Lunchtime 9x9 game with Jason

Great fun to have a work colleague playing Go. He's played a few times with his wife on their 19x19 board at home but didn't know about eyes, so those games must have been a little odd.

We played out a 9x9 game and explored the concepts of living with two eyes, atari, linking up and disconnecting groups etc. Great fun. Used my proper stones on a printout 9x9 from here

Bristol Go Club this week

Bob was kind enough to give me two teaching games, one even and one with 9 stones. Richard also offered some valuable advice about never leaving weak groups in favour of territory.

I lost a large group in the second game when I took my eye off the ball for (it seemed) a few seconds, but thought I was still leading in terms of territory, I had a long diagonal central section. But when the game was rearranged for scoring, it was 90 to 40 (or something) against me. Very surprising.

I then watched Paul A beat Paul C on 4 stones. Paul A plays very quickly 'without thinking'. You can too. You just need about 40 years of experience first.

6 members turned up this week.

Loss to DanielBR 12k (even)

Not only playing even, but as white, against a 12K. Okay then!

Move 10 maybe prefer Q6 to prevent two white groups being split in two
Move 12 prefer P7 to prevent the split
Move 18 achieves nothing but he must answer..
Move 20 too confident with too many cutting points
Move 30 missed the trap (see next turn)
Move 34 lower group all safe? Think again
Move 36 greed? over safety
Move 38 just invite the 2nd line trap
Move 40 prefer to save the one on the 2nd line
Move 44 prevents the atari on K4 but leaves the lower right group to die
Move 52 invites him in
Move 64 missed the atari (really?)
Move 66 presumably expected a forced reply with a cutting point repair to follow? Instead of replying, black attacked, forcing W to reply and leave the cutting points open
Move 78 drunk? The game was over by move 36

Awful.

Loss to Meic 18k on OGS (even game)

Like the first, my second completed game against Meic also ended in resignation, but it was a whole lot better than the first. The silly complete beginner mistakes are hopefully a thing of the past. The mistakes in the game are down to a) poor defence - too many cutting points and b) choosing areas too small to live in and getting squeezed.

Move 3 er..
Move 9 prefer a pincer?
Move 11 again prefer the pincer?
Move 17 prefer to connect at C12
Move 27 E12
Move 31 E14 = nice wall
Move 33 F15
Move 35 too many cutting points. Obviously only looking to capture the W group.
Move 57 any move anywhere on the board would be more useful than that. Look at the moyo on the right. Where's yours? Maybe the centre point would be reasonable. Just not L4.
Move 61 too far
Move 63 is this going to live on its own?
Move 73 make some space! O7?
Move 77 not obviously suicidal until you read ahead
Move 83 obviously suicidal
Move 183 necessary. allowing W to connect kills the E7 group (nowhere to live)
Move 185 necessary. sacrifice G7 group to ensure D6 group dies

Win against Julko 17k on OGS (9 stones handicap)

This game is my first earned win in the OGS Tianyuan 2009 Handicap Class tournament (I won an earlier one by timeout).

This game was largely by the numbers (as I understand them). Apart from weak play in the bottom right corner, I just played a containing game, content to allow W to settle on the edge leaving me with influence in the centre.

Move 34 is odd - inviting W to split.
Move 40 is questionable - can B succeed here?
Move 48 missed the atari
Move 50 invited double atari

Loss to LibertyBot (14k) on KGS

Haven't played robots much since the early days of learning Go, so I wondered whether I'd do better than the wholesale slaughter experienced back then.

I was given 3 handicap stones, and lost by 18.5 point - that's probably OK. It was chinese scoring, my first time, and I was a little confused, capturing his dead groups rather than leaving them dead.

Biggest mistake was thinking the ladder would work in my favour. It really really didn't.

Bristol Go Club is now weekly

With membership between 6-8 regulars, it has moved weekly now, which is great.

Had two games with Paul C (~6k), one a teaching game and one a blitz, which I've never played before. The teaching game was very instructive, concentrating on fuseki and what moves are good and why. I had a large framework and could have done well, but insisted on rescuing a single stone which let him build a wall and the game was lost. The blitz game was good, because my rushed moves in a normal game often lead to disaster, but playing the whole game at that speed gives you a hyper-concentration mode which lead to fewer disasters. I still did pretty poorly, winning just one local battle, but not seeing that it had nowhere to go, and couldn't make life. Another group was lost because I thought it could easily make life, but Paul played in a vital point that I didn't expect.

