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.

Aiden said “Da Da” this morning, clear as day to me! WOW!

I managed to get myself to the SGC Tuesday night for a game, and although I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures of the game since Jon was playing with my phone, it was just as well since it was a disaster best left unfinished as it was, and perhaps the lessons learned become immortalized instead of the clumsy game it was being recorded. The pleasant conversation with surrounders (a 3kyu young boy fresh from Go camp) and the council of one of the “regulars” there at the Center was more than good enough for an abbreviated evening. I sent the above picture to Jon after we spoke because he asked me about the set I was using in the shot when he was demo’ing the phone…

I took 4 stones against a 3 kyu, mostly as a teaching lesson on corners and attacking fuseki. I got a group with an eye to live, but missed out on a key point of attack that the young one at my elbow was quite eager to point out. My opponent left the room for tea and the boy seemed to want to beam laser beam messages into my head. I was not interested in help, but was interested in post-move commentary and variations discussions. He left to go also to the kitchen, presumably to comment on the move he would so desperately have loved to play in my stead. It would have been an even game between my opponent and the observer, so my four stone advantage had him beside himself with possibilities while I was losing ground quickly. When I was called away by work and family, it had been a satisfactory time with some pointers for future study.

I noticed it looked like Larry has now also purchased an iPhone… Right on.  More work happening with iShudan, which he sounded interested in.  Jon revealed while we were kibitzing that he earned money as a programmer on royalties for a non-go related program.  Thats awesome! Adam and I are supposed to meet this evening to do more with the project.  I have made a wiki page or two, and have a todo list to write up. There’s a downloadable archive now up, and with the subversion access completed and working with a test IDE i’m using on this klunky laptop, I might be able to get something done tomorrow on it since my boss gets back tomorrow and can take back the monkey circus =-)

Good night/Good morning (01:27 PST =  09:27 am GMT)

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…

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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

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?

This weekend firmly solidified my love of Go, and was a wonderful success. If you are ever ever able to receive in person instruction from this lady, I highly recommend that you take the opportunity. She has a wonderful and very personal style, that guarantees everyone receives benefit. She peruses the world of students as a teacher of the highest order, and gives freely of her personal wit and style, recounting stories and anecdotes while we play, making us all laugh and smile. I have some pictures of her speaking on the couch at the Seattle Go Center talking to the kyu-level class. I took a rare break to get up and get some stretch time, and get some more tea when I took this shot, as there are many intent Go-players eagerly watching the game and listening to her.

I was quite happy with the outcome of the weekend as a whole, and received special commentary from Guo and others assembled there that I had noticeably improved my game in the short period of her analysis this weekend. She challenged each of us, and me in particular, that if we wanted to improve for certain within a single month, that we should work tsumego each day for a small amount of time, without fail. Just 5 a day, hard enough to be worth looking at, but not so difficult that you are unable to solve them in a half an hour of straight through study. This daily excercise will improve your reading ability, and your analysis skills will thereby profit as well.

She is quite certain of the utility of exercises such as this for us Western players who play for fun, and within a culture that promotes free exchange of ideas and less strict discipline. She was speaking to us as a group and told us in a segue about the students of her youth in China who were strongly drilled every day without particular effort made to explain or justify or convince the children; it simply wasn’t necessary… Young Eastern students grow up within a culture that promotes conformity and regimented rigorous study, Western players contrast with this strongly.

We benefit most from increasing our efforts in the areas we are weakest, this gives us skills and tactics that sharply contrast with the lack of these talents happening organically around us. Eastern players are advised to be creative, break joseki, and think freely to find new and exciting avenues of competitive Go playing, Western students are encouraged by Guo to obtain the discipline and regimentation of our neighbors to improve our reading and lend strength to our otherwise creative but weak endeavors over the board.

I will post SGF files of the games as I record them from the kifu when I have time, and put up links to the pictures as well. In the mean time, namaste’.

It will take time to put up more, but I need to spend some time unwinding with my non-go playing significant other (NGSO) and getting my rest for tomorrow morning.

One comment from both Leanne and Guo was that with some diligent study that I could definitely up my skill level to the Single Digit Kyu range and shorten the gap between myself and some of the other SGC players within as little as a month. I’m not sure that I’m prepared to do the amount of time they are thinking about within a single month, but I am most certainly encouraged to get serious and get up that ladder!

More later, good night.

Schedule -

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.

Two of the youngest players are shown here, playing at table two of the junior division. On the left is Hugh Zhang, and playing black on the right is Maverick Lin. These two kids are (I think) about 9 years old, certainly not much older if not close. I watched this game pretty intently during the tournament, since it was the table that was closest to my vantage point and I was amazed at the youth of the two contestants. The ending result was not a huge surprise due to the different rankings of the two players, Maverick was the sole kyu rated player in the final round. I do not know how he did overall, but I would be interesting in reviewing this final game for certain, I will post up the record with some preliminary thoughts later. Of course, my commentary is likely to be the least useful owing to the difference in my level and the level this game is played at, but perhaps the youth of the participants gives me some hope of understanding the fundamental activies and thought processes happening behind the scenes. Perhaps not