a couple key stones which added significantly to his territory. I lost that game by 3.5.

Round 5

This game was against a young woman who had won all four of her previous games. At the end of the game she told me that I had offered her the biggest challenge of the tournament. During the game she actually said at one point that she would really like to get sente. I know the feeling well. I won that game by 18.5.

I'm not disappointed with my results since two of my losses were so close.

Go Takes A Back Seat To Fitness

2010-03-03T12:19:00.002-05:00

I noticed recently that I hadn't posted on this blog since September of last year, and I'm going to tell you why. I've still been playing go, and taking lessons. However go has taken a back seat to my efforts to trim back down and to improve my general level of fitness.

Retirement has been a blessing. It's been good for my go, but it wasn't good for my figure. So for the past year I have been working to take off the 30 pounds that slowly crept on at the rate of a little more than a pound a month once I was no longer on my feet eight hours a day battling teenagers. I used to be a high school art teacher.

I've been putting a lot of my energy into my other blog which I maintain on Spark People. I post to it at least once a day. Starting in October I began training to run a 5K race, and I ran my first race on Sunday, February 28th.

I have replaced the picture from when I was a high school art teacher with a photo of myself crossing my first finish line below my goal weight.

You can read about my 5K on my Spark Blog.

I attended the New Jersey Open this year and will post about that experience soon.

I Think I Know What Happened

2009-09-29T08:30:00.001-05:00

I am feeling a little bit better now after researching my opps from Hoboken. Apparently I was paired in all four game against someone weaker than myself. The system punished me severely for my one loss, and it didn't reward me at all for my three wins. Being on the borderline to begin with, I got burned. It's as simple as that. I will be checking the stats of my opps from now on before I allow myself to expect anything.

It was a mistake thinking that I couldn't drop after a winning tournament.

Win A Prize - Lose a Rank - What?

2009-09-29T07:57:00.001-05:00

Last week I checked my rating to see if the results of the Hoboken tournament were in yet. They weren't, but I found that my rating had increased to -8.92, which was up from the -8.98 I had achieved immediately after the congress.

I checked my rating again this morning.

Imagine my surprise, having gone 3-1 in Hoboken, to see that my new rating had dropped to -9.10 after having achieved prize winning results in my last tournament.

WHAT ?

It just doesn't make sense.

I would rather that I had stabilized at 9 kyu as a result of my 2-3 record at the congress. At least that would have made sense.

I came back from Hoboken feeling that my 8 kyu rating would at least be solidified. I didn't really expect it to change for the better by more than a couple hundredths of a point.

It just doesn't make sense to win and have your rating go down as a result.

At least my sigma is up to 0.47773

But now I have to enter as 9 kyu at my next tournament.

Hoboken Tournament Report

2009-09-21T09:27:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I played in a tournament in Hoboken. I was lucky enough to get a ride to the playing site with five other players from the Princeton Go Club. We had a nice time riding up and back together. I met up with them on campus for the ride.

I saw lots of people I know from previous tournaments and enjoyed my time chatting between rounds.

I went 3-1 to defend my tenuous rating of -8.98, which I earned through a two stone self promotion at the Congress this year just the month before.

I will admit to having been very nervous about this tournament because I did not want to slip back to 9 kyu. There is something nice about having a rating that matches one's AGAID number. However, it seemed unlikely that I could defend this rating, especially in New Jersey where ratings are particularly tough due to the location of the Fen Yun Go School. We are lucky to have such good competition, but it makes New Jersey events particularly tough when the young strong locals come out in force.

My four games were all with opponents under the age of 20. Three of them were with young students of Feng Yun, so it was quite a challenge to go 3-1, and I am particularly pleased with my record.

My first game was a loss, and I braced myself for the rest of the day. I recorded my first game, and sat down with Masaki Hamiguchi, one of my strong long time go buddies, and we went over the game. He is such a good teacher, and showed me where I went wrong. Primarily I failed to reduce the Chinese opening with a shoulder hit at the proper time, making it difficult for me to reduce it later. I had taken a smaller move along the side instead.

My first opponent was a young boy who made sure I knew before the end game started that he was winning. I am sure that was my subtle hint to resign, and in a club game I would have. But I was there to play go, and if I resigned every game I played with a child under the age of ten once i was behind, I would have some very long waits between rounds. I told him that I agreed with his assessment, but that I would enjoy finishing the game nonetheless, and so we did. I lost by 36.5, which was less than I would have expected given the massive kill. This boy was so committed to the Chinese Opening that he chose to play it as white. I am not sure that I have seen this before. It is time to review my Guo Juan Audio Go Lessons on the Chinese Opening.

My second opponent was the only one who was not a student of Feng Yun. She was a sophomore in college who was attending her first tournament. She had been playing go for about three years, which she had discovered in high school by way of Anime. That game turned out to be a decisive victory for me at 56.5, and I recorded that game as well up until I was about ten minutes away from byo yomi.

As much as I like having a recording so I can benefit from my mistakes, I found that I had worn myself out considerably with recording those first two games. I ended up in byo yomi in both of them, which was no surprise given that I was playing what looked like an eight year old boy who didn't need long to decide his next move, and a college student who was a self proclaimed fan of blitz.

Masaki suggested that I stop recording, and predicted that I would be two stones stronger if I did. Whether he was right about the increase in go strength, or not, I definitely found myself refreshed by not recording, and I felt a definite increase in stamina.

My third game was with a very young boy from the Feng Yun Go School who was playing as a 7 kyu. I managed to isolate some of his stones early on in the game to create a huge area of territory, which he added to by attempting unsuccessfully to live. It turned out to be an easy game, and I came out of it refreshed and with a 15.5 victory. We both played quickly so I had more than an hour to relax and do tsumgo before the 4th round.

My fourth game was with a young teenage female student of the Feng Yun Go School. This was also a relatively easy game. This opponent had won all three of her games to this point, so she was being matched up to play a stronger player even in the fourth round. Given that the handicap was inadequate for her stated rank, it was an important game for me to win. I did so by 26.5

At the awards ceremony I received some cash, and I got to choose a go book. They had more than a handful of books I did not already own, and I selected "The Go Companion: Go in History and Culture" by John Fairbairn and T. Mark Hall the Creators of GoGoD.

I came back seriously pumped and logged in immediately to KGS to look for my friends so i could brag. I found a few, and by 12:30 I had come down far enough to attempt to sleep.

It was a very exciting day, and I am very glad I went.

Exciting Evening At The Princeton Go Club

2009-09-16T21:06:00.002-05:00

My first game was with an AGA 3kyu. I took 5 stones and ended up winning by 19 points. I counted the game a number of times, but aside from that, I played pretty quickly. We replayed the game up to the point where he felt that the he had suffered a meaningful loss, which was actually early in the middle game when I isolated two of his stones. It was nice to replay the game up to that point from memory. It is entirely different from clicking through it online.

I am keeping track of who I play and how I do, so I can come up with a reasonable handicap for each individual. He and I should try four stones next time and see how it goes. I know I don't do well giving handicap, so I am sure when I play weaker players I will be unlikely to give the proper handicap and win.

My next game was with a young girl who is 8 kyu AGA. But her mother wanted to get her and her younger sister to begin heading home shortly after 9:00 PM, so we discontinued play when the mother, being a strong player, offered to review the game for us.

Oh, and did I mention, the mother's name? She is Feng Yun, 9p. Just how cool is that?

It was quite an honor to have the opening reviewed by Feng Yun. I will be going to the club again next week. I feel really lucky to be at the proper level to give a reasonable game to both of Feng Yun's daughters.

Going To Princeton Go Club Again Tonight

2009-09-16T17:35:00.003-05:00

In about a half an hour I will be out the door to attend the Princeton Go Club again tonight.

Since my husband wakes me up at 5:30 AM every weekday, my leaving the house at 7:00 PM to attend a go club feels like venturing out at 10:00 PM if I were getting up at at a normal time. I don't like playing at night, and I have stayed away from evening clubs because I have a fear of doing poorly. But let's face the fact that I have a fear of doing poorly online too, or at a tournament. I have such a fear of doing poorly that I will use almost any excuse to not play, but to watch instead. So I have decided that I am simply going to face the fact that I am likely going to show performance that is anywhere from one to two stones below what I am capable of at a decent hour, and I will just suck it up and play.

When discussing the club with my friend Charles, who has no fear of playing at all, I realized that what I like about the club is that if I go I am forced to play. Online I can say, "No". But at the club if I am not playing I look like a chicken. And if I am not playing, then what on earth am I doing there?

So, off I go, to be brave, and to play.

I am wearing the tshirt from the 2004 New Jersey Yang Workshop. That is the one that has Yilun Yang's face embedded in the grain of a 9x9 go board.

Went To The Princeton Go Club Last Night

2009-09-10T07:01:00.003-05:00

On a weekday I get up at 5:30 AM, so by the time the evening rolls around I am pretty tired and reluctant to play go because I feel that I am about two stones weaker than I am in the morning. But I finally dealt with my fear of playing at night, and forced myself out of the house to go to the Princeton Go Club last night. It felt really great to play some casual games over the board.

There were only two other people there because it was the first meeting of the semester and the word had not gotten out to all the students yet. The three of us in attendance took turns playing and watching, so each of us got to play two games and watch one. It was great to play over the board rather than online. It was also great to play without a clock as I would at a tournament. I play quickly, so I actually play faster without a clock than with a clock. I had forgotten what club play feels like. It is a whole different experience from online play and tournament play.

The only thing I missed was actually reviewing the game in depth since no one recorded, and we did not attempt to replay.

I will be going back again next Wednesday looking for a ride to the Hoboken tournament on the 20th. Maybe I can persuade my friend Charles to come to the club.

American Go Association Go Database

2009-08-21T06:56:00.004-05:00

At the U.S. Go Congress this year the AGA rolled out the American Go Association Go Database.

You can find the main page at:

http://agagd.usgo.org/

A search for AGAID#8 will yield my page at:

http://agagd.usgo.org/Player_Card.php?&key=8

Above you can see my entry ranks for all tournaments beginning with the 1997 Go Congress. You can also see the five year stretch where I was stuck pretty much stuck at 13 kyu.

I like that you can look up your opponents and see how many games they have in the database.

I was even told on a thread on Go Discussions that if I would email them sgf files of my tournament games that they would upload them to the database. It would be really neat if the people who record their games would do this. If they did you could look at the other games your opponent had played. I would find that interesting.

SDK Again - Ratings Are In

2009-08-17T14:20:00.004-05:00

The ratings are in from the U.S. Go Congress.

I self promoted two stones from 10k to 8k, and I managed to hold onto it by the skin of my teeth.

Aerobic Tsumego

2009-08-13T08:56:00.005-05:00

At the Go Congress this year I decided to purchase a set of Tsumego books translated from Korean into English by a company called Baduktopia. They had a table outside the main playing area and they were selling a series of books on Life and Death. I am told by my strong playing friends that the last book in the series is difficult, and definitely dan level. They also have a series of books called "Level Up". I purchased the first set of books in the series. The answers are not in the books, but they are available for the first and second series of the Level Up books online in PDF format.

Currently the answers are not yet available online for the Life and Death books, but they are working on getting those PDF files created and uploaded.

The reason this post is called "Aerobic Tsumego" is because I have taken to solving life and death problems while walking on the treadmill. I walked for an hour and a half yesterday all the while working on life and death and working through the Level Up books.

Congress Report - Self Promoted

2009-08-11T16:49:00.004-05:00

I decided to self promote again this year at the Go Congress. If I had been 9k at the end of the Maryland Open I would not have promoted to 7k because that would have been two far. I would have lost every game at that level. My recent dip to 10k actually offered me an opportunity to self promote the necessary two stones to 8k, and actually get a one stone promotion because I am essentially still 9k in spite of one bad tournament day. I also decided that if I played as 10k and did well that my opponents would have a right to consider me a sandbagger, and if I won a prize as a 10k it would have been a hollow victory.

I started the congress with a victory in an even game against a 5k in a casual game just before the first round of the U.S. Open. Unfortunately, he went 0-6 in the open so I don't put much stock in having won that game.

I went 2-3 at the Congress, which may just be enough to squeak into 8k territory. It is certainly enough to earn back my 9k status. It will all depend on how my opponents fare, and whether they self promoted or not. The two I won against did not self promote, so that is good news. I don't know about the other opponents.

I had a great time at the Congress. I decided not to play pair go this year although I had my pick of partners. I find it tiring to play that late at night, and I wanted to be fresh for my Friday game, which I lost by the way.

I have a lesson this Thursday and I am conflicted as to whether to show these games to Mr. Yang or not. The mistakes appear to be obvious. Strong players have pointed them out to me, and some of them were so painfully obvious that I saw them immediately in my games, which made it all the harder to play on in some cases. One might argue that it is a waste of money to show such games to Mr. Yang, but since I already know that my poor tournament results have more to do with stamina issues and mental blocks than they do with how much I know about go I like for him to see my lapses and stupid mistakes. Well, I don't LIKE it, but I think it is beneficial. The main reason I started to record my tournament games and to show them to Yang was so that the knowledge that they would be revealed to Yang would somehow make me more careful and think more of what Yang would say about the move I was considering. I hoped that would make me play better.

I have a day to decide.

DDK Again

2009-06-11T07:53:00.002-05:00

The results from the MD Open Tournament have been entered into the AGA Rating System.

I will be playing as a 10 kyu at the Congress, as I expected.

Maryland Open

2009-05-25T17:03:00.002-05:00

I attended the Maryland Open on Saturday of last weekend. Attendance was low this year and it seemed that we were missing the strongest players, and there were not too many weaker players either.

This tournament was my chance to stabilize my rank at a solid 9 kyu before the Congress. I had dipped close to 10 kyu after the New Jersey Open in February. Unfortunately, I think I may have pushed myself down into DDK land again.

I lost all three of my games on Saturday, and I did not play on Sunday. All of my games were very close. I lost the first by 4.5. I lost the second by 0.5, and I lost the third by 2.5.

Guo Juan Group Lessons Are Going Well

2009-05-04T08:45:00.003-05:00

I am enjoying my group lessons with Guo Juan and Jennie Shen. They take turns doing the lessons.

A new feature has been added this semester which I like. They are asking us to send in our games early enough so they can send them all to us before the lesson. We receive an sgf file which is a compilation of all the games by Friday. This way we can look at the games in preparation for the Saturday lesson. This is really nice because it gives us a chance to think about questions, and also to try to anticipate what the teacher may choose to focus on during the analysis of the various games. Basically we have been given an additional opportunity to prepare for the lesson beyond the time we spend looking at our own game record, and doing tsumego.

It is obvious through their analysis that Guo Juan and Jennie both look at each game ahead of time to find something to emphasize during review so they can make the best use of the time available for the lesson.

I love my group lessons, but unfortuately life happens. Next week I have to attend a birthday party, and the following week I will be playing in the Maryland Open Tournament. Lucky for me I am not the only person who is recording the Group B lessons in video format. When I come back from my activities I will be able to download the lesson from the link in the lesson room and watch the video.

I highly recommend the Guo Juan group lessons.

Started Guo Juan Group Lessons Again

2009-04-19T18:48:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was the first week of a new series of Guo Juan group lessons. We had a few weeks between sessions, and I am ready to get involved again. Each member of the B group sent in a game for review so we spent the entire lesson on game review this week. Next week we will look at tsumego homework problems as well.

I started to slack off on playing a game every day. I got side tracked the day I came home from visiting my mother and decided not to play a game. That was a mistake because it made me feel as if I didn't have to keep getting in my game each day. In fact I have played very little in the past two weeks. Group lessons will be good for me because it will mean that I must play at least one serious game each week. That will help me get back into the swing of things.

