Got a Mac - Kind of Off Topic, But Not Really

Given the fact that my career was that of an art educator it is amazing that it took me until now to get a Mac.  I finally took the plunge after sitting on the fence since 1984 when I abandoned the Apple IIe for my first IBM compatible.  I got a 20 inch iMac for my husband a couple weeks ago first, and then spent a few weeks getting to know his machine and trying to decide if I should get a macbook pro for myself, or if I should get an iMac too.  I decided on the 24 inch iMac because I still have a working Tablet PC, which I can count on to provide me with computing functionality when I travel.  When the tablet dies it will be time for a Mac Book Air or a Mac Book Pro.

I am not sure if I can meet all of my go needs on the Mac, but I sure hope so, because I have no intention of running windows on the machine.  I am planning to try to find Mac applications for all of my computing needs, not just go.  Those who know me can vouch that I am pretty compulsive about things, so when I make the switch to Mac I am committed.  You should have seen me when I sold Tupperware.  I do little halfway.

So far I have decided to be satisfied with iWork rather than Microsoft Office for productivity.  I might feel compelled to get a Mac version of the Adobe Creative Suite.  I do have an academic version of CS...  yes. the first version.  Since I no longer have academic status I might be compelled to take a course at a local community college and go on an academic spending spree after I decide what I think I need to have.  I am looking at the iLife applications to see if I can make do with them.  I have used Photoshop for so long though, that I think I would have a hard time making due with anything less than Photoshop Elements at least.  We'll see.

I renewed my subscription to lynda.com so I can watch tutorials on the Mac OS X operating system as well as tutorials for the iLife and iWork applications.  I'll watch everything I can and then cancel the subscription until I think I need to go on another learning frenzy.

What is kind of funny is that the very day my iMac arrived at my door I read and article in the Apple RSS feed set up in my mail program on the iMac.  The article was titled "Meet the new iMac"  I just have to figure that it's only a couple hundred dollars of money I'm out by buying at the wrong time.  If I had waited just a week I would have gotten more Mac for my money... more memory... more speed... more of just about everything,  but you have to buy some time.  Your technology is always going to be old soon, just not usually the same day you get it.

One of the things I invested in is a .Mac account, which comes with an email account and also with disk space and the ability to publish web pages and to sync multiple Macs over the web.  Given that I already have multiple Macs and stand to accumulate more, this sounds like a good thing to me.  One of the things I will do with my .Mac account is to eventually make my lesson sgf files available for download so I can share them with others.  I'll let you all know when they are available.

AGA Ratings Prediction Pans Out

After the Cherry Blossom Tournament in Philadelphia where I went 2-2, I predicted that any ratings change would be glacial and negative. I was right about that as the screen capture from my favorite note keeping application "EverNote" shows...

My rating decreased from -11.39507 to -11.41904

My sigma went from 0.26936 to 0.25708

It's just fun to keep track of.

Back to 8k

I finally made it back to 8k on KGS this morning after winning an auto match game.  It was a 0.5 victory.  It feels good to be 8k again.  I want to continue to play rated on a regular basis, perhaps one game each morning whether I feel like it or not ... kind of like a daily vitamin... but I will bask in the glory of being 8k for today and not risk losing it, at least until my friends have had a chance to see that I managed to make my come back.

Interesting KGS Ratings Graph

Yesterday I was told my one of my students that my ratings graph on KGS looks like a heart attack. It is actually very interesting looking with one large upward spike and one large downward spike. The rest of the graph is pretty solid 8k. Both of the spikes were the result of streaks of winning and loseing respectively in an atttempt to get rid of a "?" at the end of my rating.
After my recent downward spike I have worked my way back up to 9k, which I hope to maintain by playing rated on a consistent basis using automatch. I like automatch because I find less ego involved in those games than games against people I know.

It looks like I have about seven months before the upward spike scrolls off the graph. Until then it will be a very interesting image.

Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Tournament

I am really glad I decided not to self promote yesterday at the Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Tournament at the University of Pennsylvania. I had less than stellar performance with a record of 2-2. I lost my first two games and I won my last two. Any movement in my rating is likely to be glacial, and negative, at that. I did enjoy all four of my games, however, and there were interesting things about each of them. I recorded them all, and I will be reviewing them with Mr. Yang at our next lesson on Thursday.

