Go Magic League and The Surgeon Blade Award

 

Go Magic Season 4 Round 1

My first game in the new season of the Go Magic League turned out to be a 0.5 victory.  It will qualify for The Surgeon Blade Award which is one of the special awards that will be granted at the end of the season.

From the Go Magic Leago site:

I won this award in a previous season of the Go Magic League, and I received quite a nice prize in the form of a sizable discount code. I applied it to the extension of my membership for a year.  

My Go Magic membership is active now through mid 2031.

If you are interested in playing in the Go Magic League you can actually join mid season because of the method they are using for pairings, which is McMahon. You can join and they will slot you in for the next round. It is a free league, so consider joining.

You can find details on the Go Magic Leago Page including a list of the other prizes offered 

Now for my usual Go Activities content:

It was an average week for Go Activity with just over 20 spent.  Live Play came in as the top activity with nearly eight hours spent.

In the coming week I will continue to rack up BenKyo League Title Tournament points in my quest to hold onto the title The Hand of God.

2024 Western Server Challenge

 

I have chosen to play again this year in the Western Server Challenge on OGS this March.  The challenge is in its third year, and is run by Clossius who is one of my go teachers.

I participated in the WSC last year and also the year before. I have the Achievements on OGS to prove it. 

At the end of the challenge last year my rank had fallen to 9 kyu and I decided not to play rated since that time, so there is a bit of a flat line on my OGS profile graph if you set it for time. The graph below shows that I was at the 7k level shortly before the challenge began. Notice the flat line after the challenge ended.

If you set my graph for rated games things look different.

I only have 548 rated games on OGS.  About 200 of them are from the two sessions of the WSC in which I participated. That is roughly 40% of my games devoted to the Western Server Challenge. That shows how little I actually enjoy playing rated.

Does this mean I care about my rank, or does it mean I don't care about my rank?  I think maybe I don't care. If I actually did care then I would surely have scrambled to get myself back up to 7k after the WSC rather than allowing the damage to keep my rank at 9k for a full year. If I did care would I play in the WSC again? I think not.

The WSC is about fun and not caring about your rank. I intend to do both. This year the emphasis is on the auto match button and on blitz play. That will make it fairly easy to meet the 100 game requirement.

Here are my ranks before WSC 2024. I don't even have blitz ratings at all.

It will be interesting to see how my rank changes as a result of my play in March.

Here are the settings used in the various board sizes. It is my understanding that blitz auto match will use those settings.

You can read up on the specifics of the challenge on the website including the optional grand slam you can achieve by playing 100 games on all three board sizes.

There are those who might be horrified (mostly my teachers) that I have chosen to participate in a blitz challenge given the fact that I already play at nearly blitz speed in my 40 minute tournament games.  It is a habit that my teachers would like to see me break.  I'm hoping that one month of blitz isn't going to make much of a difference.

As far as I know you need to get 100 games in one of the board sizes to meet the challenge. I don't think you can combine board sizes to get to 100 games, but I may be wrong.

Consider joining me in the Western Server Challenge this year. Perhaps we shall meet across the board in an auto match game.

Now for my usual Go Activities content:

It was a fairly typical week for Go Activity with over 21 hours spent.

Nearly half of my time was spent on Live Play with 15 games played. The bulk of those games were BenKyo League Title Tournament Games.

Two AYD games look like bookends on my week of games.

I finished off the 7th season of NAOL with a 3:2 record which is pretty good considering that two of my losses were to 7k players. My final game was a decisive victory of 24.5 points. The NAOL games are played with AGA rules which means filling dame. Glancing at the ending position of this game it doesn't look like as big a win as it was, but I always feel like I have less than I do as White. I am getting more comfortable with white though these days.

NAOL Season Seven, Round 5

During the coming week I will be emphasizing play in the BenKyo League Title Tournament as I try to win The Hand of God for another month. 

The Hand of God

 

The image you see above is the icon created to represent The Hand of God which is the most prestigious title one can earn in the BenKyo League Title Tournament.  The Title Tournament (aka TT) is one of the ongoing monthly tournaments of the BenKyo League. The other ongoing monthly tournament is the Main League.

In the Title Tournament you are allowed to play every other member of BenKyo League as many as three times per month.  You earn 3 points for winning a game and you earn 2 points for losing a game.  With participation being rewarded so generously it is very possible to be competitive in winning a title simply by upping your participation. In the Main League you play in a small group of people near you level.

About five days before the end of January I saw that I had about 20 points accumulated for TT games. At that time I decided to get competitive about trying to reclaim the Hand of God title. I had held it two times previously.  In fact, I held it the first two months that the Title Tournament was in existence. It had been a long time since I tried to claim any titles much less the coveted Hand of God.  I played a good number of TT games in the last five days of the month, and also played a few more Main League games hoping to get enough points to win First Place in my Main League group.