New Jersey Open

2009-03-02T12:34:00.002-05:00

I went 1-4 at the New Jersey Open this year. For over a year I have tried to record every one of my tournament games. I have had them reviewed by Yilun Yang as part of my biweekly lessons. I was hoping to continue this tradition, so I recorded my first game on Saturday, and started to record my second game as well. However, I was feeling particularly tired, and felt that recording was getting in the way of playing more than it usually does. I abandoned recording shortly into the second game. I actually won that game. It was the only game I played against an opponent I had faced across the board previously, and it was also the only one I was to win in the two days of the tournament. I ended up simply being outplayed in three instances. In one instances I lost by a mere 1.5.

It was an unusual tournament from the standpoint that three out of five of my opponents were female. Two qualified as women, but one was a very young girl. It was the young girl to whom I lost by 1.5 in the final round of the tournament. I suspected she was a Feng Yun student, which was confirmed after we were done with our game. But I also discovered that she had gone 5-0 in the tournament thanks to my not having handled some of my end game well. Yet I felt proud to have possibly given her her toughest game at the tournament. She played one board down from me in the 4th round against another Feng Yun student approximately her own age. Their game was played at lightning speed, and I had a hard time keeping my eyes from it while I was trying to concentrate on my own game. During the scoring phase they were having some difficulty adding up the points. Playing is easy for these little ones, but math can be hard. I handed the boy a piece of paper and a pencil and he added up the areas on the paper. I can relate. After a really tough game I don't want to do the math in my head either.

I can say without a doubt that this tournament was the most physically demanding I have ever played. I ended up in bed and asleep by 8:00 PM on Saturday night, and feeling just as exhausted on Sunday evening. I attribute part of that to the fact that I am actually using so much more of my time in my games, and not leaving myself with nearly as much time to rest between rounds. I am going to have to get used to that because as time goes on I use more and more of my time.

There Is Death In The Dame

2009-03-02T09:34:00.002-05:00

Another name for this post might be "Dame Disaster".

I will report on my own results at the NJ Open in another post. But here I want to tell about the most exciting part of the tournament for me. Perhaps it might be more accurate to say it was the most fascinating part of the tournament for me. It was fascinating, yet tragic. After observing this event I felt as if there ought to be a lesson in it, but I don't really think there is.

Two of my go buddies were playing each other, and I was watching the very end of the game. Black seemed to have won the game for sure, by perhaps eight or more points. There seemed to be agreement that it was over except to fill the dame and move the stones around. In fact, white seemed tacitly prepared to lose gracefully. Black played a dame. White handed over a stone. Black could have passed, and it would have been over. But black searched for another dame, and found one. White was poised to pass another stones, but decided to find that one last elusive dame. He played a stone. I froze in terror for black as I saw the damesumari from which there was no escape. After a pause white said, "I just saw something.". Black saw it too, and played the move he had to play to minimize his loss, hoping he still had enough to win the game, but knowing in his heart that he did not.

That was yesterday. These two guys actually have to work together today. They not only play in the same club. They also work for the same employer. Luckily there were no hard feelings, but plenty of sympathy to go around for black yesterday.

The take home lesson here, if there is one, might be "Rich men don't seek dame".

Tuesday Is "Play Like Chas Day"

2009-02-18T20:20:00.004-05:00

Monday a week ago I was feeling depressed about my go game and I decided to try to desensitize myself to these bad feelings by playing a large number of games the next day. I proceeded to play six games quickly that Tuesday. I lost all six of them, and I definitely played poorly, but I achieved the result of making myself more willing to play without fear in the following days. I found myself less concerned about playing my required go game for the rest of the week, and less insistent that they be played first think in the morning. "Play Like Chas Day" had been born. It is named in honor of my friend, Charles Layton, who plays fast and furious, and racks up as many as 30 games in a day, and has over 5,000 games to his credit in his first year of online play.

This week I decided to repeat "Play Like Chas Day" again yesterday. I had similar results as last time. I played eleven games this time, and lost all but one of them. I came away from the experience feeling as if I had played too quickly, not very well, and was not particularly interested in reviewing right away, but I was definitely desensitized.

All but one of my games yesterday was an auto match. The other was with a friend who I often end up turning away because the timing isn't right when he asks me to play. Something unusual happened with auto match yesterday.

If you look at the image you will see all my games from yesterday including seven unfinished games in a row begun in the span of three minutes time. I kept getting matched with the same 5k player who kept running away from me... very odd. What was even odder is that after the 2nd time he got matched with me he kept seeking a match. You would think that if he didn't want to play with me he would have waited until I got a match before he put up another offer. I guess this goes to show just how few people are actually looking for an auto match.

Knowing Stuff - Bulky Five

2009-02-16T09:15:00.005-05:00

Last night a strong player reviewed a game for me, and showed me a number of variations in a corner invasion. He asked me what I would do if my opponent responded in certain ways... the answer being to exploit cuts. This prompted me to reflect again on the importance of knowing stuff. I should know that stuff, and I shouldn't have to stop to think about it or read it. I should just know it.

I saw the importance of knowing stuff illustrated vividly yesterday afternoon in a game that two of my friends were playing together. They shall both remain nameless here.

White was way ahead and he won the game easily, but could have won by a landslide if some vital information about the bulky five had been seared into his memory. White had attacked a black group and reduced it to a bulky five. There was also a false eye attached to the bulky five, and there a miai situation which insured that the false eye could never be real. After making the placement on the vital point of the bulky five, white could have used his next move to insure the isolation of the group. Black would have needed two moves in a row inside the bulky five to make two eyes after the killing placement. He could never get those two moves in a row. But rather than insuring the separation, white added a move inside the bulky five. This was essentially a pass. Black went on to secure a connection for his formerly dead bulky five shape to another live group. I imagine that there was wailing and gnashing of teeth after that.

White was in byo yomi, which of course makes it hard to think clearly. All the more reason, however, for having as much "stuff" seared into one's memory as possible ... stuff you don't need to think about, not for a minute, not for even ten seconds.

I had fun watching that game because I saw this situation, and I knew the instant that the second stone went down into the bulky five that it was no better than a pass. How exciting. White, by the way, is a great player and gave me a trashing the week before. So I ask myself, what obvious things do I not know? What "pass moves" do I make each day because I lack that critical knowledge? What do I have to think twice about that will steal critical seconds when I am in byo yomi, which is more likely to occur now that I can actually read far enough ahead to start using up my time in the middle game?

I have to do more tsumego, and I have to learn more positions by heart... L, L+1, L+2. I have said before that I want to not only know their status, which I do, but know every likely attack, and proper refutation.

I am going to be a go player yet, and knowing stuff is going to help to get me there.

Enriching My Love Of The Game - Two Years Old

2009-02-07T12:07:00.001-05:00

Yesterday marked the two year anniversary of my first post on this blog.

Guo Juan Group Lessons

2009-02-03T12:23:00.003-05:00

I recently started taking group lessons with Guo Juan, and am very excited about the group lesson experience as a supplement to my private lessons with Yilun Yang.

You can read details about the lesson schedule and get pricing information at Guo Juan's Internet Go School Web Site. A new term will begin in April, and I know after only two weeks of participation in this term that I will be signing up again.

I had thought about taking these group lessons before, but was a bit worried about taking time out of my weekends for it. It was the recommendation of friends, however, who had taken the lessons in the past that convinced me to do it this time.

At 120 Euros (about 160 USD) you get ten weeks of lessons. Groups meet for an hour and a half at the assigned time in a private room on KGS. Three groups are running this term, A, B, and C. Apparently there was not enough interest to run the D group, although that is a shame because this would be a great way for 30k to 20k players to begin their go education along with the audio go lessons. Perhaps players of that level don't think they are ready for lessons, but I think they are.

I am in the B group, which ranges in strength from 10k to 1k, although the strongest player currently enrolled is 4k. Classes are an hour and a half each, but you are allowed to observe all other levels besides your own. I enjoy watching the A group and the C group lessons too. This gives great value for the money because you can watch four and a half hours of professional instruction a week if you are so inclined. In addition to that you can watch the lessons in video format if you are lucky enough to have someone in the group who is able to record it and make it available for download.

During the first two weeks the lessons have consisted of review of games that students have played. Each week we get a file of tsumego to solve. So far there have been 20 problems in the file. We go over many of the problems at the end of the lesson, and we receive a file later with the correct answers so we can check our work on any of the problems that we did not review in class.

I find that having classmates adds to my desire to play and discuss games outside of class. It's motivating. We all know we should solve tsumego, but being given a set of problems to solve and knowing that you will be expected to have done your homework makes it more likely that you will actually work on tsumego than if you have to search out problems on your own and force yourself to pay attention to them.

I often see double digit kyu players asking how they can improve. This certainly seems like a great way to do it. I would highly recommend to anyone that they take these group lessons. It's like being at a workshop without air fare and hotel fees. It's well worth the money.

Nice Damezumari In My Game Today

2009-01-22T09:41:00.004-05:00

I dutifully put up an auto match request this morning to play my required daily game. I think it is a good idea to get this one required game out of the way first thing, and then maybe play more games as the day progresses because I want to play, not because I have to.

I have increased the handicap range on my free auto match settings to 9H to get practice giving handicap and also to add variety to my daily game. So far I have only had to take or give 4H with this higher setting, probably because most other people have the handicap limits set much lower.

Today I got to play white in a 3H game. I didn't feel as if I was doing a very good job, and I was pretty sure I was down in the game although I had not counted. But then in the end game I saw an opportunity to set up a damezumari situation. I only expected to get four stones out of it because I expected my opponent to see the continuation that would result in the loss of progressively more stones since two more damezumari situations would occur if he continued to answer my moves. Much to my surprise my opponent connected not once, but twice. With the second atari he should have sacrificed even more stones.

In the board position above white plays first. Rather than replying at 2, black should just play at 3 and give up four stones. The game continued as in the diagram and black resigned after move 5. Afterward I checked to see what the score was before the sequence and I was losing as I thought. I would have still been losing by 10.5 if he had given up four stones instead of connecting the first time.

I was really happy to have seen such a sequence and to have acted on it, but if I played a mediocre game overall, why am I so happy over this? I must not be very highly evolved.

My Long Time Study Partner - Charles

2009-01-16T15:10:00.003-05:00

For nearly a year I have made references to someone I have mentored online. He used to be a student, but now he is much more of a study partner than a student because he is only three stones weaker than I am at this point. I first made contact with him when he called me up asking about Wings Go Club. That day I helped him login to KGS for the first time. I helped him set up an account, and I played his first 9x9 game with him there. I have watched him grow from 21k to 10k. I have stood in awe of his ability to play day in and day out without fear or fatigue, and have urged him to start taking lessons with Yilun Yang, which he has been doing now for several months.

I have gone out of my way to not mention his KGS user name when I write about him because I didn't want to expose him. But today after we reviewed a situation in his game that started as a bulky five, then progressed to a pyramid shape, and resulted in a big chase resulting in eventual, undeserved life for his stones, I told him that I might write a blog post about it. He said that was a good idea. That prompted me to ask how he would feel about me using his KGS name on the blog. The conversation went like this:

buzzsaw [7k?]: btw

buzzsaw [7k?]: I have avoided using your KGS name on my blog

buzzsaw [7k?]: and sometimes it is difficult to do

buzzsaw [7k?]: do you mind if I mention you by name?

ChasLayton [10k]: I don't care. I'm an open book.

buzzsaw [7k?]: people may come to play you

buzzsaw [7k?]: people read my blog

ChasLayton [10k]: They do anyway.

buzzsaw [7k?]: well, yeah, I send them to stalk you

buzzsaw [7k?]: but not through the blog

ChasLayton [10k]: I figured that out

buzzsaw [7k?]: I say, "go stalk charles"

ChasLayton [10k]: and some of them do

ChasLayton [10k]: I can't imagine why, except I'm online so much

buzzsaw [7k?]: well that is the reason

buzzsaw [7k?]: it is a constant

buzzsaw [7k?]: that people like

ChasLayton [10k]: Right.

buzzsaw [7k?]: they like to see the fighting spirit

ChasLayton [10k]: I'm like gravity

buzzsaw [7k?]: the fearlessness

...

buzzsaw [7k?]: you are a law of nature

buzzsaw [7k?]: me too

buzzsaw [7k?]: inertia

...

ChasLayton [10k]: yes, it's inertia

ChasLayton [10k]: Like now, I'm itching to play again. Send me in, coach!

buzzsaw [7k?]: okay okay

buzzsaw [7k?]: go get 'em charles

The cool thing about Charles is that he plays up to 30 games a day, and has nearly 5,000 games under his belt in one year. He is the opposite of me. He told me that he is glad that I like to watch so much more than I like to play because he reaps the benefit of that. That may be true, but I believe that I have learned a lot by teaching him over the course of the past year.

So when you are on KGS stop by a ChasLayton game and leave a little kibbitz message, "Buzzsaw sent me to stalk you, Charles."

Okay I Promise Not To Do This Every Day...

2009-01-14T20:52:00.003-05:00

But I am really enjoying my new program that keeps track of how I spend my time studying go.

This is how I spent my time today...

If you click on the graphic it should open in its own window and be a little easier to read.

How Do I Spend My Time Studying Go?

2009-01-14T08:02:00.006-05:00

I have often thought it would be a good idea to keep track of the time I spend on various go activities. I think it would be fun if nothing else. For an artistic type I have always had an unusual interest in how numbers can describe my life, as much as I always hated math as an academic pursuit. I am sure it would be revealing of what I value about go. Yesterday I did a search for software for the Mac that would allow me to pursue this. I downloaded a trial of OfficeTime, which allows one to start a stopwatch to tally up the time you spend when you are involved in any task.

I started by creating a list of the activities that I would be most likely to engage in related to my go study. The list had thirteen items on it by the time I was finished generating it. I can add more items if necessary. I chose to designate these activities as projects, but I could have made them categories within one project called "go study". Using the project format will allow me to further define activities by category within project if I choose to do so at a later time.

My Project list includes the following:

blogging about go
reading Go Discussions
reading go books
playing pro games
studying tsumego
watching others play on KGS
reviewing games of others on KGS
editing my Yang lessons Next Move SGF Style
preparing and giving lesson reviews
playing on KGS
having my games reviewed
Guo Juan Group Lessons
Yang Lessons

The graphic is a chart of my go activity for yesterday and shows that I engaged in four of the thirteen activities listed above. It also shows how much time was spent in each activity, and represents that time in a pie chart.

I can already see that I will need to add a category called "attended Go Workshop".

I should note that the chart is based on activity after I downloaded the software. Earlier in the day I played a game and had it reviewed by a stronger player. I can add those activities manually into the software if I desire, but I didn't bother. I have played one game per day now for seven days in a row.

I Got Caught Speeding

2009-01-12T09:02:00.005-05:00

First of all let me report that I have played a game every day for the past five days.

Yesterday it was past 6:00 PM and I had not played my game for the day. I was really tired from lack of sleep the night before due to a bad case of "go head", and didn't feel like playing at all. I considered playing two games the next day to make up for it, but I thought that I should play anyway because one game a day is not that big a deal. If I can't keep that small a commitment, then what kind of a go player am I? Can I say I am studying with any seriousness if I can't play a game a day?

I put up a game in the EGR and was hoping to play slowly, but got sucked into a fast pace again as I have so many times in the past. I guess part of the problem was that I really wanted the game to be done so I could say I had played it. I ended up resigning after failing to kill some stones that had invaded my center. I squeezed them first, and it was looking promising. A friend messaged me afterward and reminded me to slow down in the future. He pointed out that I had played 40 stones in two minutes at one point during the game.

I got caught speeding.... "But officer, I had no idea I was going that fast."

Had A Great Game Last Night

2009-01-11T14:59:00.003-05:00

Last night at about 7:00 PM I realized that I had not played my game for the day. I try not to play at night because I am usually too tired to do well, and it also rams me up so much that I have trouble sleeping, which is exactly what happened last night.

