My Week of Go Activities

 

It was a relatively light week for Go Activity with only about 34 hours. A good deal of that times was spent on Live Play.

I had to work extra hard to achieve my new goal of a minimum of five rated games because I played three league games and four tournament games this week. None of those games were rated on the go servers, though the Canadian Open counted toward my Canadian rating which is 8 kyu.

I played two rated games on OGS on Monday, and ranked back up to 7 kyu with the first game.

Since Fox decided to work for me again, for no apparent reason I might add, I logged in on the last day of my week, Thursday, to play three rated games. I met my goal of five rated games.

During my lesson last week I got Clossius to say something he has never said to a student before. He told me to do fewer go problems. Granted, I had done over 2,000 go problems the previous week, and I had played precious few rated games. It wasn't so much that he objected to the go problems. He just felt that my time would be better spent playing more games.

You can see below that I cut down on go problems. I stopped after topping 1,000.

Below is the start of my effort to rank up from my new 6k status on Fox. I have two losses and one win. The win was a resignation. I was ahead by about 9 points anyway, but I managed to cut off a group of stones and kill them. Resignation followed quickly.

2021 Canadian Open: The First Weekend

Last year I played in the Canadian Open and took first place in the 9k/8k band. This year I am playing again. The band is 9k/6k, so I doubt I would have a chance even if I played well, since I am in the lower part of the band.

I started out strong this year winning both of my game on Saturday. I did less well on Sunday losing both of my games. So at the end of the first weekend I am 2:2 with little chance to win a prize unless I do very well next Saturday.

Last year I entered with my AGA rating of 9 kyu. I earned a Canadian rating of 8kyu last year. and have kept it active through Canadian League play.

What I found very interesting is that all four of my games so far have been with Canadian League players. The first day the two players I defeated were in my own Canadian League. However, they had both beaten me in league play, so I felt really good about being able to win against them in the tournament. 

On the second day I lost against players two ranks higher than myself. One was in the league immediately above me. The other was two leagues above me so I was really pleased with my small loss.

Here are the games records:

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

I'm looking forward to rounds 5 and 6 next Saturday. 

There will be three rounds of Pair Go on Sunday.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I put in nearly 40 hours on Go Activities this week. I only managed to play eight games, but spent nearly six hours playing them.

I only had two rated games this week. One of my free games should have been rated but I forgot to check the rating check box. That is too bad because I won that one. If I had checked that box I would still be 7k on OGS.

I ranked down to 8k on OGS this week, and need to work my way back up.

I still can't play on Fox because of some issue I can't resolve. I suspect it may have something to do with the way Parallels is configured.

I was told that I may be doing too many go problems. I've been told to do fewer tsumego problems and to play more games, especially rated games. I need at least five rated games a week.

I played the first round of the Canadian Open today and won that game. Yea me!

Trouble Upgrading Fox Go Server Under Parallels Desktop

I am publishing this blog post specifically to ask for help. I have provided a link to this on the Go Facebook Group.

I installed Parallels Desktop so I could use the Fox Go Server on my MacBook Pro. I have been playing on the Fox Go Server for a couple of months now with mixed results.

The first problem I experienced was the inability to download my games. At first I was able to download games. Then, even if I could get my games list to open, I was unable to get a game to load so I could download it. I had to resort to asking friends to download my sgf files for me. This was a major annoyance because it meant that I was unable to review my losses in a timely fashion. I also felt as if I was inconveniencing my friends.

The next problem is that when it became necessary to upgrade the Fox server program I discovered that under Parallels the outdated Fox program could not download the updated version of the program.

There was a solution to this. I found that it was necessary to drag the old program to the trash and download the updated program from the internet and install it fresh. I was able to do this at least five times without a problem.

A friend pinned a link to the Fox Server download on a Discord server that we both use. So I was always able to find the download link when I needed it. That was really helpful.

Just recently, however, I ran into a new problem with updating.

I downloaded the new exe file and installed it. 

I chose "yes".

After downloading an updated Fox server exe file, and installing it, the program wanted to update. 

This made no sense because previously the new installed Fox Server programs did not need to update because they were recognized as the latest files. The fact that it was attempting to download was a big problem.

Clicking on "yes" starts an unending attempt at downloading.

I tried dragging the program to the trash and downloading multiple times, but each time I ended up in an endless download attempt after installing the new exe file.

I am hoping that the file on the web is still outdated, and that the new file will be uploaded there soon. That would explain the problem. However, if every new exe insists on downloading after installation I will never be able to play on Fox again under Parallels.

Does anyone know what is going on?

I am thinking I might need to buy a Windows machine exclusively to run Fox and Katrain.