Then, Richard (4d), partner of Louise (~1d) who have moved from the Isle of Man to Bristol kindly offered some 9x9 games with me to help develop fighting skills. Firstly on 6 stones handicap, which I won easily, then we had 2 games on 5 stones, one of which I lost and one I won. In both of these games, I responded poorly to Richard's ko threats. I must ensure that I know what I want from a ko fight before engaging.

Lunchtime loss against Tim with 2 stones

He's still 20k on KGS, and I resigned the game today.

It started off OK, but I lost a group of 6 by assuming that 3 liberties was enough, ignoring some nearby stones. He herded me into them. Doh. I lost another group of 6 by failing to count the liberties. I won a capturing race (by counting liberties this time), and then I lost another group by placing a stone and immediately noticing it was self atari. My request to have the stone back was rejected (fair enough) and my losses seemed insurmountable. Working out whether to continue, I played into his last corner and he took another group which was in atari. Resign!

This makes 2-all so far in our lunchtime games. Still very much enjoying them. Good to see that Tim is being far more defensive in his play now, leaving fewer cutting points during attacking etc.

Tim doesn't undo on KGS either. Fair enough again.

No picture of the game, alas.

Win on KGS against Kamikage

Love that name, very funny for Go players due to the famous Kageyama, Go professional and author.

This was a very enjoyable game against kamikage who was 17?k (I also had the question mark, because of inactivity, I suspect) and, I think, overall it was a convincing win. I feel that while he played better locally, I played better in whole-board thinking. That's gotta be good, right?

After the game, kamikage was very kind enough to review the game. He pointed out several mistakes (most of which I was aware of, just after playing them :/ ). This review is contained within the game below.

This was my first game on KGS for 2 weeks. It was much less laggy than recently during the game, but definitely not lag-free.




Note: OGS is down for the last 24 hours. I feel both liberated and frustrated by this. How is that possible? An addict who knows better? :)

Hikaru No Go

As I explained in my introductory post, it was this manga that first aroused my interest in the game of Go. However, since learning to play, I haven't received any new volumes of the book until last week, when volumes 16 and 17 arrived in the post.

It was a completely different experience reading them with a first-hand understanding of go. I found myself examining the board positions in the (sadly too few) occasions they occur. The author is an obvious fan of the game, and I've seen SGFs of the games featured in the story online in various places, so it seems that they are real games. Whether famous ones or not, I dunno.

It really is an astounding feat to make such a compelling story out of just a board game and the various self-improvement journeys of a handful of people, whether at amateur school go clubs, or on the professional circuit.

These two volumes contain some of the highlights of the series. I can't express too strongly how much that you need to read this story if you aren't already a fan.

Loss to Zazi on OGS

Zazi and I started playing on OGS at a similar time and level, and it has been fun watching us both improve. This game started OK, but soon developed into a capturing race for large groups. I was confident I could win it, but then failed to count liberties properly at move 93 and the group (and game was lost).

Move 7 prevents a second white shimari
Move 12 failed to extend from a hane, should I have atari-ed as punishment?
Move 13 was instead very small. Better to shimari bottom left or take the left centre star point
Move 23 helps escape/prevent W linkup
Move 25 prefer K10/N8?
Move 27 crosscut puts pressure on H16
Move 29 tries to keep W split
Move 35 necessary? or K10 better?
Move 39 prefer P9 to prevent linking up? O8 leads to an easy link up for W
Move 47 protects some territory, but leaves the centre black group very weak (unless the capturing race in won) Territory is best?
Move 97 very shortsighted. The group is dead.

I think I played pretty poorly this game. I shan't underrate Zazi again.

Lunchtime win against Tim on 2 stones

This was another great fun game with Tim. He's now 20k on KGS, and we settled on a 2 stone handicap for this one.

I won this game by a large margin, due to the capturing of two of Tim's groups, one of 5 stones and one of 13. He said himself after the game that he lost focus of the largest group and didn't see it only had 2 liberties remaining. Glad it is not just me that feels overwhelmed by the complexity of the board sometimes.

I felt that I played pretty well this game. The silly mistakes were way down. Only one of my plays resulted in my being caught in a 2nd-line-trap (and one brain-fart per game is surely allowed).

