Ah, but this week I start anew, side project completed, and I asked if Bob would oblige me at his place for a game Tuesday night. It was clearly enjoyable for both of us, as he invited me back again in a week for a repeat. But I get ahead of myself, I wish to describe instead the match we played last night and its outcome.  I look forward to our next match in less than a week…

I am happy to hear that my recent improvements in our occasional games have sparked him to start studying as well, several unfamiliar and obviously older tsumego books were out and on top of nearby piles, signs of recent study scattered around the clear space on the floor around a roll up set with glass stones. Because I brought my home set to work to show a co-worker how to play Go on a coinciding day, I have my yunzi stones and bowls ready to play on the larger bamboo board. It is agreed that due to my loosing streak of late, I will take 3 stones from him. Play is begun, and as is common with an unbalanced board like that, becomes laden with fierce contact fighting almost immediately.

Now, although I haven’t been studying, when I get a rare weekend morning to spend an hour on Go all at once, I have been continuing to work my way through Bruce Wilcox’s Contact Fights software. Even though I am less than halfway complete, I am already feeling a marked difference in my game. By conditioning and codifying what I know and explaining it in the manner that Mr Wilcox does in his program, it has crystallized a few weak spots in my game that have stood for some rapid improvement.  I definitely look forward to completing the course fully and plan to share some of the distilled wisdom with some of the people I have been teaching lately…

Some people have a very direct attacking style, and a game of Pente with my non-confrontational wife made me realize that this initial leap into the fray can be quite off-putting if applied too soon to someone not yet committed to learning the depth of the game, Pente and anything else. A strong, bold, forceful response creates immediate tension that must be resolved, and blocks further reasonable development until the local situation is resolved. In a good fight, this can quickly cover a quarter of the entire board and of course strongly influences what remains of the game. Learning the method to contact fighting allows you to redirect this aggressive thrust into a weaker missed attack that then opens up possibilities for response and follow through. Almost like a martial art, such as Judo.

So, our three stone match began with a 3-vs-1 corner balance immediately. Bob successfully invaded but was boxed in, and a few empty triangles later I was in good position. His broad strokes made quick life, but not very large and not complete. He did show me a very specific technique that I think was useful, a way of poking along a long wall of stones to create a certain shape that establishes a beachhead of sorts. If you have ever watched despairing as an opponent builds an unbalanced wall of stones, ready to fall upon any unlucky victims trapped below the avalanche, then you might know what I mean.

Here is the last shot I took of the game before things got very intense and fairly quickly resolved. I have strong position in some places, and in some of the battles that were played out, I made a few mistakes but also some large captures. In fact, several captures really turned the course of battle to my favor. In the end, we played out all the situations and entanglements to create a line of battle, but once these were resolved Bob resigned the game without the final count since it was obvious and decisive victory for me. I will not be playing any more three game stones with Bob for sure now, I just have to consistently hold my own on a 2 stone.  Thank you again for the game and your teaching, Bob.  I hope to face you evenly soon.

Peace to you and yours, and good hunting.

By a single point. Black 66, White 65.

We are already on to two more games in rapid succession. But I am grateful to have a new game record, and a new idea for iShudan: submitting game records to the GTL for analysis. Perhaps also a URL export that allows anonymous visitors and not just dojo members to view a game in progress… Long term games have the luxury of being well considered battles, and members of a dojo already have their email addresses in the database. The submission to the GTL for review could be made on behalf of both players and then the response is instantly useful for both people, all using the built in power of people volunteering on the Internet.

To do this would depend on us finding out how to re-implement the SGF export that was present in the original PHPGo. The URL export I’m thinking of is also similar to one of the main changes from PHPGo to Benjam‘s version, where the URL held both the player name, game name, and password. Less secure for sure, but on the other hand no registration necessary to view someone’s game as it is currently in the unified database.

Aiden is up from his nap, so we are going for a walk in the brisk October air.