I'll recount the highlights of each game here.

My first game was against an opponent I had played for the first time at the New Jersey Open in February. This time I had white against him. The game was very close. I believe I missed an opportunity to either kill or make seki in the upper left. I will find out for sure on Thursday. At the end of the game I spent an inordinate amount of time counting the board three times to determine if I needed to make a protective move in an area that looked s if it might need it. There were no dame left. Finally I realized that being white I had to either pass a stone or play within my own territory anyway, so the protective move became a no brainer. After we both passed my opponent told me that he assumed I had won, and I told him that if so, it was by no more than 2.5. We counted and saw that I had a 1.5 victory, or at least we thought I did. We approached the desk to report the results only to discover that there had been no komi for white. We were both surprised. So what had been a 1.5 victory turned quickly to a loss. This was a lesson to me to actually LOOK at the pairings rather than just accompany my opponent to our table on his say so. Let me be clear that my opponent had not looked at the komi either, but has also assumed 7.5 for white. There's always something new to learn about how to conduct oneself at a tournament.

My second game was against someone I had played two or three times at the Montgomery Go Club. When sitting down to play, my opponent commented that we are very evenly matched, which we both know to be true. An interesting game was sure to follow. I had black and my opponent had komi. We had both checked to be sure about komi after my earlier surprise. In this game my opponent did hane at the head of two stones after I invaded the lower right corner from a low one space approach to a hoshi stone. I extended to the 2nd line and cut after he extended to the 2nd line as well. My understanding is that this should have been successful, but I may have played it wrong, or the position may have been complicated by an additional white stone. I managed a successful invasion on the top, and did my little "snaking" routine where I managed to reduce one of my opponent's areas. At the end of the game white (with komi) had won by 7.5, so it was a jigo on the board. He would have won by 0.5 without komi anyway so I can't complain.

My third game was against a first time tournament player. He was a gentleman who had learned some lessons at the hands of the children in his first two games. In his first game he learned not to feel compelled to match the speed of opponents whose height does not exceed the bunny's ears at the amusement park. Just because one's opponent is rolling his eyes and acting bored is no reason to pick up the pace. I told him this after that game, and suggested that it is a much better strategy to allow the small children to figgit and look about the room. It breaks their concentration. In his second game he learned that his opponent might not remind him to hit his clock after each play. During our game, unfortunately, in spite of hitting his clock he ran out of time. I felt bad about that, and I would have said something if I had seen it coming, but I didn't notice until the red light on the clock started flashing. And not being familiar with how that clock handles byo yomi I had to call over the tournament director to confirm that time had, in fact, run out. It was sad, but it was a win. It was a close game anyway.

I toyed with the idea of byeing out of the fourth round and going home early since I was doing so poorly, but I was having fun and decided to stay. My fourth game was against a 12k. This time I had to give 2H. This game illustrates dramatically the extent to which I can gain a lead and then proceed to make idiotic mistakes to lose it. In this case, however, the lead was enough to result in a 9.5 victory even after allowing a large dead group to spring back to life. I even allowed a few dead stones to expand their numbers, and to result in a seki. This stole away at least twenty points from my lead. The highlight of that game was the fact that as white I was able to play the last dame by filling the third empty point in the seki, thus avoiding the need to play a stone in my own territory or pass a stone. We both had a good laugh over this. The huge seki made the board much easier to count since there was this vast expanse of stones we didn't have to disturb. :-)

I was actually ashamed of my fourth game, thinking that I did not deserve to win after having made two such huge mistakes. However, a dan player who reviewed it for me last night on KGS told me it was a very good game with advanced life and death reading just before my lapse and very pretty shape for white.

I know I am getting more from my tournament games by reviewing them myself and with stronger players, and by showing them to Mr. Yang. I am remembering more from each game, and I am particularly seeing more life and death situations in my games during the games and in review.

Buzzsaw Fearlessly Plays Five Rated Games In a Row

In keeping with my desire to be more fearless I decided it was time to play some rated games again. So I set up automatomatch on KGS for slow rated games up to 2h, and played five in a row. I watched my rank drop one stone per game up until I won the last game of the five games.