I deliberately played a little more loosely, and looked for plays that linked my groups while attacking his. I also took a leaf out of Tim's book and made sure the bottom right hoshi was turned into a shimari to prevent any invasion. Final score was 114.5 to 58.

I suspect we'll go back to 3 stones next time.

Viewing 'Go Teaching Ladder' reviews online

The Go Teaching Ladder (http://gtl.xmp.net) is a great resource, where you can submit your games for free review by stronger players. These reviews (along with those at sites like e.g. GoDiscussions) often contain a lot of good advice, and reading them has got to be good for your game.

Most people have tools to load SGF files, but it may also be useful for people to know that you can use the online SGF viewer at http://www.eidogo.com to directly load the reviews from the Go Teaching Ladder by copying the URL of a review file (right-click on the link in your browser) and pasting it into the Upload | Fetch By URL option at eidogo.

Bristol Go Club meet

Great to see Simon bring his 8 year old son Barney along. Barney's been playing since March this year and is already ~12k on KGS. Wonderful to see such a young lad doing well. Of course, it'd be a crying shame if a 4 dan couldn't enthuse his children into playing Go.

However, none of Barney's friends are interested in playing, which is a shame for him, so he has to stick to KGS and friends of his dad.

When we played, Barney gave me 4 stones and beat me 58 to 34. He even had the go finger-hold down perfect. To quote the Emperor, 'we will follow your career with great interest'.

I also had a bit of a teaching game with Bob and then Simon. Bob got frustrated with my crappy play but at least I should learn from it. Simon at several points amazed me with his reading saying if I play there, then xyz. Half the battle is knowing these exchanges are possible, so that was really good.

a wow article on extreme anxiety learning go

The always entertaining 'Killing Shapes' Go blog (see blogroll below) included a link to this amazingly frank article about one guy's extreme birthpains of learning go:

http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-10-20/high_anxiety.md

Loss to Tim at lunchtime

He's moved up to 23k on KGS, and I to 18k. He asked for 3 stones as last time we played and he won the game by about 12 points.

Tim made a surprisingly early 3-3 move. Kept me out of the corner. Haven't seen that before.

It certainly worked on me.

 I tried to expand up but got blocked while Tim built a wall.

We continued to define the lower territory shapes, and then I successfully marked out the top quarter. I felt that I had the better of this at the time but now I look at it, it seems pretty even.

 The lower half took more shape, and then Tim (again surprisingly) invaded right inside my territory. I was sure I could ignore it and take profit elsewhere for the time being.

The top side took shape and the centre went to Tim. I poked into his left side but he continued to develop inside my lower side. Could I still ignore him?

I moved as little as I thought necessary to stem him. I had the liberty to the left of the cross shape, so if he tried to atari the cross shape at the bottom, I could connect at the bottom, then atari then capture him.

 

Except of course, if he played the left side of the cross first. Doh x 100.

I left the group and tried to push through on his left side. Didn't achieve much apart from reducing his territory.

Almost at the end.  Just two areas for me. Both reasonable, but black had surely won?

Yes, 74 B vs. 62 W exactly the size of the group Tim captured.

Good fun game, especially for the lesson in needing to properly respect an invasion.

big loss on KGS to LABabe 17k

LABabe completely destroyed me.

I tried to play more quickly than normal, but that just let my inexperience shine through. On the other hand, LABabe played quickly and efficiently. Looking at her? game record shows 12 *today* alone at the time of writing, 7 of which were won. Wow, I am impressed if I play 3 games a week on KGS.

Analysing this game can only help me.

Move 9 was an invasion into my (overextended?) extension. I thought I should be able to squeeze that out. Wrong.
Move 15 cut me off. This surprised the hell out of me and made my two stone group exceedingly weak.
Move 18 was an attempt to lead them to safety. It wasn't followed up on, so it failed when 23 cut them again.
Move 26 was played with a view to making them live, or survive the capturing race for the adjacent black group. It wasn't obvious to me that it had already lost that race.
Move 28 then as good as forced B to increase that group's liberties. Even worse, it was ignored in favour of a direct assault with 29 at which point the status of the group was clear even to me.
Move 32 was pure damage control
Move 35 B played tenuki to carve out territory
Move 36 W wanted to rescue the lone stone
Move 60 looked reasonable..
Move 61 revealed that to be wrong
Move 77 was responded to too quickly, not noticing the atari
Move 78 should have been at D6, obviously

If we stop here and look at the balance of sketchy territory, L8, N13, H15 would help to give W stability. None of these were played.