Tuesday night is my customary night to play an over-the-board match of Go, so I headed to the Seattle Go Center for my game. I was there for a short time but there was nobody looking for a match, about 5 matches in progress. There are sometimes spouses and other non-go playing significant others who are at the Center, but not looking to engage in conversation or interact generally. After watching a few games in progress, I left to secure a quick but healthy-ish dinner nearby.

When I got back, there were perhaps twice as many people as before, although still no Jon Boley. Apparently he is away for a while, so other senior players take turns stewarding the place and greeting unfamiliar faces. I watched the end of a match on a 13×13 board, and once it was over was able to make some comments on the ending and contribute. I counted it out silently as an exercise, and so knew that it was over already but that playing it out was a learning experience and kept my peace. One of the interested watchers looked like he might be interested in a game, so I asked him for a match and we played a game on a nearby 13×13 board.

And so I came to play a game with Andy. He was a fellow novice, and had no idea of his relative strength, but was familiar enough with the rules to play a good game. I explained a bit about ranks, or stones, and then we agreed upon a 4 stone handicap on the 13 square board. It was very enjoyable, and tough to the end. Black ended up winning by around 15 points or so, which goes to show that a 4 stone handicap counts for a LOT more than the same on a 19×19 board! But all around, it was a learning experience; I got sloppy and let a group die that shouldn’t have and was meant to become an excellent buttress. I make good fast shapes, but then have to defend them well enough to make it stick.

I like thinking of a python squeezing out a shape; if another player is unable to make life in the “bubbles” on the board, then all the stones inside die, as if swallowed whole by a snake. On the other hand, I didn’t win, so I don’t get to give much advice…

I sent him an email recommendation on the spot and tried to warmly welcome him to playing Go on the Beginners Night there at the SGC Tuesdays, or online at KGS, or anywhere at all that he could find a match and a partner. He asked me what I thought the best way to get started getting stronger at Go was, and I thought that it was good enough of a question I would post a thorough answer.

I can give a handful of links right now by many strong players on the internet who have echoed the wisdom of go sages for a long time, for example Guo Juan the traveling Go teacher who during her seminars observes and comments on games played by the attendees, holding court in the midst of those seeking the kami no itte.

But I have found that simply recommending study to a new player such as Andy as a way to continue to get into Go is not very effective; if instead you want to find out if you have interest enough to spark your making time enough to learn Go, I feel there is almost no better way than simply starting with the 4 volume set Graded Go Problems for Beginners. (GGPFBV1-4) (The cover pictured at the beginning of this post is a link to the book on Amazon, the book is widely available and very recognizable.)

This book really started me on the path to knowing that I enjoyed what I feel is the real “root game” of Go: tsumego, or life and death problems. Dramatic sounding title, but life and death problems are kind of like riddles that you solve by applying some foresight. And the wonderful thing about tsumego is that when you have really solved a tsumego, you know it for certain. You know it so well that you have absolutely no need to look at the answer at the back of the book, you are positive that the question is solved. The idea at first doestn’t have to be about memorizing some sort of random looking pattern, but merely excercising the part of your brain and eyes that work together at perceiving the board. This simple task, if done daily as recommended by prominent well-known professionals, will lead to a healthy fundamental base upon which to build skill at Go.

The full set of 4 volumes is not required to start you on your way, and are in fact quite challenging. I have not completed the full course of problems in all 4 books due to my level of reading skill and the escalating nature of the challenge. The volumes come with ratings for their difficulty, and so you can approximate a rating to tell other people if you are able to complete at least this first book of the four. It starts out very simple, but by then end is definitely worth your time. Remember, the point is not to be stumped (although this is good), but to train your brain and your perception. Constant and faithful repetition of these exercises are bound to be reflected in your play eventually as you increase your reading depth.

Graded Go Problems for Beginners, 30 Kyu to 25 Kyu (Beginner & Elementary Go Bks.)