I tend to prefer auto match, so I tried to use it, but it was not getting me a game in a timely fashion, so I put up an offer in the English Game Room on KGS instead. I didn't have long to wait for someone to take it. Much to my pleasure, the game was taken by someone who I had not played myself, but who my study partner had played previously. My study partner has spoken very highly of this guy, and so I was very pleased to be playing him.

I had set two hours of basic time, and was hoping for a slow game. My 6k opponent started off nice and slowly. I followed suit. After a bit of time had passed I realized how calming and pleasant the game was at this slow pace. We were chatting away about our common friend, and my opponent's go club. We were also talked about my lessons with Yilun Yang. I invited my opponent to come and observe one of the reviews of my lessons that I do in the Wings Go Club room on a regular basis. It turns out that his club meets one of the days that I do my weekly reviews, and he asked if the whole club could attend. I told him I would be happy to have them. He said that he would be able to put the review up on the wall for everyone to see. How cool is that?

The game felt like a cross between a club game where we were socializing, and a tournament game where I was counting the board regularly and really trying hard to win. I was doing both of those things, and enjoying myself very much. Stylistically, I would characterize the game as one of my typical peaceful and solid games. This was indeed a "Terri" game. My player was very peaceful as well. There was an attempted invasion shortly before the end, but that was a necessary try on his part. I felt as if I could have played tenuki in the middle of the invasion a few times, but I was not about to tempt fate, having been caught in damezumari so many times in the past, so I matched him move for move until he gave up on the invasion.

Maybe my mantra, "strangers are for play, and friends are for review" is wrong after all.

Anyway, I was really careful with this game. I counted well enough that I could afford to make a real chicken move at the end. I suppose that is bad form, but my feeling is that if I know I am winning by a big enough margin, why not avoid any possibility of trouble? My opponent resigned the game just before scoring, which is fine with me. It was not a large enough margin that I would have bothered to do that myself, but everyone has their own style. In a sense, it is a way of saying, "I don't need to be shown I've lost."

The dan player who had been observing said it was a good game for me to have Yang review, and I have him look at it on Thursday.

One thing I learned from this game is that I am, in fact, capable of slowing down online. I think that I allow my opponents to set the pace. I must stop doing this. If the time is there to use, it doesn't matter if they want to use it or not. I do, and I should, regardless of what they do themselves.

Reading Basic Techniques of Go

2009-01-10T12:44:00.002-05:00

I have many books in my go library to which I have not paid adequate attention. Some of them are just too advanced for me. Some of them I have read earlier and at some time decide to read them again. Basic Techniques of Go is a book that I read previously and skimmed very quickly at the time. I have picked it up again recently, and am finding it interesting the second time around.

I have learned something from this book, however, about my shortcomings in digesting written go material. With anything but the most simple diagrams, I seem to be unable to follow the addition of stones on the board that the diagrams show. My problem seems to be an inability to "clear" the diagram of the numbered stones in advance of reading the stones one by one as they are added. I am sure that this disability is a symptom of my inability to read well during actual games. It is a matter of poor visualization. Yet, when I find myself looking at a diagram that challenges me, I tend to get frustrated and move on to the next diagram.

In Chapter 1: A Survey of Tesuji, I found myself skipping over diagram after diagram due to my inability to "clear" the stones. Obviously my visualization skills need to improve, and I imagine that a dan player reading the same material would experience no such problem. Yet, I want to benefit from the material, so I either have to get out a board and place the setup stones to read this chapter, or I need to make an SGF file to refer to as I read it. I am not sure yet which would make more sense. The board and stones are more like real life, yet the SGF lasts longer, and I can go back to it later.

Chapter 2: Principles of Even-game Fuseki, on the other hand, I found very easy to read. Starting diagrams were simple, and so few stones were added in follow-up diagrams that it was easy to "clear" the stones and see the stones as they appeared one at a time.

I wonder if most go books are meant to be read with a board or not. Obviously no one would read a kifu without a board, or at least I think they would not. But go books? I wonder.

New Study Plan

2009-01-09T09:38:00.002-05:00

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, but I do believe in trying to improve things at any time of the year, and so I am trying to improve my study routine beginning now. I refuse to call it a New Year's resolution. I will call it a study plan.

I have noticed (and been told) that my Study plan is heavy on study and light on playing. This has always been the case with me. Perhaps it is my academic background.

I think that I would profit greatly from playing more and studying less, so I am going to try to be more balanced this year. I will begin by playing one game per day whether I want to or not. I am hoping to get these games reviewed by stronger players, not just play them. I want to learn something from the games I play. Once I can successfully play one game a day and get it reviewed I will try increasing to two games when possible.

Another thing I want to do is to count up the games I play including my lesson games, club games, and tournament games. I want to see how close to 1,000 games I can get this year.

Amazingly enough, the person I started to mentor online at the end of January has played nearly 5,000 games on KGS in his first year of playing go. This has brought him to a solid 10k from 21k, and he is now more my study partner than my student. I find his dedication to play to be amazing and inspiring. I would never hope to play that many games in so short a period of time, but I ought to be able to get 1,000 games under my belt in one year if I really try.

I believe that the proverb is 1,000 games to shodan. Perhaps that may have been true in the days when games were face to face, and were hard to find. Or it might even be true today if they are slowly played, spaced out in time, and well reviewed.

If I do manage to play (and mostly review) 1,000 games this year it will be interesting to see just how much of the gap from 9k to 1d I am able to bridge.

I Won An Award in August And Didn't Even Know It

2009-01-03T15:24:00.003-05:00

Today I got an envelope in the mail from the U.S. Go Congress.

Much to my surprise it held a certificate for Third Place in the 9 - 10 kyu division for the 2008 U.S. Go Congress. I didn't think I would be in the running for a prize since I had left a day early and taken a bye in the 6th round. Apparently my 3-2 record had been enough to secure me the third place spot. Of course it didn't hurt that I played at the higher rank in the division.

I am particularly pleased with this result since I had promoted two stones and I considered it victory enough to come out slightly better than even in my game results.

Had Fun At The Jennie Shen Workshop

2008-12-16T09:08:00.002-05:00

We had a good workshop last weekend with Jennie Shen at the University of Pennsylvania. I played three even games with players very near my own strength. The B group had a concentration of players in the 10k through 8k range.

Jennie provided good analysis that went deep into the middle game fighting. I found it very interesting watching not only the B analysis (my own group), but also catching the tail end of the A analysis when I was lucky enough to conclude one of my games early on with a resignation, my own, of course. :-)

I was very pleased to have the time to sit in on the A analysis while my peers were laboring to conclude their own games in the next room. I can never understand the desire to finish workshop games which are probably only going to make it to move 100 in analysis, although Jennie went deeper into the game than I am accustomed at workshops.

We all were able to see the A analysis on the final day since it made little sense for B players to play a game with each other that would not see analysis while a pro was in the next room. I don't think anyone in the B group opted to play rather than watch A analysis.

I also found it a contrast to what I am accustomed to that handicap was used in the games. At Yang workshops games tend to be even regardless of the disparity in rating in order to allow for more natural opening play for analysis. That makes sense given Yang's emphasis on opening theory. In contrast Jennie seemed more interested in getting to the very late opening and early middle game. She mentioned a part of the game that we, in English, do not even have a name for: the part which is actually between what we call the opening and what we call the middle game. She told us the name for it in Chinese, but I didn't quite catch it. Maybe we need another go word in English. I imagine there is no word for it in Japanese either, because if there were we English players would undoubtedly be aware of it, and using the word as our own, as we do so many other Japanese terms.

Jennie informed us that you can't lose the game in the first sixteen moves, but when a strong player interpreted that to mean that she did not think the opening was important, she was careful to correct him on that. The opening isn't unimportant, you just can't lose in the first sixteen moves, barring a very unusual situation.

I got to see some players at the workshop that I had played in previous tournaments, and I got to meet some new people too. One of the highlights of the weekend was our trip to Chinatown for a nice dinner. I was in the same car with NannyOgg from KGS who had come down from New Hampshire in a rental car. Through failure to observe on all our parts that car was impounded that night. When we walked back from dinner we could not find the car and confirmed with a passing police officer that it had been towed. The four of us from that car, including Jennie, got an exciting and lengthy trip to the impound lot to reclaim the vehicle. Jennie characterized it the next day as a super tesuji.

Off To Jenny Shen Workshop

2008-12-11T19:17:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow I will be off to Philadelphia to attend the Jenny Shen Workshop. I can hardly wait. I will see NannyOgg there. She is the author of the Shodan Challenge Blog which was one of my primary inspirations for starting a blog of my own. NannyOgg and I met online initially through the Wings Go Club leagues. Way back in the day I think that I actually used to give handi to Nanny, but those days are LONG gone.

I am not going to be bringing my Tablet PC to the workshop. It still works fine, but it's old and slow, and I have two game recording devices at my disposal, both of which I will be bringing with me. I will have my iPod Touch with SmartGo touch, and I have my Palm device with Pilot GOne.

Got A Review Yesterday

2008-12-11T19:12:00.002-05:00

In my previous blog post I put out an open invitation for stronger players to observe my games weekdays from about 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM and offer comments afterwards.

Yesterday I stuck up an auto match at the assigned time and noticed a 1 dan and a 1 kyu observing. After the game was over they offered to review. It turns out they had seen my blog posting and taken me up on my request for observers. I very much appreciated the review.

Got Myself One Official Mentor - Looking For More Off The Record

2008-12-03T09:07:00.003-05:00

While reading Go Discussions I learned about a room on KGS with which I had been unfamiliar. It is called The Enclave. I discovered that many people I know hang out it in regularly. I was pleased to see them there, and I have met some new people as well.

I found out that they have a mentoring system at The Enclave. Having mentored someone since January myself, and seeing how it has benefited him to have someone sitting in on so many of his games, I thought that maybe it was a good idea for me to seek out a mentor for myself. I realize that this might sound odd coming from someone who takes professional lessons. The person I continue to mentor also takes professional lessons with Yang. However, two hours of a professional's time on alternate weeks is not the same thing as having a stronger amateur player following you around and taking an interest in your game. That is what I do for my "mentee". We rarely play each other but we review a lot. I don't think there is a good simple word for the one who is being mentored, so I call him my mentee. Forgive me for making up a word.

I got a mentor through The Enclave who is 1k and who is mostly available evenings. I don't play much at all in the evening, so I don't expect that my games will be watched much, but we can certainly review the games I play earlier in the day, which is probably a better use of the limited time my mentor may have available to give me than for him to watch me play and review afterward. That takes twice as much time, if not more.

I also don't think most people are as interested as I am in watching games of players weaker than themselves. I actually find it fascinating to watch games of players three, four, and five stones weaker than myself to see what I can find in their games that they might not have seen themselves. I think it is a good way to focus on life and death as those situations often come up in the corners at my level and below. It is also a good way to look for good end game moves.

My feeling is that the greater the number of strong players who take an interest in my game the better, so I am hoping to find others to watch me play from time to time.

So let this be an open invitation to players stronger than my own 8k on KGS to look in on my game and to offer some comments afterwards if the spirit moves you. Having observers makes me want to try harder for "the fans" and helps me to slow down a little. As much as I detest blitz, I play really fast if I don't check myself. I tend to play weekdays between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM on KGS as buzzsaw. I use auto match, so my games won't be in a room, but will appear in the active games list. My attitude lately is that strangers are for play, and friends are for review. That seems to be working for me emotionally.

Got Discouraged Yesterday

2008-11-21T08:47:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I had a very discouraging go day. I know I should play more, so I decided to play some games yesterday in the morning before my lesson with Yilun Yang to warm up. I played three games in a row early in the morning. They were auto match games set at the slowest possible setting, which is 25 minutes of basic time. I played them rather quickly though, not using the time I had available to myself. It wasn't a blitz pace by any means, just a fairly normal online playing pace. I lost all three games, which really didn't bother me all that much. I was fine with the results, and glad that I had gotten some games in.

What bothered me was the effect that these games had on my lesson with Yang a half hour later. After the first lesson game was over Yang commented immediately that I had played too quickly. He hadn't told me that in a long time. I knew it was true. I had been sucked into a quick pace with those games earlier, and even though I had taken a half hour to distance myself from them, I continued to play at way too quickly a pace to think through my moves properly for my lesson. This was very disturbing to me.

My lessons are at 11:00 am. I know one thing for sure. I won't be playing any games the morning of my lesson again. I'll do tsumego instead, and play game after.

Counting Up My Go Workshops So Far

2008-11-18T19:16:00.006-05:00

After signing up for the Jenny Shen workshop coming up this December I realized that it would be my first multiple day workshop with a pro other than Yilun Yang. That prompted me to ask myself just how many workshop I had attended with Yang to date.

From August 1997 until January of 2008 I have attended Yang Workshops at four locations. In the early years I would attend three workshops a year during the Summer, Fall, and Spring. More recently I have limited myself to one workshop per year in the Winter.

Following is a list of those workshops to the best of my memory broken out by year:

1.......1997.....New Jersey Yang Workshop

2.......1997.....Lancaster Yang Workshop

3.......1998.....Gaithersburg Yang Workshop

4.......1998.....New Jersey Yang Workshop

5.......1998.....Lancaster Yang Workshop

6.......1999.....Gaithersburg Yang Workshop

7.......1999.....New Jersey Yang Workshop

8.......1999.....Lancaster Yang Workshop

9.......2000.....Gaithersburg YangWorkshop

10.....2000.....New Jersey Yang Workshop

11.....2000.....Lancaster Yang Workshop

12.....2001.....Gaithersburg Yang Workshop

13.....2001.....New Jersey Yang Workshop

14.....2001.....Lancaster Yang Workshop

15.....2002.....Gaithersburg Yang Workshop

16.....2002.....New Jersey Yang Workshop

17.....2002.....Lancaster Yang Workshop

18.....2003.....Gaithersburg Yang Workshop

19.....2004.....New Jersey Yang Workshop

20.....2005.....Evanston Yang Workshop

21.....2005.....New Jersey Yang Workshop

22.....2006.....Evanston Yang Workshop

23.....2007.....Evanston Yang Workshop

24.....2008.....Evanston Yang Workshop

Unusual Auto Match Results

2008-11-18T11:32:00.003-05:00

I played an auto match game on KGS today and recognized the name of my opponent as someone I had played before. I recalled that the last time we had played it was a rated game in which I was leading up until the end. After I passed my opponent pulled off an invasion that should not have worked, but it did, and I lost that game by 18.5

I recalled that the main reason I had lost that game was that I had not bothered to count the board as I would have in a real life tournament game. I had plenty of time on my clock. I could have counted, and I could easily have made a few defensive moves if I had bothered to count the board. Even without the defensive moves I came to realize later when reviewing the game that the correct move would have come to me if I had spent sufficient time reading. I found the right move easily later. However, I let myself get thrown by the invasion.

Today I was leading again in what should have been the last few moves of the end game. I counted the board and saw I was at least 15 to 20 points ahead. I made a few defensive moves. As the game was finishing up my opponent tried to pull off an invasion again anyway. This time he failed. I kept my cool and countered of of his moves. I won the game by 22.5

None of what I have written so far is that unusual. However, when looking at my list of games I came to find that my previous game with my opponent had been eight days earlier, and it had been most my recent game on the server. Both games were rated. It is odd that I should end up with the same opponent for auto match eight days apart. I guess we both like auto match, and I guess we both play at the same time. He is in Japan and I play in the morning here is New Jersey.

I need to watch less and play more for sure.