Parallels is worthless to me if I can't run Fox under it.

My Weekly Go Activities

 

I spent nearly 40 hours on Go Activities this week. I only played seven games this week, but I spent nearly six hours playing them. That is nearly an hour per game. All but two of them were unrated league games played on either KGS or OGS. The only two rated games I played were on Fox. 

Based on my recent performance on Fox I knew that I was likely to rank down. I only needed two more losses to accomplish that. So relatively late in the night on Wednesday I bit the bullet and played those game. 

I now have a fresh start on Fox as a 6 kyu. 

I have continued my concentration on Go Problems this week. I met my goal of over one thousand problems on the 101 Weiqi web site.

I believe that working on go problems helped me win my most recent Canadian League Game. There was a life and death problem in the upper right of the board. I took the time to read it. I trusted my reading. After my opponent gave up and played elsewhere I continued to trust my reading, and I did tenuki as well. I was proud of myself. I got a good lead in that game which my opponent whittled away at in the end game. I managed to win it by 9.5.

Here is the life and death situation. 

AI would have preferred that I play at m19 rather than p19. A friend of mine, Drewch, who clicked through the game later, suggested m19 as well. 

During the game I considered m19, but was not sure of the continuation. It gave me comfort to make two rooms with the p19 move. 

I did manage to read that playing p19 allowed me to answer m19 with n19. That is one eye. I read that I could answer q18 with r19. That was easy. There was a more challenging move for black.  I read if black played s19 I could not r19 which made me a little crazy. But then I miraculously read that I could q18 because black could not r19. That would leave a three stones capture. That would give me an eye because a throw in would not spoil the eye of a three stone capture as it would with a two stone capture.

I was proud of my reading.

To be clear I had at least twenty minutes on my clock when I ran into the life and death situation. I have little doubt that if I was in overtime that I would have had trouble with it. I am just now beginning to actually read in my games. It is kind of a miracle that I have gotten as far as I have on instinct and principles. Be that as it may, it is now time to learn how to read.

Most of my life and death skills to this point have been based on the Life and Death Principles of Yilun Yang. You can read about his method of approaching Life and Death on Sensei's Library.

My goal for next week is to review more of my losses on a real board, and to play more rated games on Fox. I also need to learn how to avoid making stupid mistakes late in the game. I need to learn how to bring a won game home. I lost two games this week that clearly should have been won. One of them I lost because I trusted my reading, but I was wrong. I don't feel too bad about that. I just need to get better at reading.

My Weekly Go Activities

 

I spent over 40 hours last week on Go Activities. A good chunk of my time was spent watching others play, specifically my good go buddy Drewch on the Fox go server.

I decided to try to rank up to 4k this week on Fox. I only needed two wins in order to do it. However, things did not go as planned. I had five losses in a row on Fox over the course of two days, and now I only need two more losses to rank down to 6k. This rank down now seems as inevitable as the rank up had seemed previously.

I am in a disturbing downward spiral.

I played ten games this week. Half of them were league games played on either OGS or KGS. The remainder were rated games on Fox.

I did manage to kick some Canadian butt last night. It is the last game for the week.

I have been asked to replay my losses on a real board. I'm not a fan of the process yet, but I did spend over an hour this morning replaying three of my losses from last week on a real board in preparation for my lesson this afternoon.

I was a bit of a slacker this week with my go problems. I only got in 520 problems from the 101 Weiqi web site. 

I did manage to do a timed test of the cutting problems. I came in at only 88% accuracy so I will need to be working on that set again soon to raise my accuracy to at least 90%.

My Weekly Go Activities

 

I put in over 35 hours on Go Activities this week. At the top of the list was Clossius Lesson (Others), which is watching the go lessons of my fellow Clossius students. I had a Clossius Lesson Festival, spending nearly seven hours watching go lessons.

I tried to get ten games played this week, but came in short at eight games with four wins and four losses for a 50% win rate.

Last night it came down to a choice between getting in those last two games or getting 700 go problems for the week from the 101 Weiqi site. I chose go problems over playing because I really need to improve my reading.

My last game of the week had a Trouble Master that I missed. If my reading had been up to snuff I surely would have seen it. Even without seeing it all the way through, I should have invested two stone that would cost me nothing because they needed to be answered. Once they had been answered I would have easily seen the continuation. 

This was actually a pretty good game even though I lost it by 3.5. A friend of mine who observed the game commented that I had played a lot of active moves and had attacked things. There was a life and death situation with the e2 group that I failed to see. I don't think it was obvious though. When I finally attacked it I chose the wrong point to go in.

The Game

My goal for next week is to try for ten games. 

I will continue to do 700 problems on 101 Weiqi.