This brought up the topic of ratings again, and what would have been a good handicap for Andy and I to use? How could he find out his rating if he wasn’t yet up to attending one of the monthly ratings tournaments held by the AGA at the Center? What if he just wanted to make a good handicap and have a quick but balanced or interesting game?

I recommended reading the GGPFBV1 and then going online somewhere like KGS and either playing against a bot (if you are shy or suffer Online Go Anxiety) or playing a few random ranked matches with other players. After some number of rounds you will at least have a rough approximate guess, and of course the longer you devote to this the more likely you are to get a good number that will help you in the future. If you are consistently winning matches, then you are likely playing below your true level. The problem is that novice players have a much greater variance from game to game, and so its good to get a number that feels comfortable and then just throw yourself into playing matches, as many as you can.

So, if Guo Juan and others say that daily tsumego are a sure way to improve, what are sure places where you can easily get the fuel for these daily exercises? I like to have some content come to me, and tsumego makes for a great daily mailing list, IMHO. I am subscribed to a couple which I found either online or via links from the AGA web letters, using filters to automatically sort and tag the emails so they all show up in a gmail folder tagged tsumego. Since I never have to worry about running out of space, I can just let this folder fill up all the time and review it whenever I have a moment for study.

One of my favorites is actually released en francaise, which is not a problem in the world of Go. The whole board position is laid out and different problems for different ranks of players lie in separate regions of the board. The French is easy to understand, and English translation is provided below anyway to help you get started. I once disagreed with the solution to a 10 kyu problem from this list and spent an hour laying it out trying to prove it wrong. It was easily the best hour I spent studying that week, and I don’t regret getting it wrong and using that to learn more.

In the programming world, there is a saying that “There’s More Than One Way To Do It.” It’s not necessary to study Go exactly the same way I did or that I think it ought to be studied. There are lots of ways that you can get hooked into the game, and I hope that something catches your fancy the way mine was as I rode on a bus in the rain reading GGPFBV1 cover to cover. If you feel like you get stuck, or you don’t “get” how to get better, or aren’t seeing results, then by all means try some daily tsumego study.

A tsumego is basically an idea, or a pattern. As such, supplies of them can be found all over the internet both for free and for paid access. Many ancient texts and literature in other languages is surprisingly accessible, and the more sources you have the better. Whatever works best for you, books or daily emailed diagrams or java applets on a bookmark, even if its ASCII art it can still help you improve and train your mind to play better Go.

Peace to you and yours.

Studying Go with Alejo :pictures by David Whitlock

I was reading around the net about all the Go-related happenings going on right now or being reported on, and one item in particular prompted me to dig out the board and lay out the setup (and then snap a few shots).

Alejo’s Tenuki’s most recent post is about Capturing on a Large Scale, and is from a situation taken from a real game.

Although I did not correctly predict the correct answer for the sequence before the jump, I did find studying the layout of the stones informative and worthy of a few quick shots with my new favorite camera. I uploaded some into the gallery, but here are the few I found most representative. Thanks for the study time, Alejo!

Tonights match was at the SGC on Beginners Night, an auspicious event marked by the complete lack of any vehicles at all in the parking lot that appeared to belong to owners inside the same building. See, tonight the USGO Congress ’07 is in full swing, so many of the regulars are all in Pennsylvania right now. As the evening went on, “in charge” moved from person to senior Go Center person at least three times in an hour. It reminded me of a game of tag with a bunch of 12 year old boys. “notit!”"You’re It! No Tag-backs!”

I played an 8 stone handicap game with a 7 kyu player who I have met before, a young programmer for Microsoft’s Visual C development platform. In our last match on a 13×13 I think it was, he won quite easily. I expected nothing different on the full board but decided to make a try at it. Fighting spirit at hand, we began combat on the full board. this picture is just after he has placed the 13th move of the game, since we started with a whopping 8 stone handicap.  He had to show me how to place them properly, since I was unfamiliar with this.