After losing four even games in a row I was not thrilled with having to give two stones of handicap in my fifth game. But I felt considerable better about it when my opponent's first move was to directly contact my first move, which I had played at a hoshi point. I felt as if I might have the conceptual upper hand.

I won that game by 30.5 to solidify my rank at 12k, which is one stone lower than my AGA rating. I feel so normal now, and liberated too.

Impressed With The Enthusiasm Of A New Player

On January 28, 2008 I got a phone call from a beginner who lives in New Jersey who found my name and phone number of the AGA web site as the contact person for Wings Across Calm Water Go Club. He was looking for a local go club to attend. I had to tell him that Wings is a virtual club but I helped him register on KGS and played a 9x9 game with him and reviewed it.

I have reviewed some games with him since and helped him a little. I count him as one of my students, but mostly I have watched him play. Because he hurries from one game to the next so quickly he has little time for review, but I enjoy watching him. At first I was not so sure that rushing from game to game was the best thing to do, but I have come to think that the results speak for themselves. He is 16 kyu already, and not long ago he was 21 kyu, which was his first stable rating. At his level it seems that playing a lot without much review seems to be a great strategy for improvment.

What impresses me the most is the way he just plays... plays... plays, and rated too!!!

I looked at his games list today and was surprised to see only three games yesterday. But then I saw he had played 17 the day before, and 14 the day before that. Granted, these were weekend days, but still, that is a lot of games to play in two days.

I would love to recapture that enthusiasm and total lack of fear. Okay, I am not sure I ever had that enthusiasm and total lack of fear, but I did drive through a hurricane in 1970 to play a game of go, so I deserve SOME credit. Perhaps I need to develop that sense of enthusiasm and lack of fear.

If I am lucky I will meet my new go friend who has been so inspiring at the Cherry Blossom tournament at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on Sunday this coming weekend. He would be playing in his first AGA rated tournament if he shows up. And if he enters as a 16 kyu it is conceivable that we might end up playing depending on the field.

NJ Open Games Reviewed With Mr. Yang

During our regular lesson on Thursday of last week Mr. Yang reviewed the first four games of the NJ Open with me. We will review the fifth game of this tournament at our next lesson on the 20th of March.

As much as I enjoy playing a game with Mr. Yang and reviewing it as we usually do in our lessons, I think that I actually enjoy reviewing games I have played with others even more. When Mr. Yang and I play a lesson game together I realize that Mr. Yang is playing in a way to keep the game reasonable. He obviously isn't going to play like a 7p. He sets up opportunities for me to punish him, and other situations which we will review later. When we go over the game he will tell me when I have missed opportunities, and made suboptimal moves. He'll ask for better moves. Sometimes I can find them. However, if I thought a move I had made was okay thrity minutes before, and I had failed to find the right move at that time, there is a good chance I will have a hard time finding it during the review. It is a different story with my tournament games, however. I played the NJ Open games nearly two weeks prior to their review. I went over those games a number of times including during the hours immediately prior to our lesson. I asked myself which moves Mr. Yang would consider slow or unnecessary, and which opportunities I had missed. I had tried to find the moves for which he might want me to seek alternatives. As a result I felt better prepared when I was being asked questions.

Another interesting aspect of reviewing tournament games is that Mr. Yang doesn't know what is coming up in the game. In one case there was a corner situation where Mr. Yang showed me what I should have played assuming that I hadn't played it. Then he realized that he was actually in the main line of play and he said, "Oh you played that."

I got a "wow" (with two exclaimation marks) when I played a corner invasion unlike my usual self.

pala [-]: wow!!
buzzsaw [8k?]: yeah wow is right
buzzsaw [8k?]: not like terri huh?
pala [-]: great forcing move
pala [-]: you are new terri
buzzsaw [8k?]: but I do get a little whimpy in a while

This is the second tournament where I have shared all of the games with Mr. Yang afterwards. I am really enjoying doing this. There is something emotionally risky about it because I have promised myself to show them all... the good, the bad, the ugly, and the just plain stupid like the moment in which I failed to make an obvious move to create a seki. But the advantage of exposing myself in this way is that it makes me particularly mindful of my play. I know it will come under scrutiny later because I will not allow myself to weed out games that show me in a bad light. I feel safe in doing this because Mr. Yang has known me for so long and I am very comfortable in revealing myself to him. I don't feel the need to hide anything because he is always supportive. I also believe that it is to my advantage as a student for him to see what the flow of a tournament is like for me, even if it isn't pretty. I don't worry that some of my games might not have good analysis potential because I have come to realize that Mr. Yang finds valuable lessons in any game with which he is presented.