Move 93 was seen as a threat to the white group, so I descended into Bs territory. Now I see that it could be easily connected to K6
Move 105 was the killing move
Move 108 - when will I learn?
Move 120 - get strong then attack. Should have been at L16
Move 132 should have been at H17 and the black group above is dead. Instead, W group dies.

The game is already lost.

Win on OGS against flimsy

Wow, this game started in July and ended in November.

I don't think I should have won this on paper, but I fought really hard in the capturing race at the start and kept that lead. Flimsy really surprised me with the endgame, causing no end of trouble to my (anything but solid) walls. Flimsy was 18?k when this started but now has a rank of 24, same as my own on OGS at the time of writing.

Move 11 looks unlikely to work to my eyes now
Move 17 is the cut that begins the fight
Move 19 is atari-for-the-sake-of-it
Move 53 was the deciding move for the capture
Move 139 took a second group
Move 223 was short-sighted. Got to anticipate the next move!

Close game to 17? on KGS

My first game of the day was with a 17k Russian, who resigned after about 20 moves for some reason. Perhaps called away for something, or perhaps they were frustrated with my laggy moves. Certainly wasn't because they were losing, because they weren't. His resignation made me a 17k. A win is a win, but unless it is earned, I doubt it is to your advantage to have a higher rank than you are entitled to. Regular play will iron out such kinks, presumably.

Next, despite some more heavy lag, a fun game with a 17k? player: Kairo1.

My opponent won the game by 3.50 points. I made many mistakes this game, but I at least managed to surround one of their groups as consolation. My compulsion to keep my groups connected now seems second nature, finally. I ran out of main time about half way through the game (due *I think* to laggy responses, and played the rest in byo-yomi. I.e. pretty much in panic.)

Move 4, I took the enclosure rather than the remaining hoshi - wise?
Move 11, B nicely prevented a solid connection between W's two groups.
Move 44, perhaps solidifying top left at J17 would be better in terms of territory.
Move 54 oddly determined to split black. Better at O8?
Move 80 was greedy and I got rightly punished.
Move 95 a big point, denying a lot of territory to W.
Move 100 very short-sighted.

Loss on OGS to fimko

This game should have been lost at the start, but I somehow managed to escape a stranglehold, but it ultimately did no good, I had no territory, my opponent was one step ahead of me for the rest of the game. Enjoyed this one a lot.

These games can take so long, I can genuinely improve during the course of them. I look back at some of the early moves in this game and can't understand why I made them. Look at the way the bottom right corner is allowed to first get cut off, and secondly doesn't even try to live. Nuts!

My opponent's move 84 was a mistake, it allowed my otherwise very dead large group to escape and live.

The resignation followed an unsuccessful attempt at reduction of the opponent's otherwise massive territory, but my moves were uncoordinated and too separated to be effective, so I spent the whole time trying to keep lots of little groups connected, and ultimately failing.

Lunchtime game with Tim

Met up with Tim at lunchtime for a very enjoyable game. He's roughly 20k. I gave him 3 stones and I won with 78 points to his 50. I made one large mistake, allowing a strategic group to get captured while I was eyeing both defence and attack elsewhere, and missed a couple of ataris due to needless rushing. The one thing I made damn certain of, was to not get cut off. Paid off, it seems.

Haven't captured the game in SGF, but may try to do so on the Palm next time. Or maybe just a photo. Hopefully we'll make this weekly.

My first full game with the bamboo board and yunzi stones from www.weiqistore.com - great to celebrate the first game with a win!

Whoa, I have a KGS rank

On Oct 12th, I played Timmy who is 17k. My provisional rank was 21k, so KGS gave me 4 handicap stones. I won by 8.5 points - talk about close!

Despite winning, I made several bad moves in that game. Again, I lose groups by not reading ahead. Don't get cut off. Just don't. Don't miss ataris. Just don't.

Winning this game gave me an unqualified ranking of 19k. Let's see how that changes over the next few ranked games. Probably up into the 20s again. I certainly feel weaker than the OGS players who are 20 and stronger, although their ranks may be artifically weaker until they've completed enough games against their equals/betters for their own ranks to become reliable. With the slow turnaround on OGS, it can take months to reflect reality.

