David’s Go Dojo

super quick post before I go to bed, I went to Bob’s and started a game tonight, even handi on the 19×19 full board. It’s not looking so good overall for me so far, although it’s certainly not all bad news either. He’s just made a killer move at white 80 which will likely mean the death of a large number of stones I had made into a wall facing the center from the 4th line. Game record was transcribed to a paper game record sheet, and transcribed afterwards to sgf. One potential error in the game, it almost looks like somehow I got a move 43 in twice, I’m not sure how neither of us caught that, unless I just made a mistake in the record. I’ll get it up in the dojo so that he and I can continue playing the game online until we meet again.

Please feel free to replay the game as posted here and offer your comments or feedback. There’s a single spot where you have to switch play trees since there appears to be an error at my move 43, the kifu shows two spots with that number, and both look real.

late night of work, its about 3:30 am right now and I’m beat. I was going to go in for a meeting tomorrow at 11am, but I think I’m going to skip that now. Good night.

Tuesday night my friend Bob canceled our game due to his newly announced job offer, since he had to be up and working his first day bright and early Wednesday. So, after work I drove to the SGC for Beginners Night for a game there instead. I played Eric, I think his name was, and he gave me a 7-stone advantage on a full board match. I lost by 40+ points or so, because of at least two large blunders: I failed to make enough eye shape for my 4-5 stones in the lower right, and lost a large capturing race in the upper left that could have swung the game to my favor. It was a close thing for that large dragon-shape, but there seemed to be nothing I could do unless he missed an attack or failed to respond. I did manage to create a couple of ko situations which I think I played correctly to threaten his position, but he allowed me to keep the ko rather than give away the capturing race. It was a pretty thorough spanking, all in all. I believe Eric said he had been studying less than a year or so, and already he is playing well at 8kyu. I want to be an SDK so bad!!!

Towards that end, I am renewing my commitment to continue working tsumego each and every day for a month. I had to leave town for a couple of days last week for work, and then catch up on all the latest family time here, but today marks the beginning of a renewed effort on this. Guo Juan recommends working daily on these to improve reading level, and I believe that based on what we know about “brain exercises” that daily practice can truly make measurable physiological changes and improvements in a players overall abilities. (<–warning, large pdf) I will try to track that here and perhaps I can generate my own data to prove it.

Many many thanks to NannyOgg, a fellow Go-blogger who recommended a solution to the need for a diagram generator: Drago. Here is one of my exercises for today as an example:

and

black to play in both left and right. Can black _absolutely_ kill?

I think these diagrams look lovely, don’t you?

After stopping at home and having some dinner, I made it to the SGC with enough time to play a 13×13 game before the night time maintenance window in Amarillo Texas. I think his name was Paul, or maybe kevin? Anyway, he was an unpaired 6 kyu or maybe 9 kyu. He gave me three stones on the board and managed to beat me pretty badly. I resigned once all of my groups were resolved completely. There was one spot where I missed playing at the ko, and lost a big group of perhaps 11 stones. Playing on, I failed to make life in two other border groups, and misread several situations that allowed me to fall behind.

He did review immediately after the game with me for a while, including some talk about a jump into the 3×3 on the shoulder of my handicap stone. with a stone of mine on either side, it is to his profit since he can almost certainly live, and all i can do is drive him downward along one of the sides. in the end it works out that he has nothing to lose. this means i have to make sure profit from this or plan on that issue. press down severely rather than just give it away and allow it to impact or connect elsewhere…

I thanked him for the willingness to play the smaller board and the review and left. I also signed up for the Go Juan seminar this coming weekend, and paid my tuition, Jon said that he will be sending out materials online in sgf format shortly. I hope so, there’s not much time to study them before her arrival!

**UPDATE**: got materials tonight and spent 45 minutes reviewing on my board, but have to work now. will work more and post later.

Tonight was an extrodinary game with bob, an even game on a full 19×19 board with no handicap that i only just barely lost at the last moment. I started with the chinese fuseki opening style, but it didnt seem to influence the game very much. Bob took all 4 corners, butI had strong hold over the center. i captured two of his groups after some vicious fighting and maintained a good lead, but piddled away a few stones on pointless probes into secure corners. And then, as the end game was drawing to a close, we both at the same moment saw a move that killed a group of mine that was worth over 20 stones. The ending score was 5-9 for him. I was extremely close.

What’s amazing is that this is the first ever even game we’ve played. There were only 5 stones left in my bowl when it was finally done. Quite the marathon.

“Just one game,” they said, and started to play — that was yesterday.
– Chinese proverb