We ended our analysis on Thursday with the game where I failed to make seki, my only loss in the tournament. It resulted in the following comments:

pala [-]: oh no.
buzzsaw [8k?]: I resign obviously
buzzsaw [8k?]: end of game
pala [-]: really painful

It's great to have a teacher who understands how you feel.

Four Wins At NJ Open Gets Me 0.06793 Rating Point Increase

I don't really believe in self promotion since I play in tournaments on a regular basis. I would like to think that if I do exceptionally well at a tournament that I could improve half a rating point. My results at the NJ Open, however, prove otherwise. The results are in.

Before the tournament I was rated -11.46300. After the tournament I was rated -11.39507. This is a ratings improvement of 0.06793, less than a tenth of a ratings point. Plus my sigma went down and is now at a low 0.26936. Having a lower sigma should slow things down even more.

Given these results I would expect to break into 10k if I can go 4-1 at my next four tournaments. This just doesn't seem right to me. It isn't that I am in such a hurry to be 10k. I would just like to see results that make sense. Less than a tenth of a point for four wins just doesn't make sense to me. The fact that one of the opponents I won against had self promoted two stones didn't help, and is all the more reason to resist self promotion myself to avoid providing a future opponent with similarly disappointing results.

At the end of the month I will be playing in a tournament at the University of Pennsylvania and will have to decide at what rank to enter. I will probably enter at my AGA rating if for no other reason than to see how small the increase in rating will be if I happen to win all of my games.

Blog Celebrates One Year Anniversary A Few Weeks Late

I have been retired for over a year now. It is hard to believe how quickly time passes in retirement. The old saying, "time flies when you are having fun" is true for me.

I started this blog about a week after I retired, and the year anniversary of the beginning of this blog passed without my even being aware of it. Today I checked the date on the first post, and I realized the anniversary had come and gone about three weeks ago. In the first year I posted 54 times, just slightly over once a week on average.

Thanks to those who have followed along, and especially to those who have made comments along the way.

New Jersey Open - Day Two

During my first game of the day I played a young lady who had also gone 3-0 the day before. I tried to make the center of the board less valuable by extending into it, and was doing a pretty good job of it. It got to the point where it looked as if I was going to be able to kill a large number of stones in the middle, which would been even better than just making the middle less valuable. I was told by a dan player that I should have ignored the threat to my group in the upper left to make a clean enclosure of the stones in the center, but I didn't do that. I was afraid to make the game hinge on the kill. I did manage to separate the center stones, but unfortunately some of my surrounding stones got disconnected and it was going to be necessary to make seki. Sadly I had a moment of blindness when I should have thrown a second stone into an eye to prevent my opponent from capturing the single stone to make two eyes. Instead I chose to fill an outside liberty. It was stupid and it should have been obvious. If I had been watching someone else's game it would have been. I should have walked away from the game to gain composure when I realized I needed to make seki. The move was something I ordinarily would have seen, but in the excitement of the game I made a big mistake. I am not sure that seki would even have been good enough after part of my group in the upper left had been killed. I'll look into that later. I'm not ready to know that now. The board position at the time of my fatal mistake is shown below. I played A, but I needed to play B instead. I am white. One really good thing about this game was the way I handled the lower left corner. My opponent tried very hard to kill it, but I kept it alive.

In my second game of the day I managed to get a resignation from my opponent after I made a decisive kill. After it was pointed out to me in analysis that my opponent could have made a ko for life by playing at o1, I didn't feel quite so smug about the kill. But if one's opponent doesn't see the ko, then the ko doesn't exist. I was euphoric from the kill and wanted to avoid the mistake of failing to take a break at the appropriate time. I went for a break to clear my head so I would not do something stupid in the aftermath of the kill. That has happened to me more than once. The second game of the day is shown below at the point of resignation. When I returned from my break my opponent resigned. I was really tired by then, and it was a relief not to have to play the end game. I am black.