Signed Up For Jenny Shen Workshop

2008-11-15T10:22:00.003-05:00

Jenny Shen is going to be giving a workshop in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania on December 12, 13, and 14. It is being sponsored by the Penn Go Society. The workshop is being offered at a great price due to a grant the club was able to obtain. Penn Go Society members and Youth Players may attend for $50.00 and all other will pay $100.00. That would include me. Considering that a workshop like this would ordinarily run about $200.00 this is a great deal.

I have taken some of Jennie Shen's lessons on the audiogolessons web site, and she is a good teacher. I also saw her review games at the U.S. Go Congress this year. I am looking forward to taking this three day workshop with her. Since I know a few of the people who will be attending I am sure it will be a nice social occasion as well as a great educational experience.

Go Art - Unusual Self Portrait

2008-09-23T14:15:00.006-05:00

I was talking to a friend of mine online today who is a go player and also an art student. I was telling him about how I had to create a self portrait for one of my classes back in art school. I combined the two most important things in my life into that portrait and left my face out of it. No one said I actually had to include my face in the drawing so I didn't. I was a rule breaker even back then, and not much of a drawer. I actually I wove most of my assignments. The drawing is pictured above propped up against my iMac which happens to be showing a go game I played at the tournament in Hoboken last Sunday. I drew that picture in 1974. Interestingly enough, at the time I drew that picture I was already in love with the game of go in spite of having only played a few times and being unable to find players. I had driven through a Hurricane to play one of the games I had played up to that point. This was the phase of my life when I traveled with a go board under my arm and forced all my relatives and friends to play the game. None of them developed an interest, and they all accused me of making up the rules as I went along.

Hoboken Tournament Report

2008-09-22T12:19:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I went to the Hoboken tournament. It was a long trip starting out early. I left the house at 6:20 am to catch a train leaving Princeton Junction at 7:11 am. I got lucky at Seacaucus Junction where I caught a connecting train that should have already left the station. Since it was arriving late to Seacaucus I didn't have to wait the 25 minutes for my connecting light rail line to Hoboken.

I met a go player I had been mentoring online since January for the first time yesterday at the tournament. He is 11k KGS, and decided to enter at that rank. Unfortunately he went 0-4, so he won't have an accurate assessment of his strength from yesterday's results. I think a lot of it may be the need to get used to over the board play, with which he is largely unfamiliar.

I went 2-2 at the tournament myself. I considered this a really good result because I had self promoted at the Congress and just recently earned my 9k rating, up from 11k.

I had unusual results yesterday because I lost to both of my adult opponents and won against both of my child opponents. Both of my child opponents were students of the Feng Yun Go School, so I didn't expect to win those games. One of those children went on to receive a prize for winning three out of four of his games.

My first game was against a previous opponent. He is currently 5k on KGS and was playing as an AGA 8k, so while my AGA-KGS ratings lag is two stones, his AGA-KGS ratings lag is three stones. We had a challenging game. We were both in byo yomi by the end of the game. There were only 4 periods of 20 seconds for byo yomi, so it was a fast paced end game. He won the game by a wide enough margin that it was unnecessary to actually determine a final point difference. I think it was somewhere in the 15 to 30 point range. My opponent, with whom I had lunch after the game, told me that he felt I had him through the early middle game.

My second game was with one of the Feng Yun youngsters. The game with him was interesting on a number of counts. He was very aggressive and picked a fight with me, which I happened to win. Feng Yun actually came over and stood at the board for a while visually assessing the position. I was happy with that because I had killed a huge group in that fight by then. My opponent was very young, perhaps six years old at most. He could barely reach to the far side of the board. More than once early in the game he had to aim and pitch his move to the other side, so I slid the board as far away from myself as I could so he didn't have to reach any farther than necessary. Still he ended up shifting stones from one place to another because he would bump up against them on his side of the board as he reached to my side of the board to make his plays. Luckily I was recording the game with SmartGo touch on my iPod. About halfway through the game I stopped recording but I actually had to open the record during the end game to reposition stones that had been pushed out of place after I had stopped recording. The most interesting part of our game was that after all the dame were filled there was a meaningless ko on the edge of the board. It was simply a ko between one of his groups and one of mine. The life of neither group depended on who won the ko. I was ahead by a sizable margin and there were many dead stones scattered across the board. When there was nothing left to do I took the ko. But after awhile it became obvious to me that there was no point in playing it and I put a stone in my own territory and told him that he could have the ko. Rather than fill it he proceeded to make more threats. I ended up handing him three stones before I finally got annoyed and said, "I'm not going to take the ko again. So you can fill it or we can put a stone on every point of the board that doesn't go towards making two eyes." He looked really disappointed, then pondered what I said for a moment and filled the ko. We passed our stones and it was over. As I removed the dead stones and started to place them back into his territory he told me that he resigned, which was actually annoying after he had put me through the trouble of playing the end game, but at least I was saved the trouble of scoring.

My third game was against an adult who I had never played before. He played his first move on the 3-5 so it was an unusual game at my level from the start. Very few 9k start with anything but a 4-4 or 3-4 in my experience. We ended up with a ko fight for the life of some stones at the bottom of the board. It was important to both of us. In my haste to approach and also in my confusion over recording the game I managed to miss seeing an atari from his last ko threat. He kindly offered to let me take back my move, but I told him that I wasn't allowed to take back a move even if he said it was okay, and that it was my fault and I needed to accept the responsibility. But, what a nice guy to offer. It is interesting that the tournament director made a point of actually telling us at the start of the tournament that we should not take a move back even if our opponent offers a take back. Those words must have been ringing in my ears to give me the strength to take my medicine as I knew I should. My early resignation in the third round gave me an opportunity to get to know my friend from KGS who had also resigned relatively quickly, and to gather my strength for the battle to come.

My fourth and last game was with another Feng Yun student, who I had played at the Oza earlier in the year. She is a good player and we always have a tough game. Last time I killed a group of hers early on, and she nearly bounced back to win the game. I believe she is the superior player. This time I separated some of her stones and she separated some of mine to even things out. She ended up reducing the size of my groups and I was very short on time so I didn't really have time to count near the end. I think it was close, and it would have been nice to know by how much. It wasn't as if I needed to decide whether to invade or not though, so I could live without counting. I just had to keep playing the best I could. There was a group of her stones in the middle of the board, however, that looked somewhat vulnerable. If I filled all of the outside liberties and then got in a couple of atari moves in succession I might be able to kill them. I waited until it was time for filling dame anyway, and then I started to fill them. I got in my first atari and she saved the stone. I got in my second atari and she made a protective move but it allowed me to atari seven or more stones which could not connect due to shortage of liberties. She resigned right away. We determined that she had needed to let the single stone go when I made the first atari. I don't really know if I needed those stones to win or not, but knowledge of their imminent capture did bring a speedy end to the game via resignation.

The thing that is notable about yesterday is that I played significantly more slowly in my games than ever before. I was in byo yomi once, and minutes away from it the other two games that actually concluded. And even in the resigned game I was behind my opponent in time by 15 minutes or more. I may have been playing slowly at the Congress as well, but with twice as much basic time it is hard to tell. I consider my new slow pace to be an advance because it is an indication that I am thinking more.

I stayed for the awards ceremony and got a ride back to Princeton Junction to retrieve my car. I was lucky that part of the Princeton Go Club had room in the car to save me from the trip via public transportation.

Purchased iPod Touch

2008-09-12T08:34:00.002-05:00

The new iPods came out on Tuesday. Wednesday I put in my order. I had my iPod engraved with my name and email address just incase it gets lost. If an honest person finds it they will be able to get in "Touch" with me to return it. Tt the very least it will be hard for a thief to sell it when it is engraved with someone's name.

So what does the iPod Touch have to do with go? A lot. SmartGo is currently in beta for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Anders Kierulf announced this shortly before the U.S. Go Congress on the Go Discussions forum, and asked for beta testers there. I saw SmartGo in action on the iPhone at the Congress, and even posted a picture of Anders with his iPhone here on my blog.

As soon as I finish the basic set up of my iPod Touch I will be installing the beta of SmartGo, and may have it up and running in time for the Hoboken Tournament on the 21st of September. The iPod may arrive as early as today.

In addition to SmartGo, there is at least one other go related programs for the iPod Touch, such called Tesuki, which will soon be available in the iPhone App Store. Tesuki is mentioned in another thread on Go Discussions.

EuroGo TV

2008-09-10T11:39:00.002-05:00

I was doing a search for "Baduk TV" recently on the web and came across a web site for EuroGo TV

I was pleased to see that all of the videos that I have looked at so far on this site were recorded in English. They have free videos at the site, and they also have an advanced membership option that allows you to view videos at higher resolution and download sgf files. Membership gives other benefits as well.

I did a search for Guo Juan on the site since I am a big fan of her Audio Go Lessons

The search yielded many videos featuring Guo Juan including a four part series covering a workshop that she conducted at the European Go Congress for double digit kyu players.

Not A Go Post - A Graphics Post

2008-08-31T19:55:00.002-05:00

I am taking a course on Photoshop Elements 6, and was having trouble posting a gif file on my other web site using iWeb. The image was converted to a png file. So I am going to try to upload the file here as a gif.

Go On A Treadmill

2008-08-27T08:13:00.007-05:00

I posted this message on Go Discussions, so if you read that discussion group you can probably skip this blog entry... otherwise please continue.

I have a membership to a local gym that has something they call "cardiac theatre" which is simply a row of television sets tuned to various channels with audio input devices on each treadmill, elliptical, and bike. You can plug your own earphones into these input devices and change channels so you can watch TV or listen to music stations while you exercise.

I know I should get to the gym more often, but network TV and music is almost as boring as walking on the treadmill and doesn't make the time go by that quickly for me.

Yesterday I took my Tablet PC to the gym with me to see if I could stand it up in the book stand on the treadmill. This would never work with a laptop because the book stand is narrow from side to side, and not particularly deep either. I had to put my tablet into a portrait orientation because the width of the space was not adequate to hold the unit in landscape orientation. This made it necessary for me to size the window of cgoban so it only occupied half of the screen because it doesn't work well in a portrait orientation. If I had allowed it to fill the screen in portrait mode
I would have had only a narrow strip at the bottom for the commentary and for the move tree. The tablet was surprisingly stable on the rack and I didn't have any fear of it falling off.

My thirty minute walk seemed like only a fifteen minute walk as I reviewed one of my Yang lesson games on the tablet.

Next I'm going to load up my tablet with some screen captures of audio go lessons and try listening to them as I walk. This will be easier because I won't have to use the stylus to navigate a tree structure as I walk. (Before anyone asks if I will share my screen captures I will say that I made them for personal review and not for distribution. Guo Juan deserves her Euros. She's already got mine. She should have yours too.)

I wish the gym had wireless. That would be fantastic. I could watch go games live and maybe even play them "on the go".

I have a stationary bike at home, which I don't like as much as a treadmill, but if I could rig a good system for supporting the tablet while riding I might get some use out of it.

The image at the top of the post represents the appearance of cgoban as it takes up half of the screen space of my tablet in portrait orientation.

SmartGo for the iPhone

2008-08-25T13:28:00.005-05:00

SmartGo for the iPhone and iPod made its debut at the U.S. Go Congress this year. I was lucky enough to get a demo from Anders before the first round of the U.S. Open. Here he is pictured holding his iPhone with SmartGo active. The picture doesn't do the display justice, which is brilliant and dazzling. Anders, however, is looking good, as usual.

I'll be getting an iPod when the next model comes out, hopefully in the Fall. I can hardly wait to have all of the recording and reviewing power of SmartGo in the palm of my hand, at which point my Palm will likely be history.

Terri

Knowing A Position Can Pay Off

2008-08-21T08:04:00.006-05:00

My teacher, Mr. Yilun Yang, has always recommended studying life and death. It undoubtedly develops one's reading "muscle", but I think that when one knows the status of certain positions for certain, it also gives one the confidence and patience needed to find the solution in one's own games.

An example of this type came up in my game yesterday.

I had just played c14 to complete the corner. It was my assumption that the corner could no longer be invaded. I think I had read about it in a book at one time. My opponent and I were chatting during our friendly game, and he said that he was thinking of where to invade in the upper left. I told him that it was my understanding that theoretically an invasion in that corner should fail, although I admitted that I could not claim to know exactly how to refute it if he tried. Thus the gauntlet had be tossed... The starting position appears below...

Before we get to the actual sequence of play, which dragged on for a nerve shattering 20 moves, I want to show the position which I felt I knew. It helped boost my confidence in the middle of the sequence, and helped me to avoid a bad move, which I might have played if I had not known the position. Most of us know that "six die and eight live". I even own the tshirt from Samarkand. This life and death proverb refers to stones in a row along the second line. The position below is taken from this game, in which six in a row appear. Because I could recognize that this would be the position a few moves before it actually occurred, I was able to resist the urge to make a premature hane at b12, which would have increased my cutting points, and would probably have resulted in disaster.

Here is the "six die" position...

And here is the actual sequence of play...

It was great to be able to see the "six die" position coming, and to know how to deal with it all the way through the nobi at 12, the hane at 16, the throwin at 18, and the nobi at 20.

Now I really have to pay some attention to the the following shapes: the L, the L+1, and the L+2. Getting the status of those positions down cold ought to be worth something. I want to not only know what is alive, but how it is likely to be attacked, and how to refute those attacks.

Strong players can not only read, they also know stuff. I know stuff about the opening, but I don't yet know much stuff about standard corner positions. It's on list of things to do to acquire such knowledge.

Played Rated - Went From 8k to 7k

2008-08-20T09:51:00.003-05:00

The friend I blogged about yesterday kept our date to play a rated even game today on KGS. Yesterday he was 6k and gave me two stones in our handicap game. Today he was 7k. We played an even rated game with 6.5 komi, which meant I was still slightly under handicapped.

It turned out that I didn't need the komi. As we approached the second half of the endgame my opponent resigned because it became apparent that my moderate lead could not be overcome as there were only regular end game moves left and no real tricks to be played.

Upon his resignation I immediately became 7k, which was my plan all along.

We had a really good time playing. We agreed to play a slow game and chatted throughout. Adding time, if necessary, was agreed upon by both sides. My opponent played the game on a real board alongside the computer to slow himself down. Since he is very far from a go club he hardly ever gets a chance to play an opponent on his real board.

The whole game had quite a real life club flavor to it, and I will probably use a real board myself next time when I play this opponent to slow myself down as well. Incase anyone is wondering, we did agree that there would be no variations played out on the real board. It is impossible to enforce, I realize, but I trust this person, having known him online for many years.

The real life feeling was enhanced by our review, which we conducted along with another of my online go friends who I started helping back in January, and who has since gone on to become a Yang student. My fellow Yang student showed his superior reading skills by pointing out something I had missed in the game. There was a weakness I was aiming at and I thought that after my opponent had added a couple stones that it no longer worked, but it actually did work due to a ladder. I had tried to read it but was off enough to think it didn't work.

I've saved the game analysis locally to my computer and will go over it again.

Time To Play Rated Again On KGS

2008-08-19T08:25:00.003-05:00

About two weeks before the Congress I stopped playing rated on KGS because I had a good solid 8k rating, and I wanted to maintain it as justification for my two stone self promotion. And since coming back from the Congress I have been busy reviewing games and have not played much, and not any rated games at all.

Today I accepted an offer for a clan game in the Battlefield room on KGS. I am a member of the Honinbo clan. The offer came from a long time go acquaintance for a game at no more than two handicap stones. Since the offer came from a 6k, and I am 8k, I took the offer. He seemed surprised to see me, probably because I so often turn down offers to play. I have to stop doing that. But I also have to be firm about not playing when I really don't want to play, but that is another problem altogether which I may address in another post.

The game proceeded well for me. I made a kill early on in the game. I managed to win by 39.5 so I may have won without the kill. But who knows what would have happened on the rest of the board without it.