Midgame:

This is the position at a point just into the midgame, where I stopped to take a quick picture and survey the status so far. He has already established a well defined portion along the left hand wall, walking along the third line. I’m trying to make trades that give profit in exchange for position, and paying attention to the situation in the lower left corner. We are fighting for eyes and development into the center. Score estimate?

Endgame : loss for Black

My opponent had to leave I think for a bus or something, but it was clear to me that this was a loss for Black and we were just playing to find the end of the game. I had just made a rather stupid blunder in the upper right corner of the board. I’m going to try and get a score estimate based on the pictures and reconstructed details. I took about 6 pictures total during the evening, at least one of them looks just fabulous upon examination at home. I keep thinking I need to maybe start a nice photo stream somewhere… I mean, another one

Good learning experience, all around. One positive thing that happened was that a group of about 5 stones were resurrected and saved when I played a ladder-breaker on a set of previously threatened stones. They ended up linking into the left side of the board and living, to swing the score a bit more my way. It is perhaps easy to get overconfident when I play only a single person against whom I am measurably improving over time (Bob). Basic confrontations with higher ranked players can still give me quite a bit of trouble, indicating some basic weakness in the fundamentals. I will spend more time thinking about this later. As always there is a great deal of material available for study, not least of which because of the event on the East Coast that most US Go folks are at right now…

—

I love this quote from this evening’s AMA Go Newsletter this evening:”JON BOLEY 6d of Shoreline, WA, is the Program Director at the Seattle Go Center. He won the 2007 Verna Castanza Memorial. Hobbies include dancing, yoga, classical, fusion and jazz guitar. His favorite thing about go is “The dichotomy inherent in the game which is first introduced when one realizes how complex the game is while being so simple.”

I should find and link his myspace page, lol

I feel that at the mid point that I took the first pair of shots, I was already well ahead, after a blunder by white that cost 5 stones in the lower right corner, but more importantly, a lot of influence and sure territory; I believe I counted 70 points.* Bringing this game home to a very sound victory was exhilarating. Bob won’t soon give me three stones again, and I should perhaps have played a more even game. But it was a very very fascinating game. I need to go to work now, but perhaps later I will try to create an SGF file from the pictures shown here so that I can use the game position for counting study. Guo Juan gave advice that it was important to count at least twice every game, and this is definitely borne out by my experience thus far. Counting gives the definitive answer to the question: How should I play now? Am I behind and thus need to get aggressive, or am I ahead and need to defend and maintain only? In this case, I can clearly see how it helped me win a won game. Until next time, namaste.

*How many do you count in the first and second picture for both sides?

White is taking a position along the lower middle star point and gets 20 points or so. But if the space behind black’s position becomes his, it is ultimately much larger, 30-40 points at least. I feel like black has staked a larger claim of influence, but white has secured his group along the bottom and taken some almost certain profit as well… My guess is that she wants us to acknowledge and count the ending shape, but I could be wrong, this is my first pass at the problem so far.

What do you think?

Second thoughts: white doesn’t have a settled shape yet, and the bottom is by no means certain for either side. I would feel uncomfortable as white, although there is good strong position and influence at the lower left side of the whole board position as well….

Tonight, I am studying a game between two highly ranked amateurs on KGS. I am done with the opening and am now about to start the middle game fighting. The white player uses the 4-4 stones for quick flexible development and specifically plays to thwart the chinese fuseki.

Now, my mind, I got to the move shown here, and had some questions about why white did this. The last move is shown in closeup at this picture:

now maybe its just me, but it appears that now if black takes this sacrificial stone, it will end in a gote sequence for black or worse simply doom blacks 4 stones to die with no eyes. A little bit later, the scene looks like this and develops to this point:

There’s not enough on the board to count territory with any meaning, but influence abounds, and so far I think white has done favorably, after some initial problems in the lower right corner. Black has recently staked a claim to the upper left in retaliation. Iron pillar to keep sente pressure on white, stretching away from a hane. one white prisoner stone so far.

what do you think so far?