Still, now I'm on the map, and it's not a bad rank for a beginner! In fact, at the Bristol Go Club I attend every couple of weeks Peter, a 2k player thinks I'm slightly stronger than 19k. We'll see. I'd like to get my games there recorded for analysis.

Still, it pleased me immensely to a) win on KGS for once, and b) finally have a rank.

Another day, another loss

I tried to play a KGS game the next day, and then again a couple of days later, but had to resign both due to lag.

Couple of day later again, I played Windblow who didn't know his rank (but KGS shows maybe about 9k to 16k at the time) and I lost by 53 points. Closest yet on KGS, but not actually close. I was winning the first series of fights, but failed to read ahead simple moves which got my own groups cut off and killed. Serves me right.

Another KGS game, same opponent

A couple of days later I offered another game and the same guy accepted.

10 points better than the last game, but still some large mistakes - groups getting cut off, more missed ataris etc.

First realtime 19x19 game on KGS

With a few 19x19 games on OGS under my belt, and a rank of 26 (some of which was earned, some due to timeouts), I felt more ready for realtime 19x19 games on KGS. So when the opportunity arose, I took it. Like all beginners, I was more interested in getting a good ranking than learning to improve my play, so I sought out rated games as opposed to free games (where your rating is not affected by the result).

On KGS, when you want to play, you have the option of either offering a game yourself, or selecting an offered game. I didn't see any 'appropriate' (i.e. games offered by ranked players of ~30 which would make a win more likely) games, so I offered one of my own. It was accepted by a guy with an ~18 rank, so I expected to lose, but it would all count towards my own ranking. On KGS, you need two wins and two losses to ranked players before your own rank is considered reliable enough to be shown unqualified.

But wow, the biggest shock when coming to realtime play on KGS after a couple of months of OGS is the speed of play required. It looks like the most usual game time option selected is 30 mins each, with 5x30 seconds of byo-yomi time. In addition to the novelty of a time limit, my internet access to KGS is quite laggy, with frequently 30 seconds being taken off my time each move despite my clicking the move pretty immediately. This all conspired to make my play on my first realtime game on KGS a highly anxious one.

I'd like to blame the loss on all of the above, but you gotta be able to make better decisions under time pressure than I did in this game. From stupid cutting points being gifted to the opponent, to failure to notice ataris, I think I was lucky to be only 90 points behind black.

Loss on OGS against miharbio

This game is a lesson in being herded into the edge without the room (or enough effort) to make life.

The activity in the bottom right corner is just weak, but I completely misread the danger presented by move 51, and my response is laughable. Move 53 was exactly right and the group was dead, I just hadn't noticed. Things continued poorly from there on, despite my continued feeling that 'I can get out of this'. I couldn't.

Loss on OGS to boredom

the player that is, not the state of mind.

Enjoyed the beginning of this game, some experimentation and some cockiness. I thought I was doing OK, but my experienced opponent just kept his cool and punished me again and again when I let myself get isolated.

Welcome to my go blog

Despite rapidly approaching 40, I am a comics and manga fan, and it was through the excellent Hikaru No Go manga that I was first introduced to the game of go (also known as weiqi in China, baduk in Korea, igo in Japan).

In the summer of 2009, I began to learn the rules and tried playing against the computer. At the same time, I signed up to KGS and IGS, online go servers that allow you to play against other addicts.

Initial games were played on a 9x9 sized board on KGS, popular with beginners because the normal 19x19 board is pretty overwhelming until you attain a certain level.

Apart from generally sucking at games, the largest handicap facing me is my two kids, the youngest of which is under a year old and frequently robs us of sleep. This, coupled with the fact that a full game of go can take an hour and a half to play, leaves me with a problem of finding time to play enough to progress.

Enter OGS, a turn-based/correspondence go server that allows you to play as slow as you like, a move here, a move there. Not as useful to beginners as losing a few dozen realtime games as quickly as possible, but certainly better than nothing.

This is my first completed 19x19 game on OGS. OGS players are from all over the world, but Meic happens to also live in Wales, UK. Perhaps we'll meet at a tournament one day.

In this game, my battle plan was pretty much assume-your-opponent-will-play-poorly. This rarely happens, and is not an advisable strategy. Also on display is a complete failure to read ahead (even 1 move) on my part. Not a pretty game. But completing a 19x19 game is an achievement in itself for a beginner. At a couple of stages I did ask my opponent whether I should resign there and then, but the question was never answered, presumably missed.