My opponent suggested that I play some rated games to get my rating up to where it belongs.

I have decided that I will try to play one rated game each weekday between 8:00 am and 9:00 am my time, which is Eastern Daylight Time. My opponent and I have a tentative date tomorrow for an even rated game at that time. If I lose it won't hurt me since I will be under handicapped anyway, but if I win it should help me get my rating where it belongs, which might be 6k or 5k by now.

Self Promotion Pays Off

2008-08-17T21:13:00.002-05:00

The games from the Congress have been factored into the ratings.

Before the congress I was -11.41904 with a sigma of 0.25708

After the congress I am -9.35656 with a sigma of 0.68605

I don't have all that far to go to get to 8 kyu :-) and with my new improved sigma it should be easier to get there.

I am very happy.

My U.S. Go Congress Results

2008-08-11T06:50:00.003-05:00

I am back from the Congress and have good news to report.

I went 3-2 at my self appointed 9 kyu rank. I didn't need the note I brought from my teacher to convince the TD to allow me to self promote, but I showed it anyway just for fun. I had printed out our conversation from the sgf file in which we had our discussion, and had the TD okay it.

My first game I lost by 5.5
My second game I won by 2.5
My third game I won by 2.5
My fourth game I lost by 0.5
My fifth game I won by resignation while I was at least 40 points ahead on the board. That felt really great.

Based on the starting ranks of my first four opponents I could tell that none of them had self promoted... too many digits following the decimal point. My fifth opponent had self promoted from 12k to 9k, which based on his record he feels was one stone too optimistic. That game may not help me, but the other four should put me somewhere near -9.5 when the dust settles.

One of my rationales for trying the self promotion this year was that I was flying back early Saturday and would be unable to play the 6th round. I didn't want to run the risk of doing well as an 11k and miss the chance to earn a prize. I would have been heart breaking to board the plane at 5-0 with a game yet to play. I hoped to go 2-3 as a 9k and claim a new rank.

As it turned out my record of 3-2 meant that if I had played today I might have gone 4-2 and probably could have come in third again this year if I had done so. Last year I pulled that off with a 3-3 record, but that was undoubtedly a fluke caused by too many players byeing out of too many rounds in my band. Mediocre results and fighting spirit paid off last year. They probably don't always get such good results.

I'm okay with not playing the last round this year. Having lost my first game I probably didn't have all that great a chance at a prize anyway.

This was undoubtedly the best Congress I've ever had because I was able to tell people that I self promoted and that I was even in wins and losses at the end of the fourth round. It felt like a major victory. And the 9k I probably earned is a ten stone increase above my first AGA rating of 19 kyu.

I am very anxious for the ratings to be updated so I can see where the dust will settle.

Self Promoting To 9k At The Congress

2008-08-01T09:49:00.002-05:00

Although I don't tend to self promote at tournaments I decided to ask Mr. Yang's advice about my entry rank for the U.S. Go Congress before our lesson yesterday. He said he would like to see me enter as a 9k, so I am going to do that. Having him suggest it takes the heat off of me in a way. I don't have to be conflicted about it. I can simply follow my teacher's directive.

Just to be silly I printed our our conversation so I can show it to the people at the registration desk if they are reluctant to let me promote. Since it is a two stone promotion I know they will let me do it, especially since I have a solid 8k KGS rating. But it would just be fun to flash the document for a laugh.

It is hard to argue with a 7p, so I don't think I will have any trouble.

The Tablet Is Coming Along For The Ride

2008-07-31T15:31:00.004-05:00

I am no longer conflicted.

I have decided to bring along the Tablet PC to the U.S. Go Congress. But the main reason I am doing so is because of the horribly long eleven hour journey to Portland with the stopover in Phoenix. I am downloading episodes of Photoshop User TV to watch in the airports and on the flights. Books and magazines just won't be enough to keep me happy for that long eleven painful hours.

Whether or not I lug the tablet to the playing area each day remains to be seen.

Conflicted About Whether To Drag Tablet To The Congress

2008-07-28T07:44:00.002-05:00

With five days left before departure for the U.S. Go Congress I have yet to decide if I am going to take my Tablet PC with me. For every tournament and Congress in the past couple of years I have used my Tablet PC to record games. It's always been a hit, and to some extent an interesting distraction to my opponents, which may or may not offer me an advantage across the board. But mostly, for the past four years, my tablet has just been a very important part of who I am as a go player. I'm the middle aged gray haired woman with the incredibly cool contraption that people just can't keep their eyes off.

Recently, however, with my new found addiction to everything Mac, I have lost patience with this aging technology. Compared to my iMac my tablet is slow, and the only thing it has going for it anymore is that I can place it flat on the table between myself and the go board. There is no doubt at all that it still carries an amazing coolness factor for that alone, but I am not sure if it worth lugging around for 11 hours from Philadelphia to Phoenix and on to Portland. Of course there is something to be said for the entertainment value of having the tablet with me during those long waits in the airport and the flights.

I'll have my Palm to record games if I want. I'm still conflicted.

Next year I will probably have a nice new Mac Book Pro to take along once the tablet dies and I wean myself away from my PC hardware altogether.

When I come back from the Congress one of the first things I will be doing is installing VMWare Fusion on the iMac so I can run SmartGo.

Look For Me At The Congress

2008-07-21T07:53:00.008-05:00

I don't look much like my picture here on my blog, nor that on Go Discussions. I don't much resemble the highly stylized image that functions as my KGS identity either. On KGS I am buzzsaw. I should be easy to find at the U.S. Go Congress this year, however, since I will be sporting the cool name tag pictured above, which I have slipped into the highly functional tag holder provided at the 2007 Congress.

I hope to meet many new go players this year and visit with old friends.

An Observation of One of My Students

2008-06-04T09:17:00.007-05:00

Today my most active student, chaslayton on KGS, sent me an email with some thoughts that he said I could post on my blog. The following is what he has to say about observing a game on the KGS server. I thought it was insightful, and certainly echos what I feel myself many times. You are always five stones stronger when you kibitz.

===========================================

Yesterday I watched a game on KGS – one of those fascinating games in which everything rides on a single move. In this case, if white played J2 first, white would make a second eye, thereby saving a group of about 20 endangered stones. White would then have been able to turn around and kill an equally large group of black’s stones. White would have won the game.

However, if black played J2 first, white’s large group would die and black’s would be saved. It was a huge move – the import of which was obvious to me as an observer – but neither player saw it for several turns. I was sitting at my desk yelling, “For God’s sake, somebody play J2!” When black finally did play it, white immediately saw the light, and resigned.

This brought home to me the fact that an uninvolved observer often sees the game more clearly than the players can. Even though I am far inferior to both those players, I saw what they did not. But it also brought home that even very good players make dumb mistakes – just like me. This is good for me to know.

Go, in this respect, is much like real life. And that, apparently, is true at every level of play.

Yang Lesson Review - A Small Gathering Of Friends

2008-06-01T10:17:00.003-05:00

I have one student in particular that I have been spending a lot of time with in the past few months. In the time that we have been working together he has gone from 21k to 14k. He gets most of the credit due to his hard work, but I have been commenting his games pretty regularly, so I take some credit too. Recently I started reviewing my Yang lessons with him online by replaying the sgf files of those lessons on KGS at a specific time each week. My lessons with Yang are private, but it is really easy to upload them and step through them for my student's benefit later. Although I used to make all my lessons public many years ago, I think that at this stage, with KGS being a little less civilized than it used to be, that I would be too self conscious making the lessons public again. I do the replay of my lesson not only for my student, but also for myself as a form of review. In the six weeks that I have been doing this we have drawn a small audience, and I would like to keep it that way.

There was a post not long ago on go discussions concerning stronger players "taking over" lessons, so I have been silent up until now about the reviews, and people have wandered in from time to time and they behaved themselves well. Aside from my involvement with the Mac, the focus on my Yang lesson reviews also accounts for the lack of posts to this blog. They have dominated my go activities lately, and I had been reluctant to mention them until now.

I have been really clear with anyone who ends up watching that the objective is to review the lesson rather than go off on tangents that were never explored in the original lesson. I also make it clear that we are trying to keep the review at the 20k - 10k level. My student is around the middle of that range right now. So far things have gone really well. Last week there were only three people besides myself in attendance, and it went very smoothly. During a previous presentation we had about eight people in the room, and it was a little more difficult to control, but I can be pretty direct, so it wasn't really a problem.

I am still not advertising the time of the review because I am not trying to populate the room, just posting about what I am doing right now in my go life, which after all is the purpose of this blog. For those who might wonder how Mr. Yang feels about my lessons reviews... he was asked, and he approves.

Neglecting My Go Blog - Sorry About That

2008-06-01T09:48:00.002-05:00

It has been nearly a month since I posted to this blog. My new iMac must take the blame. I have been spending most of my waking hours reading books about the Mac, watching instructional videos on lynda.com, and learning how to use the applications that came with the iMac.

Highest up on my list of priorities has been finally using the domain that I registered a couple of years ago, terrischurter.com. I am using iWeb to create my web site which consists of a Welcome page, a blog currently devoted to my Mac experiences, and a page mentioning my lessons with Yilun Yang. My domain is hosted on the space provided by my .Mac account. I am finding iWeb easier to use than Blogger , and I am posting to my Mac blog once a day on average, which is why I have been so busy. It is great to be able to simply drag and drop images onto a page. I really love my Mac. There is no going back to the PC for me.

Zen Comment About "Moving" In Impressive Circles

2008-05-02T12:45:00.003-05:00

I was having a discussion with one of my students today online. We were talking about my new Mac computer. He also has a Mac and is just as enthusiastic about his as I am about mine. He was telling me that he wants to get a laptop, and I was telling him that I still have a tablet that I use, and that since it is a windows machine it can run SmartGo

I then informed him that I know Anders Kierulf in real life, and that "sgf" stands for "smart go format" which he invented.

Whereupon he said, "Wow, you move in impressive circles."

To which I responded, "I am like a go stone... I don't move... other stones gather around me."

To which he responded, "How very zen."

That was the idea.

Mac Rebate

2008-05-01T09:36:00.003-05:00

It pays to ask. I called Apple and asked if they offer a rebate to customers who have bought a machine within a certain period of time when they upgrade models. They gave me a $200.00 rebate, with which I was very satisfied.

Got a Mac - Kind of Off Topic, But Not Really

2008-04-30T13:18:00.003-05:00

Given the fact that my career was that of an art educator it is amazing that it took me until now to get a Mac. I finally took the plunge after sitting on the fence since 1984 when I abandoned the Apple IIe for my first IBM compatible. I got a 20 inch iMac for my husband a couple weeks ago first, and then spent a few weeks getting to know his machine and trying to decide if I should get a macbook pro for myself, or if I should get an iMac too. I decided on the 24 inch iMac because I still have a working Tablet PC, which I can count on to provide me with computing functionality when I travel. When the tablet dies it will be time for a Mac Book Air or a Mac Book Pro.

I am not sure if I can meet all of my go needs on the Mac, but I sure hope so, because I have no intention of running windows on the machine. I am planning to try to find Mac applications for all of my computing needs, not just go. Those who know me can vouch that I am pretty compulsive about things, so when I make the switch to Mac I am committed. You should have seen me when I sold Tupperware. I do little halfway.

So far I have decided to be satisfied with iWork rather than Microsoft Office for productivity. I might feel compelled to get a Mac version of the Adobe Creative Suite. I do have an academic version of CS... yes. the first version. Since I no longer have academic status I might be compelled to take a course at a local community college and go on an academic spending spree after I decide what I think I need to have. I am looking at the iLife applications to see if I can make do with them. I have used Photoshop for so long though, that I think I would have a hard time making due with anything less than Photoshop Elements at least. We'll see.

I renewed my subscription to lynda.com so I can watch tutorials on the Mac OS X operating system as well as tutorials for the iLife and iWork applications. I'll watch everything I can and then cancel the subscription until I think I need to go on another learning frenzy.

What is kind of funny is that the very day my iMac arrived at my door I read and article in the Apple RSS feed set up in my mail program on the iMac. The article was titled "Meet the new iMac" I just have to figure that it's only a couple hundred dollars of money I'm out by buying at the wrong time. If I had waited just a week I would have gotten more Mac for my money... more memory... more speed... more of just about everything, but you have to buy some time. Your technology is always going to be old soon, just not usually the same day you get it.

One of the things I invested in is a .Mac account, which comes with an email account and also with disk space and the ability to publish web pages and to sync multiple Macs over the web. Given that I already have multiple Macs and stand to accumulate more, this sounds like a good thing to me. One of the things I will do with my .Mac account is to eventually make my lesson sgf files available for download so I can share them with others. I'll let you all know when they are available.

AGA Ratings Prediction Pans Out

2008-04-30T13:07:00.003-05:00

After the Cherry Blossom Tournament in Philadelphia where I went 2-2, I predicted that any ratings change would be glacial and negative. I was right about that as the screen capture from my favorite note keeping application "EverNote" shows...

My rating decreased from -11.39507 to -11.41904

My sigma went from 0.26936 to 0.25708

It's just fun to keep track of.

Back to 8k

2008-04-25T07:21:00.002-05:00

I finally made it back to 8k on KGS this morning after winning an auto match game. It was a 0.5 victory. It feels good to be 8k again. I want to continue to play rated on a regular basis, perhaps one game each morning whether I feel like it or not ... kind of like a daily vitamin... but I will bask in the glory of being 8k for today and not risk losing it, at least until my friends have had a chance to see that I managed to make my come back.

Interesting KGS Ratings Graph

2008-04-19T11:42:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I was told my one of my students that my ratings graph on KGS looks like a heart attack. It is actually very interesting looking with one large upward spike and one large downward spike. The rest of the graph is pretty solid 8k. Both of the spikes were the result of streaks of winning and loseing respectively in an atttempt to get rid of a "?" at the end of my rating.
After my recent downward spike I have worked my way back up to 9k, which I hope to maintain by playing rated on a consistent basis using automatch. I like automatch because I find less ego involved in those games than games against people I know.

It looks like I have about seven months before the upward spike scrolls off the graph. Until then it will be a very interesting image.

Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Tournament

2008-03-31T11:37:00.002-05:00

I am really glad I decided not to self promote yesterday at the Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Tournament at the University of Pennsylvania. I had less than stellar performance with a record of 2-2. I lost my first two games and I won my last two. Any movement in my rating is likely to be glacial, and negative, at that. I did enjoy all four of my games, however, and there were interesting things about each of them. I recorded them all, and I will be reviewing them with Mr. Yang at our next lesson on Thursday.

I'll recount the highlights of each game here.

My first game was against an opponent I had played for the first time at the New Jersey Open in February. This time I had white against him. The game was very close. I believe I missed an opportunity to either kill or make seki in the upper left. I will find out for sure on Thursday. At the end of the game I spent an inordinate amount of time counting the board three times to determine if I needed to make a protective move in an area that looked s if it might need it. There were no dame left. Finally I realized that being white I had to either pass a stone or play within my own territory anyway, so the protective move became a no brainer. After we both passed my opponent told me that he assumed I had won, and I told him that if so, it was by no more than 2.5. We counted and saw that I had a 1.5 victory, or at least we thought I did. We approached the desk to report the results only to discover that there had been no komi for white. We were both surprised. So what had been a 1.5 victory turned quickly to a loss. This was a lesson to me to actually LOOK at the pairings rather than just accompany my opponent to our table on his say so. Let me be clear that my opponent had not looked at the komi either, but has also assumed 7.5 for white. There's always something new to learn about how to conduct oneself at a tournament.

