PlayGo.gg Problems

 

I continue to enjoy the the lessons on PlayGo.gg, and spent over four and a half hours there last week working on Lessons. For a while I had been moving forward from one level to the next without bothering to play out the addition problems provided for each level.  After finishing the 900 Elo lessons I decided to check out the rest of the problems for all levels up to that strength before moving forward with the 1000 Elo lessons.

I discovered that there are a great many problems available, and that the site keeps track of which ones I have completed.  This makes it easy to return to doing problems, and to pick up where I left off.  I finished all problems up through the 900 Elo level. After that I returned to doing lessons, and am currently working on the 1000 Elo level.

I've actually changed the name of my activity category from Go the Game to PlayGo.gg because I don't think most people think of Go the Game as the name of the site.

Now for my usual Go Activities Report.

It was a very active week with over 24 hours of go activity. PlayGo.gg came in as the top activity.

I played six games and won four of them.  There were two Kango9 Group games among them because my week begins on Friday and it just worked out that way.

There are three auto match games on PlayGo.gg  The time I spend on games played there gets categorized as Live Play.

I Need to Play More Games

I've noticed that I have a tendency to play fewer games the week after I have a lesson with Clossius. Last week I had a lesson with him during which he reviewed seven of the games I had played in the previous two weeks. He reviewed all but the two games that BenKyo Baduk had reviewed for me.

Five or four games per week isn't terrible, but I know I can do better. But when I know that my lesson with Clossius is two weeks away I start to spend more time on activities other than actually playing.

My go activites for the week reflect this.

Though I spent nearly 21 hours on go activities, I spent only slightly more than two and half hours playing go. I managed to get in two games last week.

I need to play a lot more games for my next lesson with Clossius since BenKyo Baduk has already reviewed the two games above. I am planning to play some games on PlayGo.gg. I have already played three games there, and I have won each of them, which has earned me the Elo listed below.

Once the system sees me lose a few games that ought to change.

I Joined the Kango9 Community

Kango9 is a go teacher with a Discord server that he started in order to encourage people to play one serious game a week.  He is pairing people for weekly games and he asks that people who join the server either play a game each week, or at least contribute to discussion on the server.

Since joining a few weeks ago, I have played three games, and have another one scheduled for Friday night.

The image above is lifted from my games spreadsheet and shows a Kango9 Group game every week.

You can join the Kango9 Server here:

Now for my usual weekly Go Activities Report

It was a busy go week with 23.5 hours of go activity.

I didn't play a lot of games, only four, though I did win all of them.

I Missed Another Goose Tesuji

This was the last NAOL game of the season. I was black. White had passed. I shouldn't have.

Find the goose tesuji before scrolling down.

Wait for it,

Wait for it,

Wait for it,

Wait for it.

Ready, set, scroll.

Here is the goose.

I had looked long and hard at the cut at e3 earlier in the game. At the time white had not yet played the dame at e8, which changed everything.

This goose would have reversed the game, and I would have won by a small margin.

I was thinking that maybe white could do better by giving up the four white stones at e2, so I looked at that, but it would actually be worse.

It would have lost even more for white.

Anyone who is interested in seeing how the game unfolded can find it here.

Now for my weekly Go Activities Report.

It was a heavy week for Go Activities with nearly 27 hours spent. Live Play did not make it into the number one position. The category of Twitch - Patrick takes that honor, with Go The Game coming in third.

I played five games, most of them league games. I managed to win my Kango Group Game which I played against a fellow BenKyo League member. I used the new opening that BenKyo Baduk created for me, but played it as white. If anyone has an interest in seeing that game you can find it here.

I'm hoping not to have a missed goose next week. We'll see.

Try PlayGo.gg

I've recently been spending quite a bit of time on a new site for playing go and studying about go.  It is called PlayGo.gg  You can also get there by typing gothegame.com as well, which is how I found the site initially, and how I still get there. It hopes to be, for go, what chess.com is for Chess, and I believe that it may succeed. Currently you can do everything there for free. Eventually there will be fees involved which you can preview on the site.

I created a new activity under my Miscellaneous category for Go The Game, and ended up spending three hours there.  

Here is what I see when I log in.

It is a nice clean interface which is easy to understand and to navigate.

The only thing I have done so far there is to work through the lessons under Learn.  In spite of being 9k, I decided to start from the very beginning, and I am glad I did. I am currently working through 23 kyu problems. The site keeps track of how far I have gotten on my lessons, and it lets me pick up where I left off. When I click on Learn, I can redo problems or scroll down to where I can continue from where I left off.

I highly recommend these lessons for beginners.  The teacher goes to great lengths to explain in detail what is happening in the problems.  He shows every possible variation that can happen.  This is a level of detail I have found nowhere else for beginner problems. I expect, as the levels increase, that the level of detail will decrease as students are expected to be able to see the consequences of certain actions. However, at the very beginner levels this high level of detail is very refreshing.  Get your lessons in while you can watch as many as you want with no restrictions.