My final result for the tournament was 4-1. That earned me a nice certificate suitable for framing, and a cash prize of $40.00, which paid for my playing fee and then some. As much as it would have been nice to go 5-0 I am glad things worked out the way they did. If I had not lost the 4th game I would not have had the valuable lesson about seki, which I am unlikely to forget. I also would not have been matched against my 5th opponent so I would have missed our game, which I found to be very interesting.

I do not expect my record to be sufficient to bring me up to 10k from 11k.

It is my plan to have Mr. Yang review the NJ Open games during our next lessons.

New Jersey Open - Day One

Yesterday was the first day of the New Jersey Open. Some die hard go players traveled from the Baltimore and D.C. area, but snow kept many players away this year. I think there were only 33 tables, and there were very few players weaker than myself.

I won all three of my games yesterday and I am going back hoping to win one or two more. But even if I lose both games today I will have won more than I lost, so I am in a good position.

I will do my best to keep a calm mind. I know my go skills are up to the challenge if I can just keep my mind calm.

Played Rated Again

After a few weeks of having that nasty question mark attached to my rank on KGS I decided to play some rated games to get rid of it. Yesterday I used automatch to find my games. The first game was a 0.5 komi game against a solid 8k, which I lost by 20.5, a significant defeat, especially since there was no real fighting. That loss dropped me from 7k? to 9k?. Well, that just couldn't be allowed to stand. So I fired up another automatch game right away. I ended up as white against a solid 11k giving two stones of handicap, which I knew would be a challenge. I play white often, but I am still much more comfortable as black even when there is no handicap.

I actually was ahead by 4.5 according to Score Estimator just before I played the winning move. In the screen capture below you can see the shadow of the stone that I intend to play at h19. Because black made his second eye at j19, I was able to cut at h18. I would then be able to capture the black stones to the right because black could not approach from the inside because of a shortage of libeties, but I could approach from the outside.

The screen capture below shows the position at the point at which black resigned. Score Estimator shows W+37.5 at this point. I was glad not to have to depend upon superior end game play to win the game because I am okay in the end game these days, but I hardly have superior end game skills. I would not have been happy falling to 10k, so it was a good thing to get it over with painlessly... well, at least for me. :-)

Yang Workshop In Evanston

I spent last weekend in Evanston, Illinois at a two day Yang Workshop. This is the fourth year I have attended this particular workshop, and it was a great event as usual, even though it was a day shorter than usual this year.

After the Oza I decided to have Mr. Yang review all six of my Oza games using about thirty minutes of my regular lesson time for each game. Although I had reviewed games with Mr. Yang online during my lesson time previously, that was many years ago, and I had never reviewed my tournament games. I had only reviewed games I had played online. So this was the first time that Mr. Yang had seen any of my tournament games.

I enjoyed reviewing the games, and definitely got value from it. But one of the main reasons I wanted to do it was because I wanted Mr. Yang to get a feel for what a typical tournament is like for me. It was my hope that seeing the situations in which I end up with other players might impact in some way the situations that Mr. Yang might choose to create in our lessons games. I believe that everything he sees about the way I play has potential to influence what he does in our lessons, if not consciously, then subconsciously, based on what he knows about how I play, and what I need to practice.

Mr. Yang said something at the workshop which confirmed my belief that he had"filed away" some information from those Oza game reviews, and added it to his knowledge of "how Terri plays". There was a point in a game review or a lecture at which it was appropriate to play a 2nd line move against a 3rd line move which would then allow for a double sente move on the side. He said, "Terri makes this kind of move often." That would not be so impressive a statement if I actually got the chance to play such moves in our lesson games. But given the fact that our lesson games don't often get beyond the middle game, he had to have made that statement based on what he had recently observed in my Oza games, which we reviewed to the end. I am only one of many students that Mr. Yang had taught in the past month, which makes his observation even more impressive to me.

At the workshop I made it a point to show Mr. Yang one of the video recordings I had made of our lessons. He said he had never seen anyone make that kind of recording before. It was just like watching a KGS lecture only it was our lesson.