My second game was against someone I had played two or three times at the Montgomery Go Club. When sitting down to play, my opponent commented that we are very evenly matched, which we both know to be true. An interesting game was sure to follow. I had black and my opponent had komi. We had both checked to be sure about komi after my earlier surprise. In this game my opponent did hane at the head of two stones after I invaded the lower right corner from a low one space approach to a hoshi stone. I extended to the 2nd line and cut after he extended to the 2nd line as well. My understanding is that this should have been successful, but I may have played it wrong, or the position may have been complicated by an additional white stone. I managed a successful invasion on the top, and did my little "snaking" routine where I managed to reduce one of my opponent's areas. At the end of the game white (with komi) had won by 7.5, so it was a jigo on the board. He would have won by 0.5 without komi anyway so I can't complain.

My third game was against a first time tournament player. He was a gentleman who had learned some lessons at the hands of the children in his first two games. In his first game he learned not to feel compelled to match the speed of opponents whose height does not exceed the bunny's ears at the amusement park. Just because one's opponent is rolling his eyes and acting bored is no reason to pick up the pace. I told him this after that game, and suggested that it is a much better strategy to allow the small children to figgit and look about the room. It breaks their concentration. In his second game he learned that his opponent might not remind him to hit his clock after each play. During our game, unfortunately, in spite of hitting his clock he ran out of time. I felt bad about that, and I would have said something if I had seen it coming, but I didn't notice until the red light on the clock started flashing. And not being familiar with how that clock handles byo yomi I had to call over the tournament director to confirm that time had, in fact, run out. It was sad, but it was a win. It was a close game anyway.

I toyed with the idea of byeing out of the fourth round and going home early since I was doing so poorly, but I was having fun and decided to stay. My fourth game was against a 12k. This time I had to give 2H. This game illustrates dramatically the extent to which I can gain a lead and then proceed to make idiotic mistakes to lose it. In this case, however, the lead was enough to result in a 9.5 victory even after allowing a large dead group to spring back to life. I even allowed a few dead stones to expand their numbers, and to result in a seki. This stole away at least twenty points from my lead. The highlight of that game was the fact that as white I was able to play the last dame by filling the third empty point in the seki, thus avoiding the need to play a stone in my own territory or pass a stone. We both had a good laugh over this. The huge seki made the board much easier to count since there was this vast expanse of stones we didn't have to disturb. :-)

I was actually ashamed of my fourth game, thinking that I did not deserve to win after having made two such huge mistakes. However, a dan player who reviewed it for me last night on KGS told me it was a very good game with advanced life and death reading just before my lapse and very pretty shape for white.

I know I am getting more from my tournament games by reviewing them myself and with stronger players, and by showing them to Mr. Yang. I am remembering more from each game, and I am particularly seeing more life and death situations in my games during the games and in review.

Buzzsaw Fearlessly Plays Five Rated Games In a Row

2008-03-27T09:48:00.004-05:00

In keeping with my desire to be more fearless I decided it was time to play some rated games again. So I set up automatomatch on KGS for slow rated games up to 2h, and played five in a row. I watched my rank drop one stone per game up until I won the last game of the five games.

After losing four even games in a row I was not thrilled with having to give two stones of handicap in my fifth game. But I felt considerable better about it when my opponent's first move was to directly contact my first move, which I had played at a hoshi point. I felt as if I might have the conceptual upper hand.

I won that game by 30.5 to solidify my rank at 12k, which is one stone lower than my AGA rating. I feel so normal now, and liberated too.

Impressed With The Enthusiasm Of A New Player

2008-03-25T07:12:00.002-05:00

On January 28, 2008 I got a phone call from a beginner who lives in New Jersey who found my name and phone number of the AGA web site as the contact person for Wings Across Calm Water Go Club. He was looking for a local go club to attend. I had to tell him that Wings is a virtual club but I helped him register on KGS and played a 9x9 game with him and reviewed it.

I have reviewed some games with him since and helped him a little. I count him as one of my students, but mostly I have watched him play. Because he hurries from one game to the next so quickly he has little time for review, but I enjoy watching him. At first I was not so sure that rushing from game to game was the best thing to do, but I have come to think that the results speak for themselves. He is 16 kyu already, and not long ago he was 21 kyu, which was his first stable rating. At his level it seems that playing a lot without much review seems to be a great strategy for improvment.

What impresses me the most is the way he just plays... plays... plays, and rated too!!!

I looked at his games list today and was surprised to see only three games yesterday. But then I saw he had played 17 the day before, and 14 the day before that. Granted, these were weekend days, but still, that is a lot of games to play in two days.

I would love to recapture that enthusiasm and total lack of fear. Okay, I am not sure I ever had that enthusiasm and total lack of fear, but I did drive through a hurricane in 1970 to play a game of go, so I deserve SOME credit. Perhaps I need to develop that sense of enthusiasm and lack of fear.

If I am lucky I will meet my new go friend who has been so inspiring at the Cherry Blossom tournament at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on Sunday this coming weekend. He would be playing in his first AGA rated tournament if he shows up. And if he enters as a 16 kyu it is conceivable that we might end up playing depending on the field.

NJ Open Games Reviewed With Mr. Yang

2008-03-11T06:50:00.002-05:00

During our regular lesson on Thursday of last week Mr. Yang reviewed the first four games of the NJ Open with me. We will review the fifth game of this tournament at our next lesson on the 20th of March.

As much as I enjoy playing a game with Mr. Yang and reviewing it as we usually do in our lessons, I think that I actually enjoy reviewing games I have played with others even more. When Mr. Yang and I play a lesson game together I realize that Mr. Yang is playing in a way to keep the game reasonable. He obviously isn't going to play like a 7p. He sets up opportunities for me to punish him, and other situations which we will review later. When we go over the game he will tell me when I have missed opportunities, and made suboptimal moves. He'll ask for better moves. Sometimes I can find them. However, if I thought a move I had made was okay thrity minutes before, and I had failed to find the right move at that time, there is a good chance I will have a hard time finding it during the review. It is a different story with my tournament games, however. I played the NJ Open games nearly two weeks prior to their review. I went over those games a number of times including during the hours immediately prior to our lesson. I asked myself which moves Mr. Yang would consider slow or unnecessary, and which opportunities I had missed. I had tried to find the moves for which he might want me to seek alternatives. As a result I felt better prepared when I was being asked questions.

Another interesting aspect of reviewing tournament games is that Mr. Yang doesn't know what is coming up in the game. In one case there was a corner situation where Mr. Yang showed me what I should have played assuming that I hadn't played it. Then he realized that he was actually in the main line of play and he said, "Oh you played that."

I got a "wow" (with two exclaimation marks) when I played a corner invasion unlike my usual self.

pala [-]: wow!!
buzzsaw [8k?]: yeah wow is right
buzzsaw [8k?]: not like terri huh?
pala [-]: great forcing move
pala [-]: you are new terri
buzzsaw [8k?]: but I do get a little whimpy in a while

This is the second tournament where I have shared all of the games with Mr. Yang afterwards. I am really enjoying doing this. There is something emotionally risky about it because I have promised myself to show them all... the good, the bad, the ugly, and the just plain stupid like the moment in which I failed to make an obvious move to create a seki. But the advantage of exposing myself in this way is that it makes me particularly mindful of my play. I know it will come under scrutiny later because I will not allow myself to weed out games that show me in a bad light. I feel safe in doing this because Mr. Yang has known me for so long and I am very comfortable in revealing myself to him. I don't feel the need to hide anything because he is always supportive. I also believe that it is to my advantage as a student for him to see what the flow of a tournament is like for me, even if it isn't pretty. I don't worry that some of my games might not have good analysis potential because I have come to realize that Mr. Yang finds valuable lessons in any game with which he is presented.

We ended our analysis on Thursday with the game where I failed to make seki, my only loss in the tournament. It resulted in the following comments:

pala [-]: oh no.
buzzsaw [8k?]: I resign obviously
buzzsaw [8k?]: end of game
pala [-]: really painful

It's great to have a teacher who understands how you feel.

Four Wins At NJ Open Gets Me 0.06793 Rating Point Increase

2008-03-05T07:43:00.002-05:00

I don't really believe in self promotion since I play in tournaments on a regular basis. I would like to think that if I do exceptionally well at a tournament that I could improve half a rating point. My results at the NJ Open, however, prove otherwise. The results are in.

Before the tournament I was rated -11.46300. After the tournament I was rated -11.39507. This is a ratings improvement of 0.06793, less than a tenth of a ratings point. Plus my sigma went down and is now at a low 0.26936. Having a lower sigma should slow things down even more.

Given these results I would expect to break into 10k if I can go 4-1 at my next four tournaments. This just doesn't seem right to me. It isn't that I am in such a hurry to be 10k. I would just like to see results that make sense. Less than a tenth of a point for four wins just doesn't make sense to me. The fact that one of the opponents I won against had self promoted two stones didn't help, and is all the more reason to resist self promotion myself to avoid providing a future opponent with similarly disappointing results.

At the end of the month I will be playing in a tournament at the University of Pennsylvania and will have to decide at what rank to enter. I will probably enter at my AGA rating if for no other reason than to see how small the increase in rating will be if I happen to win all of my games.

Blog Celebrates One Year Anniversary A Few Weeks Late

2008-02-26T08:47:00.003-05:00

I have been retired for over a year now. It is hard to believe how quickly time passes in retirement. The old saying, "time flies when you are having fun" is true for me.

I started this blog about a week after I retired, and the year anniversary of the beginning of this blog passed without my even being aware of it. Today I checked the date on the first post, and I realized the anniversary had come and gone about three weeks ago. In the first year I posted 54 times, just slightly over once a week on average.

Thanks to those who have followed along, and especially to those who have made comments along the way.

New Jersey Open - Day Two

2008-02-25T02:09:00.008-05:00

During my first game of the day I played a young lady who had also gone 3-0 the day before. I tried to make the center of the board less valuable by extending into it, and was doing a pretty good job of it. It got to the point where it looked as if I was going to be able to kill a large number of stones in the middle, which would been even better than just making the middle less valuable. I was told by a dan player that I should have ignored the threat to my group in the upper left to make a clean enclosure of the stones in the center, but I didn't do that. I was afraid to make the game hinge on the kill. I did manage to separate the center stones, but unfortunately some of my surrounding stones got disconnected and it was going to be necessary to make seki. Sadly I had a moment of blindness when I should have thrown a second stone into an eye to prevent my opponent from capturing the single stone to make two eyes. Instead I chose to fill an outside liberty. It was stupid and it should have been obvious. If I had been watching someone else's game it would have been. I should have walked away from the game to gain composure when I realized I needed to make seki. The move was something I ordinarily would have seen, but in the excitement of the game I made a big mistake. I am not sure that seki would even have been good enough after part of my group in the upper left had been killed. I'll look into that later. I'm not ready to know that now. The board position at the time of my fatal mistake is shown below. I played A, but I needed to play B instead. I am white. One really good thing about this game was the way I handled the lower left corner. My opponent tried very hard to kill it, but I kept it alive.

In my second game of the day I managed to get a resignation from my opponent after I made a decisive kill. After it was pointed out to me in analysis that my opponent could have made a ko for life by playing at o1, I didn't feel quite so smug about the kill. But if one's opponent doesn't see the ko, then the ko doesn't exist. I was euphoric from the kill and wanted to avoid the mistake of failing to take a break at the appropriate time. I went for a break to clear my head so I would not do something stupid in the aftermath of the kill. That has happened to me more than once. The second game of the day is shown below at the point of resignation. When I returned from my break my opponent resigned. I was really tired by then, and it was a relief not to have to play the end game. I am black.

My final result for the tournament was 4-1. That earned me a nice certificate suitable for framing, and a cash prize of $40.00, which paid for my playing fee and then some. As much as it would have been nice to go 5-0 I am glad things worked out the way they did. If I had not lost the 4th game I would not have had the valuable lesson about seki, which I am unlikely to forget. I also would not have been matched against my 5th opponent so I would have missed our game, which I found to be very interesting.

I do not expect my record to be sufficient to bring me up to 10k from 11k.

It is my plan to have Mr. Yang review the NJ Open games during our next lessons.

New Jersey Open - Day One

2008-02-24T08:32:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was the first day of the New Jersey Open. Some die hard go players traveled from the Baltimore and D.C. area, but snow kept many players away this year. I think there were only 33 tables, and there were very few players weaker than myself.

I won all three of my games yesterday and I am going back hoping to win one or two more. But even if I lose both games today I will have won more than I lost, so I am in a good position.

I will do my best to keep a calm mind. I know my go skills are up to the challenge if I can just keep my mind calm.

Played Rated Again

2008-02-21T08:12:00.004-05:00

After a few weeks of having that nasty question mark attached to my rank on KGS I decided to play some rated games to get rid of it. Yesterday I used automatch to find my games. The first game was a 0.5 komi game against a solid 8k, which I lost by 20.5, a significant defeat, especially since there was no real fighting. That loss dropped me from 7k? to 9k?. Well, that just couldn't be allowed to stand. So I fired up another automatch game right away. I ended up as white against a solid 11k giving two stones of handicap, which I knew would be a challenge. I play white often, but I am still much more comfortable as black even when there is no handicap.

I actually was ahead by 4.5 according to Score Estimator just before I played the winning move. In the screen capture below you can see the shadow of the stone that I intend to play at h19. Because black made his second eye at j19, I was able to cut at h18. I would then be able to capture the black stones to the right because black could not approach from the inside because of a shortage of libeties, but I could approach from the outside.

The screen capture below shows the position at the point at which black resigned. Score Estimator shows W+37.5 at this point. I was glad not to have to depend upon superior end game play to win the game because I am okay in the end game these days, but I hardly have superior end game skills. I would not have been happy falling to 10k, so it was a good thing to get it over with painlessly... well, at least for me. :-)

Yang Workshop In Evanston

2008-02-19T09:19:00.003-05:00

I spent last weekend in Evanston, Illinois at a two day Yang Workshop. This is the fourth year I have attended this particular workshop, and it was a great event as usual, even though it was a day shorter than usual this year.

After the Oza I decided to have Mr. Yang review all six of my Oza games using about thirty minutes of my regular lesson time for each game. Although I had reviewed games with Mr. Yang online during my lesson time previously, that was many years ago, and I had never reviewed my tournament games. I had only reviewed games I had played online. So this was the first time that Mr. Yang had seen any of my tournament games.

I enjoyed reviewing the games, and definitely got value from it. But one of the main reasons I wanted to do it was because I wanted Mr. Yang to get a feel for what a typical tournament is like for me. It was my hope that seeing the situations in which I end up with other players might impact in some way the situations that Mr. Yang might choose to create in our lessons games. I believe that everything he sees about the way I play has potential to influence what he does in our lessons, if not consciously, then subconsciously, based on what he knows about how I play, and what I need to practice.

Mr. Yang said something at the workshop which confirmed my belief that he had"filed away" some information from those Oza game reviews, and added it to his knowledge of "how Terri plays". There was a point in a game review or a lecture at which it was appropriate to play a 2nd line move against a 3rd line move which would then allow for a double sente move on the side. He said, "Terri makes this kind of move often." That would not be so impressive a statement if I actually got the chance to play such moves in our lesson games. But given the fact that our lesson games don't often get beyond the middle game, he had to have made that statement based on what he had recently observed in my Oza games, which we reviewed to the end. I am only one of many students that Mr. Yang had taught in the past month, which makes his observation even more impressive to me.

At the workshop I made it a point to show Mr. Yang one of the video recordings I had made of our lessons. He said he had never seen anyone make that kind of recording before. It was just like watching a KGS lecture only it was our lesson.

We did experience some significant lag in our last lesson, however, which makes the video recordings less valuable since stones and text sometimes appear very quickly in spurts when lag occurs. In those cases it is necessary to look at the sgf file to make sense of things. I told Mr. Yang that it is more efficient to view the sgf file from a time standpoint, but it is nice to be able to watch the lesson in real time as well.