BenKyo Baduk has done a video about the site which you can watch here

And now for my weekly Go Activities Report:

My week was a little short on go activity with fewer than 20 hours.  As usual, my top activity was Live Play.  My newest activity, Go The Game, took second place. I also spent a good deal of time watching others play.  I can only assign an activity to one category, so a good portion of the time I spend on the category Twitch - Patrick is actually watching someone else play, and then part of it would be watching someone else review, but I let it just be covered by Twitch - Patrick.  Logging my time isn't so much about being 100% accurate as it is about counting up the time spent, and feeling that I have put in an adequate amount of effort.

It was not an especially good week in terms of my game performance.  I played six games, all with human beings, which is a plus.  However, I was unable to win a single one of them. They did turn out to be good material for a lesson with Clossius. He actually made me feel better about a couple of these games.  I am taking my lessons with Clossius on alternate weeks.

I'll have a new Go Activities Report next week, and hopefully something else interesting to write about.

I Missed a Goose Tesuji

Goose Tesuji is a term coined by Clossius (Shawn Ray), one of my teachers. It often results from filling dame, but it can actually be any weakness, especially near the end of the game.

In a recent NAOL game, with a long time Go Congress opponent, I totally missed a move that would have resulted in the capture of 11 stones minimally. It would have resulted in an even larger loss if my opponent had failed to step back, as necessary.

Take the time to see if you can find the first move for black in this board position. White had just passed, so it is black's turn.

You can check your answer by looking at the these two variations in the game record.

Click on the link below to find the above mentioned variations. Feel free to leave comments and variations of your own for both players while you are there.

NAOL Game

I consider myself lucky to have not needed this goose in order to win this game. However, it would have been nice to have at least seen it.  My intuition was drawing me to the area. I wanted to make something work, but I couldn't.  I saw the last remaining dame, which threatened a capture, but the threat was obvious and easily protected against.  My opponent made the proper response, and we moved on to scoring.

  

I failed to see that the proper move was from the inside rather than the outside. I hope to be able to see such problems in the future.  With that in mind, I headed over to Tsumego Dragon, and loaded up every Vital Wedge problem available to me.  There are 61 of them, and they range in difficulty from Level 0 to Level 3.

I did all 61 problems and only missed about four or five of them on the first try.

If you are interested in how the term Goose Tesuji came to be, you might enjoy this video:

The Story of the Goose Tesuji

Now for the report of my week of Go Activities:

Last week was a moderately active week for go activities. I put in over 17 hours. I did manage to get in a bit of time on my Internet Go School Spaced Repetition problems. I missed one day and am down to 12 vacation days. I have to be more vigilant.

My Return to Go Activity Tracking

For the past three weeks I have returned to tracking the time I spend on go using the IOS app "Now Then".  When I attended the U.S. Go Congress in 2024, in Portland, I had stopped tracking, as I do at every Congress.  I find it too annoying to track at a Congress. After returning home, I decided to take a break from tracking altogether for a while.  Unfortunately, I found that this pretty much put an end to blogging for me. After that I stopped tracking, I blogged seldom, and intermittently.

It wan't that I had nothing to say, but I found that reporting on my go activities was the trigger that prompted me to post.  When I did post, I often had more to say, but my trigger was gone, so the posts ended.  Therefore, I am here again with my finger on that familiar trigger, posting my beach balls and my activity lists for the world to see.

It was a busy week for go activities.  My week runs from Friday to Thursday because my lessons with Clossius fall on Fridays.  I did not have a lesson with Clossius last week. He was meeting with friends for a fun filled go weekend, so my usual Friday afternoon slot was unavailable.

Last week I spent over 23 hours on Go Activities.  My top activity was attending BenKyo Baduk's Invasion Workshop. It was a great workshop with good attendance. I look forward to more workshops with Ben.

I created an entirely new Twitch category for my friend Patrick, who has been an inspiration to me. He streams most of his league games, and if I am not doing something else at the time he is streaming, I enjoy watching.

I was shocked this morning to discover that I did not have any time devoted to Guo Juan's Internet Go School on my beach ball, so I logged on to see that I had missed quite a few days, and had lost quite a few vacation days as a result.  It is easy to forget to do my minimal number of problems if I am busy with other go activities. I had made a resolution last year to build my IGS vacation days back up to 70, and I had achieved that goal.  However, forgetfulness had chipped away at those days to a dangerous extent, and I must do better.

I am down to 17 vacation days, and I do not want to risk my 2491 days in a row. I'll lose that number if I run out of vacation days.  I have multiple reminders on my calendar to do my problems, but the reminders are easy to overlook. At my best, I finish all due problems every day. This earns me bonus points.  My recent forgetfulness has brought me to 953 problems due. Bonus points are not important now.  Building up vacation days is what is important.

I have a two hour lesson with Clossius coming up, which is not going to be live streamed.  I've got nine games that he can review for me.

The games that have not been reviewed since January 14h are available for Clossius to review. I'm saving my Go Magic League game for BenKyo Baduk to review.  That is a Lesson which I will share with my opponent, as I am encouraging him to join BenKyo League.

Here is a better view of the games available for review.  If there is no name in the right column the game has yet to be reviewed.

I might return to streaming my lessons with Clossius, but I'm currently feeling a bit self conscious, and prefer to keep them private for now.

Next week I will be back with another Go Activity report, and perhaps more thoughts to share.