We did experience some significant lag in our last lesson, however, which makes the video recordings less valuable since stones and text sometimes appear very quickly in spurts when lag occurs. In those cases it is necessary to look at the sgf file to make sense of things. I told Mr. Yang that it is more efficient to view the sgf file from a time standpoint, but it is nice to be able to watch the lesson in real time as well.

Slight Ratings Increase From Oza

I went 3-3 at the Oza, so I could have stayed the same, or I could have had a slight decrease or a slight increase in my rating. As it turned up my rating improved slightly. Actually it is so slight that it is pretty much like staying the same.

Before the tournament my rating was -11.52063 with a sigma of 0.31384.

After the tournament my rating was -11.46308 with a sigma of 0.28265.

I experienced a ratings improvement of 0.05755 points and my sigma went down by 0.03119.

I don't think that going 3-2 at the NJ Open will be enough to break into the 10 kyu range, and I am not comfortable with a self promotion to 9 kyu. Since the AGA is not currently allowing self promotions of one rank it looks as if it's going to be a tough battle to 10k.

A Curious 13k Makes My Day

I was reviewing a game for a student of mine by the name of ramatheson on KGS. We had an observer, and after I had shown my student how he was making small center moves when there were big end games moves to be had by both sides our observer decided to chime in.

The following conversation took place...

teamochi [13k]: Are you really 7kyu?
buzzsaw [7k?]: yeah
buzzsaw [7k?]: do I seem weaker?
buzzsaw [7k?]: I am really 7k
ramatheson [13k]: Are you really 13k ?
ramatheson [13k]: :)
buzzsaw [7k?]: I have a ? cause I have not played rated in a few weeks
teamochi [13k]: Well you seem stronger than any 7kyu I've seen
buzzsaw [7k?]: I just know more than any 7k you have ever seen
buzzsaw [7k?]: thanks for the complement though
buzzsaw [7k?]: I study with a 7 dan professional
buzzsaw [7k?]: so I have a good theoretical base

Whew! I was scared there for awhile.

Later in the review I thanked him for the complement and told him that he had made my day.

The Sweatshirt I Wore At The Oza

I had a sweatshirt made up at cafe press with this image on it, and wore it the first day of the Oza. It is a 9x9 go board with the face of Yilun Yang 7p embedded in the grain of the board. I did the work in Photoshop. The artwork had originally been done for a tshirt for a New Jersey Yang Workshop in 2004, and I used just the artwork to create the sweatshirt with no lettering.

To create the artwork I took a photograph I had taken at a previous Yang workshop and made it a grayscale image. I then used a posterizing filter on it to reduce it to about six shades of gray. Each shade of gray was assigned a color. Then the grain was hand drawn with a graphics tablet, then the grid was superimposed over the image. The board is actual size, so if the sweatshirt were placed flat on a table you could actually play a game on it.

Oza Baltimore - Day Two

It is the day afer the Oza and I am very tired. I didn’t get home until after 11:00 PM and it was a long trip home with much to think about. I slept until 9:00 AM to recover, which is a few hours past my usual wakeup time so I am rested, yet groggy.

Day two of the Oza started off well with a win which brought my record to 3-1, and provided the promise of at least a face saving result of 3-3 by tournament’s end, which is exactly what I ended up getting.

The day started off with the fourth game, in which I played black. It was a peaceful and fairly uneventful game which was quite close through the late middle game. It was touch and go though, and was anyone’s game. Fairly late in the game my opponent attempted to invade a solid corner and tried to set up a ko for life, but I declined to play it because it really wasn’t a ko at all. It just looked like one. Then later on we were putting finishing touches on the edges of territory. I played a move which I expected my opponent would realize was atari against six stones. This move required that he capture one of my stones to save his six. I never saw it as a potential trick play, and I never though that he would miss the threat. It had to be played eventually since it was forcing and would gain a point for me and lose a point for him when he took, but I guess the move was played late enough that it was not perceived as the real threat that it was. That move turned a possible win into a sure win. But at the end of the game we determined that it had not been game deciding afterall, which made me feel much better about it. I’m sure my opponent felt better as well. No one likes to win or lose a game based on that kind of oversight. After pushing around the stones during the scoring phase and seeing that it was a clear win we never actually bothered to come up with the exact number of points, but it appeared not to be over ten, yet less than twenty.