Slight Ratings Increase From Oza

2008-01-29T08:42:00.000-05:00

I went 3-3 at the Oza, so I could have stayed the same, or I could have had a slight decrease or a slight increase in my rating. As it turned up my rating improved slightly. Actually it is so slight that it is pretty much like staying the same.

Before the tournament my rating was -11.52063 with a sigma of 0.31384.

After the tournament my rating was -11.46308 with a sigma of 0.28265.

I experienced a ratings improvement of 0.05755 points and my sigma went down by 0.03119.

I don't think that going 3-2 at the NJ Open will be enough to break into the 10 kyu range, and I am not comfortable with a self promotion to 9 kyu. Since the AGA is not currently allowing self promotions of one rank it looks as if it's going to be a tough battle to 10k.

A Curious 13k Makes My Day

2008-01-26T15:23:00.000-05:00

I was reviewing a game for a student of mine by the name of ramatheson on KGS. We had an observer, and after I had shown my student how he was making small center moves when there were big end games moves to be had by both sides our observer decided to chime in.

The following conversation took place...

teamochi [13k]: Are you really 7kyu?
buzzsaw [7k?]: yeah
buzzsaw [7k?]: do I seem weaker?
buzzsaw [7k?]: I am really 7k
ramatheson [13k]: Are you really 13k ?
ramatheson [13k]: :)
buzzsaw [7k?]: I have a ? cause I have not played rated in a few weeks
teamochi [13k]: Well you seem stronger than any 7kyu I've seen
buzzsaw [7k?]: I just know more than any 7k you have ever seen
buzzsaw [7k?]: thanks for the complement though
buzzsaw [7k?]: I study with a 7 dan professional
buzzsaw [7k?]: so I have a good theoretical base

Whew! I was scared there for awhile.

Later in the review I thanked him for the complement and told him that he had made my day.

The Sweatshirt I Wore At The Oza

2008-01-25T08:23:00.000-05:00

I had a sweatshirt made up at cafe press with this image on it, and wore it the first day of the Oza. It is a 9x9 go board with the face of Yilun Yang 7p embedded in the grain of the board. I did the work in Photoshop. The artwork had originally been done for a tshirt for a New Jersey Yang Workshop in 2004, and I used just the artwork to create the sweatshirt with no lettering.

To create the artwork I took a photograph I had taken at a previous Yang workshop and made it a grayscale image. I then used a posterizing filter on it to reduce it to about six shades of gray. Each shade of gray was assigned a color. Then the grain was hand drawn with a graphics tablet, then the grid was superimposed over the image. The board is actual size, so if the sweatshirt were placed flat on a table you could actually play a game on it.

Oza Baltimore - Day Two

2008-01-21T12:23:00.000-05:00

It is the day afer the Oza and I am very tired. I didn’t get home until after 11:00 PM and it was a long trip home with much to think about. I slept until 9:00 AM to recover, which is a few hours past my usual wakeup time so I am rested, yet groggy.

Day two of the Oza started off well with a win which brought my record to 3-1, and provided the promise of at least a face saving result of 3-3 by tournament’s end, which is exactly what I ended up getting.

The day started off with the fourth game, in which I played black. It was a peaceful and fairly uneventful game which was quite close through the late middle game. It was touch and go though, and was anyone’s game. Fairly late in the game my opponent attempted to invade a solid corner and tried to set up a ko for life, but I declined to play it because it really wasn’t a ko at all. It just looked like one. Then later on we were putting finishing touches on the edges of territory. I played a move which I expected my opponent would realize was atari against six stones. This move required that he capture one of my stones to save his six. I never saw it as a potential trick play, and I never though that he would miss the threat. It had to be played eventually since it was forcing and would gain a point for me and lose a point for him when he took, but I guess the move was played late enough that it was not perceived as the real threat that it was. That move turned a possible win into a sure win. But at the end of the game we determined that it had not been game deciding afterall, which made me feel much better about it. I’m sure my opponent felt better as well. No one likes to win or lose a game based on that kind of oversight. After pushing around the stones during the scoring phase and seeing that it was a clear win we never actually bothered to come up with the exact number of points, but it appeared not to be over ten, yet less than twenty.

After my third win of the tournament I was destined to meet stronger opposition in the form of a 9 kyu during my fifth game. At least I got to play black again. I lost this game by 18.5. The dan players who reviewed the game afterwards liked my position early on… up through move 70, in fact. They said that I lost the game because I failed to invade the lower left corner at the 3-3 in a timely fashion. In addition to that, I had earlier failed to extend from a three stone wall on the bottom in favor of adding a stone to a framework in the upper right in response to an approach move which I thought would be followed by an invading pincer. Late in the game I did attempt the invasion at the 3-3 after it had been reinforced with an additional stone by my opponent. I made a valiant effort at life, which failed. I probably should not have forced my opponent to connect three in a row to make the killing nakade shape, which I knew he was strong enough to recognize as the killing move. People are known to make mistakes, however, so I did force that move on the off chance that the proper response might have been missed. I stopped short of capturing the nakade and making him throw in to complete the kill. Having made the nakade in the first place there was no doubt in my mind that he would throw in. I see no point in playing a truly insulting move. After game five I was 3-2 and feeling optimistic about the possibility of winning again, especially since I was not likely to meet a 9k again. However, another win was not to be.

My sixth and last game was against a 10 kyu. I had the white stones in my hand again, which is never easy for me, but I gave it my best shot. Up until this point all of my opponents had been clearly at least twenty years younger than myself, although I had played only one child. My last opponent was in my own age range, and obviously experienced. My opponent took a fairly clear lead in this game, and gave me some trouble with a group along the top which he made annoyingly small, and then attempted to kill. He had stones on either side of the eye which bordered the upper side. He did a hane on the first line and when I did atari he did hane on the other side so that I could not block without being captured. I expected this after the first hane. I could read that far, but I saw no choice but to atari his first hane and see where it might lead. As much as my atari was probably death, failure to atari was SURE death. After his second hane from the outside I considered resignation, but I looked more carefully and I realized that if I threw in and he took I could squeeze and he could not connect to the second hane due to a shortage of liberties. I had not seen that until my atari and his second hane were in place. I would never have been able to read that situation a year ago even after the addition of those two moves, and I am certainly glad that I didn't talk myself out of continuing based on how far I actually could read. I've been known to do that on occasion. When I threw in my opponent appeared to be surprised, but he then read it too, and connected out the stone that was short allowing me to save my group. After I managed to live along the top my opponent knew I could read… at least a little bit. Another highlight of this sixth game was my invasion of the upper left, which was necessary because I was behind. I thought it was destined to die, but I managed to make it live. I am going to have some stronger players look at that position. I thought I knew the killing move for my opponent, but after trying it for black in a variation I found that I was able to refute it. Maybe the invasion did deserve to win afterall. Stronger players will be able to tell me. Since it was the last game of the day I didn’t have anyone look at it yet, but I will load it up on KGS for some friends to take a look. After living in the upper left I thought I had a chance, but I needed more to win. I next managed to reduce the lower left quite successfully by jumping across a 3rd line stone from the 2nd line to the 2nd line which my opponent could not cut off. After that I counted myself ahead by a couple of points, but I think I may have been wrong. In any case I had a group in the lower right that needed an extra stone thrown in to avoid seki, and I was afraid that I could not afford to play that stone and gambled that my opponent would view it as alive. As it turned out my opponent jumped into that group. I avoided death, and got the seki I deserved. I’m still not sure if it cost me the game or not, but I did lose by about ten points, and I think there were only eight points in that territory to begin with, so throwing in a stone would have had me down by three points at the end if that were the case. The game brought my opponent’s record to 3-3 and my own to 3-3 so I figure we both got what we deserved regardless.

Aside from my first game loss, my three wins came early in the tournament. I consider myself lucky in that respect because I was able to play stronger players in my last two games. I played white three times and I played black three times. The beauty of the system is that even though it is nearly impossible to go 6-0, it is also nearly impossible to go 0-6. If your rating is accurate you are going to hit a wall somewhere and your fortune will be reversed, whether that means eventually winning, or eventually losing. 6-0 records are for children, beginners, and players who don’t play regularly enough to have their rating keep up with their improvement. And every once in awhile I guess someone else has a couple really good days, in which case they deserve to go 6-0.

One positive for me to focus on from this tournament is that my stamina was obviously up, and I credit that as much to physical exercise as to lessons. Heaven knows I don’t play enough, nor do I do enough tsumego. I have recently started doing cardio activity on an almost daily basis, which is supposed to be as good for your brain as it is for the rest of your body. Another positive is that aside from my swift resignation in my first game, all of my games were reasonably close. I include the second game resignation because if it had not been for cutting off a group the game would have gone on to completion, and it would have been a close one, which I think I still would have won.

In spite of telling myself that 3-3 if good and fair, I will admit to some disappointment that I had not been able to pull off a 4-2 record given the difference between my AGA rating and my KGS rating, as well as the observations of so many that my play has improved dramatically in the year since retirement. The breakthrough they have been predicting will come some day, but apparently the time is not now. There will be more tournaments soon. For now I must focus on study, stamina, and playing. These are the things that will make the difference in the long run.

I am very happy to have gotten so much analysis from stronger players between games at the Oza, and I am going to seek even more review online to add to the lessons to be learned from this tournament. I may have had three losses, but I only had one game to be ashamed of.

I had a great time. I have a Yang workshop coming up in four weeks to look forward to in the Chicago area, which will be followed the next week by the New Jersey Open in Princeton, which will be followed a month later by a one day tournament at The University of Pennsylvania. My Winter go calendar is full, and life is good.

Oza Baltimore - Day One

2008-01-20T07:36:00.000-05:00

The Oza has been great fun. I've had an opportunity to meet NannyOgg, Flameblade and others for the first time as well as the opportunity to touch base with old friends from across the East Coast at least.

I played the lightning round at the reception the night before the first day of the tournament. There were four players to a table and we played three games with one player staying put and the others rotating around the table. Time constraints were 10 minutes basic time, sudden death. I don't play blitz online, so it was not like me to do this, but I had a glass of wine in one hand and a go stone in the other, and it worked out okay. I actually managed my clock very well, and won one of those games. It was fun.

In the main event I went 2-1 in the first day.

I played my first game against a very young girl who was quite a strong fighter, and who I observed later forcing resignations from her future opponents. I was in lightning go mode from the evening before, and unfortuantely got drawn into a quick game, which I resigned ten minutes into the game from a hopeless position. The slips hadn't even come out. How embarressing. Given the fact that four hours had been devoted to the round, I had time on my hands. My opponent had played a Chinese Opening, which I did not know how to handle. Later Massaki Hamaguchi, who is mh online and our Wings 2008 League King, showed me how to handle the Chinese opening as white, and also how to handle some other common opening situations to avoid a fighting game.

In my second game of the day I played black. I got to play my usual opening of 3-4, and 4-4 with a low knight's move shimari extension from the 3-4. I actually got to extend from that shimari in the optimal direction down the side, which surprised me since I nearly never get that opportunity. The game was ultra peaceful. I played quite solidly and succeeded in getting at least a 25 point lead. I then cut off a group, and a resignation swiftly followed. What was really eventful about this game, however, was the successful invasion which I played very lightly which drew praise from even the dan players.

In my thrid game of the day I was white again playing against another Chinese opening. Thanks to the advice from mh I knew enough to appoach the 3-4 with a large knight's move. But what really made me proud of my win in that game was that I came from behind in the end game and kept sente. Although I should have gone after the two double sente end game moves one move earlier, my opponent answered my small move in the middle of the board, and I went on to get those two sente moves by extending to the second line from the third line in both cases before doing hane from the second line to the first, thus maintaining sente and going on to get the other really big end game moves. The two double sente end game moves alone won the game, which was W+8.5 with komi being only 6.5, so I actually won it on the board by 2 points. It was slow, solid, and close.

I can hardly wait to see what the second day brings.

Go Blog You Should Read

2008-01-13T10:34:00.000-05:00

I have added a fairly new go blog to my list of links. It is Sol's Blog of Go and Fun

Sol.ch, is a strong dan player, a regular poster on Go Discussions, and has just recently decided to enter the world of Go Blogging. He has done so in a big way with posts full of real go content including diagrams from his games. I've enjoyed reading his posts, and have responded to a couple of them.

If you haven't discovered this blog yet, please stop by and take a look.

All About Life And Death

2008-01-09T07:56:00.000-05:00

I am having another lesson tomorrow. In my most recent lesson I was told to do more puzzles meaning more life and death. I have a few ways to study life and death. I have the problems that come with SmartGo. I have The "Get Strong At Life And Death" book. I also have the Davies "Life and Death" from the Elementary Go Series. I have read through parts of both of these books from time to time, but have never read straight through either one of them. I also have "1001 Life and Death Problems" from the Mastering The Basics series of books.

But the jewel in my collection of life and death books is the two volume set by Cho Chikun "All About Life And death", which is currently out of print.

The way I study my collection of go books, not just life and death, is way too random. I flit from topic to topic rarely finishing one book before I have torn into another.

I want to set a goal for myself to really spend time with the Cho Chikun books and play through all of the diagrams in the two volume set of "All About Life And Death". I started yesterday with my single convex yunzi stones which made it really easy to pick up the stones from the variations without destroying the initial positions. I am working through Part 1 - Life and Death On The Second Line, and have gotten through Pattern 9.

I might make sgf files of each of the patterns so I can upload them to KGS and present them to my students. There are 346 patterns in the two volumes. Creating the sgf files would be good reinforcement. I wouldn't bother to add the comments to the files because I would have the books to refer to during the online analysis of the positions. If I did an sgf file with multiple positions for each Part I would have ten sgf files representing the patterns in the book. For instance, Part 1 is Life and Death On The Second Line and it consists of 22 patterns.

Perhaps this is just some crazy task I won't complete, but it would be really nice to have those files on my tablet to review. That way I can look at the position without seeing the continuations on the pages of the book. It would be a good way of reviewing the information to refresh my memory from time to time.

I need to able to recognize more positions from sight without having to read them out each time.

Single Convex Yunzi Stones Arrived Today

2007-12-28T18:56:00.000-05:00

I was so happy to get my single convex yunzi stones from Yellow Mountain Imports today. I placed my order on the 20th so it only took eight days for them to arrive.

The first thing I noticed is that the white bowl is significantly taller than the black bowl, but they seemed to be about equally full. Upon examination it became clear that the black stones are not only smaller in diameter than the white stones, which was expected, but also noticably thinner as well, which I didn't expect, but was certainly fine, and makes sense given the fact that if they were the same thickness they would be out of proportion.

My bowl for the black stones was a bit lopsided, which I found to be quite charming actually. The lids fit amazingly well. I actually had to work a little the first time to open the bowls. I can imagine transporting these bowls strapped into my Ishi travel bag without worrying about the lids coming off.

I have not washed nor treated the stones with oil yet, and I am not sure if I am going to bother to do so. I like the feel of the stones as they are. I really like the thickness, and since I bought the smaller stones they fit well on my Japanese sized board. They are a little more difficult to remove from the board than double convex stones. I find it easier to remove them with a thumb and index finger rather than with the index finger and middle finger that I use to place them initially.

Where these stones really shine is in game review when it comes time to play out a variation. I decided to try them out with a game from Go World. I chose the first game in issue 95 (Summer of 2002). The game was titled "Meinen Magic in the Fujitsu Cup". Even though I have the Go World Digital Archive I happen to have a hard copy of that issue. I found the game in Smart Go and made a copy of it to load in my Go World tab in Smart Go and renamed the record GW095-01. Pak Yeong-hyeon was white and O Meien was black. I read through the commentary for each figure before I added the stones to the board so I would know to stop for commented moves and to play out variations. I clicked through the record on my tablet pc and had my hiba board next to it. As I clicked through the game I placed the yunzi stones on the board. When I came to a variation I put out the stones upside down. It was so easy to remove the variations after I was done playing them. All I had to do was look for the flat stones and pull them off the board, and I didn't have to worry about messing up the main line of play.

