Wednesday, October 15, 2014

I Can Make a Ghost Head Now

It is almost Halloween. What better way to celebrate than with a ghost head? 

I have been enjoying the new Training System over at Guo Juan's Internet Go School now for nearly three months. I love my daily problem set. Some of the problems are harder than others. 

I remember a little over a week ago I was presented with a problem that resulted in a ghost head shape. It was very impressive, but my initial thought was, "Are you kidding me? I'll never learn this. There are too many moves." But each time the problem came along, and I failed to see it, I would move into the solution mode and play the problem out a few times.

A couple days ago I was a few moves into one of the problems and I saw a cut I said to myself, "The ghost head is coming after this cut if I can only make the right moves to bring it about." It felt so good just to know that I could see that the ghost head was coming up even if I couldn't remember every move to make it happen. Bear in mind that the problems are presented in random corners, random order, and random colors, so recognizing it was a real accomplishment.

That day I did it! For the first time I remembered all the moves and I made the ghost head without having to back up after a wrong move. That doesn't mean I will be able to do it ever time, but I did a very long hard sequence of moves to get that ghost head, and it felt so good.



Here is the starting position on the problem:



Here is the ending position on the problem:


As you can see a great number of moves are involved including the sacrifice of two stones at c2 and c1.

I'd like to share my statistics for my activity with the Training System. You can see that as I spend more time with the system I am doing more problems on a daily basis.







You can view your statistics by the day, month, or year. I'm hoping that they will add a week view at some time in the near future because that would be useful for me. I have requested that view, and they have been very responsive to suggestions for adding to the new Training System, so I believe I will see it at some time depending on the other things they want to add and their priorities.

I'll keep you all posted about how the system is working for me. If you decide to subscribe please let me know. We can talk about it.

My next post is going to be a look back at my first Go Congress in Lancaster in 1997. It will be coming soon.


4 comments:

Unknown said...

That's a great accomplishment! I can't say that I know what the ghost head is, but I can empathize with the feeling of finally grasping a concept intuitively after trying for so long. Congrats!

Terri said...

Thanks. It felt really good.

GJ said...

Terri, I really like your writing. Very nice to read, it makes me want to do fun things :)
I am so happy to know the Training system is helping you improve on Go and like Go more.
And thanks for your wonderful post on your Go study and our Training System. We will do our best to make it better and better.

Benjamin, ghost head is the english name I give to this shape. In Chinese it is 大头鬼.
A heavy, big dead head :)

Unknown said...

Ah. Thank you for the clarification! I hope to learn it in the near future!