After my third win of the tournament I was destined to meet stronger opposition in the form of a 9 kyu during my fifth game. At least I got to play black again. I lost this game by 18.5. The dan players who reviewed the game afterwards liked my position early on… up through move 70, in fact. They said that I lost the game because I failed to invade the lower left corner at the 3-3 in a timely fashion. In addition to that, I had earlier failed to extend from a three stone wall on the bottom in favor of adding a stone to a framework in the upper right in response to an approach move which I thought would be followed by an invading pincer. Late in the game I did attempt the invasion at the 3-3 after it had been reinforced with an additional stone by my opponent. I made a valiant effort at life, which failed. I probably should not have forced my opponent to connect three in a row to make the killing nakade shape, which I knew he was strong enough to recognize as the killing move. People are known to make mistakes, however, so I did force that move on the off chance that the proper response might have been missed. I stopped short of capturing the nakade and making him throw in to complete the kill. Having made the nakade in the first place there was no doubt in my mind that he would throw in. I see no point in playing a truly insulting move. After game five I was 3-2 and feeling optimistic about the possibility of winning again, especially since I was not likely to meet a 9k again. However, another win was not to be.

My sixth and last game was against a 10 kyu. I had the white stones in my hand again, which is never easy for me, but I gave it my best shot. Up until this point all of my opponents had been clearly at least twenty years younger than myself, although I had played only one child. My last opponent was in my own age range, and obviously experienced. My opponent took a fairly clear lead in this game, and gave me some trouble with a group along the top which he made annoyingly small, and then attempted to kill. He had stones on either side of the eye which bordered the upper side. He did a hane on the first line and when I did atari he did hane on the other side so that I could not block without being captured. I expected this after the first hane. I could read that far, but I saw no choice but to atari his first hane and see where it might lead. As much as my atari was probably death, failure to atari was SURE death. After his second hane from the outside I considered resignation, but I looked more carefully and I realized that if I threw in and he took I could squeeze and he could not connect to the second hane due to a shortage of liberties. I had not seen that until my atari and his second hane were in place. I would never have been able to read that situation a year ago even after the addition of those two moves, and I am certainly glad that I didn't talk myself out of continuing based on how far I actually could read. I've been known to do that on occasion. When I threw in my opponent appeared to be surprised, but he then read it too, and connected out the stone that was short allowing me to save my group. After I managed to live along the top my opponent knew I could read… at least a little bit. Another highlight of this sixth game was my invasion of the upper left, which was necessary because I was behind. I thought it was destined to die, but I managed to make it live. I am going to have some stronger players look at that position. I thought I knew the killing move for my opponent, but after trying it for black in a variation I found that I was able to refute it. Maybe the invasion did deserve to win afterall. Stronger players will be able to tell me. Since it was the last game of the day I didn’t have anyone look at it yet, but I will load it up on KGS for some friends to take a look. After living in the upper left I thought I had a chance, but I needed more to win. I next managed to reduce the lower left quite successfully by jumping across a 3rd line stone from the 2nd line to the 2nd line which my opponent could not cut off. After that I counted myself ahead by a couple of points, but I think I may have been wrong. In any case I had a group in the lower right that needed an extra stone thrown in to avoid seki, and I was afraid that I could not afford to play that stone and gambled that my opponent would view it as alive. As it turned out my opponent jumped into that group. I avoided death, and got the seki I deserved. I’m still not sure if it cost me the game or not, but I did lose by about ten points, and I think there were only eight points in that territory to begin with, so throwing in a stone would have had me down by three points at the end if that were the case. The game brought my opponent’s record to 3-3 and my own to 3-3 so I figure we both got what we deserved regardless.

Aside from my first game loss, my three wins came early in the tournament. I consider myself lucky in that respect because I was able to play stronger players in my last two games. I played white three times and I played black three times. The beauty of the system is that even though it is nearly impossible to go 6-0, it is also nearly impossible to go 0-6. If your rating is accurate you are going to hit a wall somewhere and your fortune will be reversed, whether that means eventually winning, or eventually losing. 6-0 records are for children, beginners, and players who don’t play regularly enough to have their rating keep up with their improvement. And every once in awhile I guess someone else has a couple really good days, in which case they deserve to go 6-0.