These stones are a pleasure to use and a value when you consider that you are getting stones and bowls for one reasonable price. I would recommend them as a first set of stones to anyone.

I'm actually thinking that I might like them better than my slate and shell stones that I paid over $500.00 for. Maybe I will sell them some day so I can buy more go books.

I am considering using these to mirror my online games to slow myself down and to force myself to read looking at real stones instead of the computer screen.

I love my single convex yunzis.

Going To The OZA in Baltimore

2007-12-21T20:11:00.000-05:00

I was on the fence about this for a few weeks, but I finally decided that I am really going to the OZA in Baltimore this year. This will be my first time at the OZA, so I am really excited. It will also be my first tournament since starting my lessons with Mr. Yang again. I notice that there are a good number of players near my strength (11 kyu) already registered for the OZA, and that can only get better as the event approaches. This was not true when I first considered going. At that time I would have been pretty much alone at the bottom of the field. It was looking pretty lonely in the double digit kyus, but now I have plenty of company. It seems I can look forward to even games after all.

I can also look forward to finally meeting the primary inspiration for my go blog, NannyOgg from KGS, who is the author of the Shodan Challenge blog, a link to which has been in my list of links since the inception of my blog, along with Chiyo Dad's blog link. Nanny has been an inspiration as she has detailed her journey to Shodan.

New Go Stones

2007-12-20T08:09:00.001-05:00

I broke down this morning and finally bought the single convex yunzi stones that I have been wanting from Yellow Mountain Imports.

I have been wanting these to use in reviewing games, and my frustration yesterday over being afraid to try the variations in the games I was reviewing (for fear of losing my place) made me dust off the Pay Pal account and make the purchase.

I can hardly wait for these stones to arrive.

Studying With Go World

2007-12-19T10:25:00.000-05:00

The three back issues I had ordered of Go World arrived.

Last night and this morning I replayed the first three games in Go World issue 111, which were the games of the 3rd Toyota & Denso Cup: Cho U vs. Yi Se-tol. I played them on my hiba board with my slate and shell stones in front of the Christmas tree. It was a pleasant experience, but I don't think I got the most out of it. Although I read the commentary, I didn't actually play out the variations, but just looked at the variation figures. I think I need to get some single convex yunzi stones for reading through my Go World collection. After carefully placing the stones of the main line on the board I was afraid to add the variation stones for fear that I would get confused and be unable to get back to the main line. If I had single convex yunzis I wouldn't have to worry about this, and could just pick up the inverted stones of the variation without even having to think about it.

One thing I noticed is that it is taking me less and less time to find the next moves in the main line diagrams. I'm not sure why, but I figure it has to be a good sign. I am also not sure what I got out of replaying the games, but I figure it couldn't have hurt.

Yang Lesson Today

2007-12-13T19:27:00.000-05:00

I had my biweekly (fortnightly) Yang lesson today. We played and reviewed two games as usual.

At the end of the second game review I was told that I had done well today with territory, but that I had done poorly with life and death. That was an understatement. Today my life and death was terrible. I'm never really sharp with it, but I am usually better than today.

I was advised to do problems. I think I will drag out "1001 Life and Death Problems and work my way through the one move problems again.

I recorded my game reviews with Camtasia Studio again. Each review was roughly 34 minutes in length and took up 20 megs of disk space.

Go World Digital Archive - A Go Retiree's Dream Come True

2007-12-05T09:07:00.000-05:00

I recently purchased the entire Go World Digital Archive from Kiseido... 108 glorious issues of articles, commented games, and "news", now history, of the world go scene.

At the same time I ordered the archive I subscribed to Go World to obtain future issues. Shortly after that I ordered the three back issues necessary to fill in my collection from where the digital archive ends at issue 108 and my new subscription begins at issue 112.

I had subscribed to Go World back in 1995, and have issues 72 through 97 in hard copy. I allowed my subscription to lapse at the same time that I stopped taking lessons. This was a bad decision in both cases. What could I possibly have been thinking?

I now have all 108 issues of Go World installed on my Motion M1400VA tablet PC, which happens to be the optimal go study machine. It is over three years old, but still going strong, and since go applications demand so little, I am hoping to get another two years of carting my tablet to workshops and tournaments. It's not everyone who has a three year old piece of hardware that still turns heads. I do.

But I digress... this is about the Go World Archive.

I began my exploration of the archive at issue 1, and had started to enter game records. But a quick read of the html index that came with the archive suggested that I look up the games in SmartGo . I decided to look for a game from issue 96. I first tried searching by name, at which point I discovered that I was not able to copy the name from the archive, but had to type it out instead. This inability to copy might be a security feature designed to prevent partial copying of the file, or it might be that the use of jpg images and OCR make this impossible, but it is inconvenient nonetheless. When I typed one of the names of the players I could not find any corresponding files in the library. I assumed that I had not entered the name the way SmartGo wanted to see it, so I sorted the records by date and found the game easily among the other 12 or so records for that date. Because I wanted to be able to add the variations shown in the commentary without altering the library file, I decided to rename the file and save it in a folder dedicated to holding sgf files from Go World which I have reviewed. I named the file GW096-02 because it is the second game review in the 96th issue. This folder of files should be a handy way to keep track of which games I have reviewed. I also created a new tab in SmartGo to display these records.

There is enough material in this archive to keep me occupied for a very long time.

A couple days ago someone asked me online, "Who is your favorite pro?" If he had asked "Who is your favorite teacher?" I would have said Yilun Yang without hesitation, but I had the feeling he was asking me about a playing style preference. I told him that I didn't have a favorite pro because I have not reviewed enough pro games to know whose style I like. I always felt that reviewing pro games was not very productive at my level because I won't understand most of the moves. But now it feels as if my lack of pro game viewing is a big gap in my appreciation of the game of go, which I intend to change through the use of the Go World Archive.

If I find a favorite pro I'll post about it.

Reviewing Lessons - Found Interesting Commentary

2007-12-02T09:42:00.000-05:00

I love the way Mr. Yang teaches using even games. He leaves opportunities along the way for the student, or presents him with challenges. You can't assume that he is playing his best. You can't assume that you can trust that if he made a move that it has to be a good one, and that you should not challenge it. You have to evaluate the board just as critically as you would when you play any other opponent to look for the mistakes and weaknesses. Later in the review you find out which moves were not optimal, why they were played, what you missed, and what you could have done better.

Because of this style it is impossible for me to judge how well I am doing because the bar keeps moving. I might think I am doing really poorly when, in fact, I am doing quite well. That was illustrated by the commentary in one of my lessons I took five years ago that I reviewed today...

goddess [-]: gee I seem to be in a lot of trouble now
goddess [-]: I did hane cause I was obviously weaker
goddess [-]: but this result doesn't seem good
goddess [-]: let me try to read it
pala [-]: you did well, and i did badly today
pala [-]: that is why you will feel uncomfortable
goddess [-]: oh
goddess [-]: like when I play my tournament games
goddess [-]: and the opponent doesn't play like the people at the yang workshops
goddess [-]: and it makes me crazy
pala [-]: right
goddess [-]: well I am going to spend some time thinking now
pala [-]: that is why i have to play wildly

Back To 7k on KGS

2007-11-28T10:05:00.000-05:00

I have fallen down on my promise to play rated games with greater regularity on KGS. I had planned to play one rated game a day on weekdays for a total of five rated games a week. I wanted to do this primarily to keep that question mark away from my rating. My resolve only lasted for a couple of weeks. I had settled in at 8k after a few weeks of rated games and then I had stopped, probably because I was devoting so much time to reviewing my past lessons.

A couple days ago someone I recognized from Go Discussions who was two stones weaker asked me for a game. I asked if he wanted a free or rated game, and he chose rated. With some measure of fear I proceeded to play the rated game fully expecting to lose. I went into it willing to lose cheerfully, sacrificing myself on the alter of go to encourage someone weaker than myself. Afterall, isn't that what we are supposed to be doing, and what others before have done for us? It is impotant to play white even if you don't feel comfortable doing it.

I was losing, but found a chance for a great double atari late in the game which brought it to a conclusion in my favor, and I was instantly 7k. The first thing that went through my mind was that I would avoid playing rated until Thursday so Mr. Yang could see my 7k even if it was to disappear later.

I have my next lesson tomorrow. I hope that having reviewed so many former lessons will help my game.

Reviewing My Former Yang Lessons

2007-11-26T09:09:00.000-05:00

I have been reviewing my former Yang lessons to get rid of those pesky triangle marks I referred to in a recent post. But I also wanted to reveiw them to get back in the spirit of things now that I am taking lessons again.

I decided to begin with the first lesson game Mr. Yang and I played on KGS. Since November 13th I have reviewed 61 games spanning a time period of one and a half years. When I got to game 111a I had a good laugh because that game was played right after I had "beaten" at 4 dan on KGS and had become 5d? as a result. It was a joke, and I never used the game to play rated after I achieved the rank, that was never the intent so the administration didn't care since I was not going to corrupt the system. Also KGS was a lot smaller in those days, and I don't think it could be done now because the current rating system would probably not allow that rank to linger as long as it had five years ago when I played my little joke. I think I kept the vanity rating for a couple weeks.

Here is some of the commentary from the next game I played with Yang:

pala [-]: now w has two weak groups
goddess [5d?]: yes
pala [-]: not good, attach to weak stone

One interesting thing about having the rank of 5d? is that I found that I was treated very differently than I had been treated as the 6k that my rating had drifted to previously. Everyone wanted to talk to me and play with me. I had been fairly well known, and thought I was popular, but people I had never met before started coming out of the woodwork to speak to the female 5d. After a few weeks I turned off the rank and went back to life as usual, and was much happier.

SmartGo and EverNote - Perfect Together

2007-11-14T10:56:00.000-05:00

The more I use SmartGo the more I am convinced that it is a "kick ass" go study tool. The review of my previous lessons with Yang in SmartGo has promted me to look more closely at how SmartGo handles the markup of sgf files. I find that I am in love with the way SmartGo reads coordinates from the file and places letters on the board to show these moves. (Until I actually understood what was happening I found it really confusing to have letters appearing on the board that I knew I didn't put there.) In the past I used to spend hours tediously adding triangles to mark moves referenced by coordinates so they would be easy to find. SmartGo saves me the trouble. This feature works especially well for me when I use the markup style of showing next moves with capital letters rather than lower case because it avoids the confusing duplication of letters in lower and upper case. Seeing A, a, B, b drove me absolutely nuts. But the best part is that if my way of viewing things isn't your way of viewing things, you get to have it your way. It's like SmartGo is the "Burger King" of sgf editors. I am now in the process of going through my lessons and removing all of those pesky triangles that I don't need anymore.

As much as I love SmartGo, I still cling to CGoban on occasion because of it's fantastic move tree, but the coordinate markup feature of SmartGo has forced me to take a closer look at the SmartGo tree, and I am getting used to it even though it doesn't offer the fully expanded glorious visual map that CGoban offers.

The title of this post mentions a program called EverNote. (Follow the link to buy it cheap.) I have used this program for years to collect recipes, and web clippings, and emails with registration keys for software... all the things you jot down and don't want to lose. In all that time I never actually thought about the value of this program for studying go until recently. The program is basically an endless tape of notes which you can categorize and search. I created a category called "go study journal" and I have been putting in all of the nitty gritty details of my go study... the stuff that absolutely no one is interested in, even though they might think they are... the stuff from which I choose to spare you. I can use a tool in EverNote called the "universal clipper" which not only allows me to do a screen capture ala SnagIt, but actually deposits that screen shot into an new note in the "go study journal" category, where I can then add text to annotate it.

Evernote happens to be running a special promotion until the end of November which will allow you to purchase it for thirty dollars off the regular price. It is too good a deal to miss, and you can use it to organize every other area of your life as well. I have absolutely no connection with EverNote, other than as an enthusiastic user. And I would love to see other go players benefit from its use in go study so I bring it to your attention here.

Had My Second Lesson On Thursday

2007-11-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

I had my second lesson with Mr. Yang in my new series of lessons which I started two weeks ago. It is actually lesson 134 with Mr. Yang if you count the lessons I took previously from 1998 to 2003. I know this because I named my lesson game records with numbers, and the last two lessons I took in 2003 were named 132a and 132b. Of course that doesn't count the few times we had spent our lessons reviewing games I had played with people at my own rank.

On Thursday we played two games and reviewed them. I did screen capture videos of the lessons as I did two weeks ago, and will probably continue to do this. It takes longer to watch the videos than to click through the sgf files because the time spent thinking of alternate moves in response to Mr. Yang's questions is in the video. But it is a good way to get a feel for the flow of the game before using the sgf files. So I watch the lessons in video format two or three times.

When I took lessons previously I would edit the game records to move comments back in the record so they referred to the next move rather than to the current move. I started to do this in 2003 when I moved my lessons to KGS because it emulated the style of commenting that Mr. Yang used when he commented games off line.

My first 12 lessons were on IGS and I found it difficult to edit the game records to include the variations and the comments so I found myself getting behind in the editing. So at the 1999 go congress I asked Mr. Yang if he would play a game with me for one hour and then spend the other hour of the lesson time commenting the game offline and sending it to me. It was an unusual arrangement, but because I was a weak player I could not remember the comments and variations to insert them into the game record like a strong player would be able to do after the lesson. So I think it was a good way for me to take lessons. We started that arrangement in August of 1999 after the go congress and continued with it until January of 2001 when we started lessons on KGS.

I guess you could say that one of my claims to fame is that I was the first student to bring Mr. Yang to KGS for lessons. Others followed, and the rest is history.

Started Lessons With Yilun Yang, 7p Yesterday

2007-10-26T07:16:00.000-05:00

After a four and a half year break I decided to start lessons again with my teacher Yilun Yang, 7p. I always loved the lessons I took with him from January of 1998 through March of 2003 (over five years). The main reason I stopped when I did was because I was not playing enough, nor studying enough, to justify taking the lessons. It was always good entertainment for me and a social event as well, but it couldn't be called studying go if I wasn't doing anything outside of the lessons to enrich my study.

That was then... this is now...

I'm retired and I have the time to play, study, and review my lessons.

Speaking of reviewing my lessons, I have discovered an exciting way to save my lessons for future review. I have a screen capture program called Camtasia Studio. Yesterday I used it to record the screen during the review of my lesson games. I sized the game window at 800 x 600 and captured only the window in which the review was taking place in order to keep file size down. Mr. Yang and I played two games in our two hour lesson. The first review resulted in a 40 minute video file. The second review resulted in a 30 minute video file. I can replay these files as often as I want and relive the review exactly as it occured in real time. I have replayed them each twice already.

Back in 1998 when I first took lessons, in the spirit of sharing, I made my lessons public on KGS in the Wings Go Club Room. They were in the late morning on Saturdays so it was a good time for most people in Europe or the United States who wanted to watch. At the time I thought that it didn't bother me to have people watching me play. I think I was fooling myself, however, to think that I wasn't self conscious, and that it didn't effect me to have all those people watching... as many as ten or more people at a time. It is probably one of the reasons that I stopped taking lessons when I did. So this time my lessons are in the English room at a time that is convenient to me, and they are private. I feel a little selfish about this, but I have to do what it right for me.

I had been thinking of starting lessons again ever since I retired, but it was a recent post to the Go Discussions web forum asking questions about your go teacher that really pushed me over the edge and got me to send the email asking about starting up again.

I am really happy to be doing this, but it is very important to me that I keep focused on what is important, which is enriching my love of the game, not improving my rating. It's not that I would mind improving my rating, but I don't want to lose sight of what is really important.