One positive for me to focus on from this tournament is that my stamina was obviously up, and I credit that as much to physical exercise as to lessons. Heaven knows I don’t play enough, nor do I do enough tsumego. I have recently started doing cardio activity on an almost daily basis, which is supposed to be as good for your brain as it is for the rest of your body. Another positive is that aside from my swift resignation in my first game, all of my games were reasonably close. I include the second game resignation because if it had not been for cutting off a group the game would have gone on to completion, and it would have been a close one, which I think I still would have won.

In spite of telling myself that 3-3 if good and fair, I will admit to some disappointment that I had not been able to pull off a 4-2 record given the difference between my AGA rating and my KGS rating, as well as the observations of so many that my play has improved dramatically in the year since retirement. The breakthrough they have been predicting will come some day, but apparently the time is not now. There will be more tournaments soon. For now I must focus on study, stamina, and playing. These are the things that will make the difference in the long run.

I am very happy to have gotten so much analysis from stronger players between games at the Oza, and I am going to seek even more review online to add to the lessons to be learned from this tournament. I may have had three losses, but I only had one game to be ashamed of.

I had a great time. I have a Yang workshop coming up in four weeks to look forward to in the Chicago area, which will be followed the next week by the New Jersey Open in Princeton, which will be followed a month later by a one day tournament at The University of Pennsylvania. My Winter go calendar is full, and life is good.

Oza Baltimore - Day One

The Oza has been great fun. I've had an opportunity to meet NannyOgg, Flameblade and others for the first time as well as the opportunity to touch base with old friends from across the East Coast at least.

I played the lightning round at the reception the night before the first day of the tournament. There were four players to a table and we played three games with one player staying put and the others rotating around the table. Time constraints were 10 minutes basic time, sudden death. I don't play blitz online, so it was not like me to do this, but I had a glass of wine in one hand and a go stone in the other, and it worked out okay. I actually managed my clock very well, and won one of those games. It was fun.

In the main event I went 2-1 in the first day.

I played my first game against a very young girl who was quite a strong fighter, and who I observed later forcing resignations from her future opponents. I was in lightning go mode from the evening before, and unfortuantely got drawn into a quick game, which I resigned ten minutes into the game from a hopeless position. The slips hadn't even come out. How embarressing. Given the fact that four hours had been devoted to the round, I had time on my hands. My opponent had played a Chinese Opening, which I did not know how to handle. Later Massaki Hamaguchi, who is mh online and our Wings 2008 League King, showed me how to handle the Chinese opening as white, and also how to handle some other common opening situations to avoid a fighting game.

In my second game of the day I played black. I got to play my usual opening of 3-4, and 4-4 with a low knight's move shimari extension from the 3-4. I actually got to extend from that shimari in the optimal direction down the side, which surprised me since I nearly never get that opportunity. The game was ultra peaceful. I played quite solidly and succeeded in getting at least a 25 point lead. I then cut off a group, and a resignation swiftly followed. What was really eventful about this game, however, was the successful invasion which I played very lightly which drew praise from even the dan players.

In my thrid game of the day I was white again playing against another Chinese opening. Thanks to the advice from mh I knew enough to appoach the 3-4 with a large knight's move. But what really made me proud of my win in that game was that I came from behind in the end game and kept sente. Although I should have gone after the two double sente end game moves one move earlier, my opponent answered my small move in the middle of the board, and I went on to get those two sente moves by extending to the second line from the third line in both cases before doing hane from the second line to the first, thus maintaining sente and going on to get the other really big end game moves. The two double sente end game moves alone won the game, which was W+8.5 with komi being only 6.5, so I actually won it on the board by 2 points. It was slow, solid, and close.

I can hardly wait to see what the second day brings.

Go Blog You Should Read

I have added a fairly new go blog to my list of links. It is Sol's Blog of Go and Fun

Sol.ch, is a strong dan player, a regular poster on Go Discussions, and has just recently decided to enter the world of Go Blogging. He has done so in a big way with posts full of real go content including diagrams from his games. I've enjoyed reading his posts, and have responded to a couple of them.

If you haven't discovered this blog yet, please stop by and take a look.