My efforts paid off.  The results of the month are published in a pdf magazine for BenKyo League members.  Below are screen captures from the January magazine which show my results.

I managed to get 1st Place in B-Group. That prize comes not only with glory, but with a 60 minute Semi-Private Lesson with Ben.

The answer to the question of whether I had done enough to reclaim my 7k status is a resounding, "Yes!" Here I am listed among the BKL Promotions from January.

Now for how I did in the Title Tournament:

I managed to win three of the five Special Titles (based on specialized criteria).

Last, and most importantly, I was able to reclaim the most prestigious of the High Honors titles (based on simple criteria).  A player may earn only one of those titles in any month. The Hand of God is  awarded first. Then that player is exempt from the remaining three titles and the exemptions continue until all four of the High Honors titles are granted. 

I was happy to receive the three less prestigious Special Titles, but the only one I really cared about was The Hand of God. It is going to be my goal to reclaim my place at the top of the list showing who has won The Hand of God, and how often they have won it. It will undoubtedly take quite a while to achieve that goal.

Currently I am 3rd on that list.

The list is maintained in The Hall of Fame channel on the BenKyo Discord Server.

I now need to win four more times to take first place on that list.  There is no guarantee that working hard to schedule games will get me there, but I intend to try. It is likely to take more than four months to do it. The competition will be tough.

Here are lists of all of the available titles in the Title Tournament:

I'm so pleased with myself that I changed my OGS Profile Picture. Its meaning would not be obvious to anyone but the members of BenKyo League.  The HOG image was created for the BKL magazine after there was a discussion on the Discord server about the difficulty of achieving The Hand of God.  I had said that "That HOG is a slippery pig." That was a number of months before I decided to try to chase down and grab that hog again.

If you have suffered through my bragging today I hope that I have sparked your interest in BenKyo League.  

We have two recurring regular leagues every month, plus recently a third special league. Last month it was the Level-Up Challenge to give players an opportunity to earn extra ratings points. This month it is The Hero Mode Tournament: Ace of Diamonds in the Frost Dragon's Core. It involves beginning the game from a set position on the board and using negative Komi for rank differences of two stones and above.

On the fence about joining? 

Any time is the right time to join BKL. There is no waiting for the end of a month, nor for the beginning of a new Season.  We are suitable for 3d through beginners. If you choose to join based on what you have seen here please tell Ben when you sign up that buzzsaw sent you.  We have a generous referral program. For each member you bring it at the League level or above you get a 30 minute Semi-Private Lesson with Ben.

If you have questions feel free to ping me on Ben's Discord in one of the free channels, or you can direct message me.  I am buzzsaw.

Now for my usual go content:

It was an active week for Go Activity with nearly 20 hours spent.  I always feel good when the amount of time I spend on Live Play comes in as the top activity,  and at more than 25%.  I feel as if that is a good balance for me.

I see that Watching Others came in quite low at 1.3%, but that is most likely because I often forget to log my time when I am doing it. I watch others play quite often.

I got in six games last week, all of them being League Games.

I got a good start on the new cycle of AYD winning my first game. However that was to be expected since the order of games starts with the highest placed player in each group playing the lowest placed player in the group.  I had fallen from C2 to C3 this cycle and I landed at the top of the group.

There are nearly 300 rating points between myself and my opponent this week. That is the equivalent of three ranks. As a result I only gained 5 points from my victory. In contrast to that last week I lost 11 points for my loss to an opponent who gained 13 points for his victory. 

The major disadvantage of being at the top of the lowest group is that your wins don't count for much.  It isn't as bad as it used to be though when the gap in rank could be nearly 5 ranks.  The higher groups usually have differences in rank between about 100 to 200 points while the gap in the lowest group is about 300 points.

My Go Teacher: Michael Sherman

This is the sixth and final entry in my series of posts about my go teachers. Well, it is the last assuming I don't add a new go teacher, but that is a distinct possibility.

I first heard about Michael Sherman, AKA Mikito, through his involvement with the MGA Discord. 

Mikito has been teaching  a DDK class for the MGA for quite a while now on Monday evenings. Don't let the DDK category keep you away from the class if you are SDK. About half of the people who attend,  including myself, are actually SDK. The class is free and open to anyone who wants to attend. It occurs at 6:00 PM EST on zoom, and you will find the zoom link for the class posted in the classes channel of the MGA Discord shortly before the class begins.

Recently Mikito has expanded his DDK class offerings to Tuesday evenings as well. Those classes also occur on zoom. The Tuesday classes are a part of the MGA virtual go club meeting that takes place every Tuesday night. David Kahn, who organizes that meeting, has hopes of expanding the meetings to the point where they become a 24/7 virtual go club with face-to-face discussions and breakout rooms for small group participation. NAOL participants who play their games at the default time of Tuesday at 8:00 PM EST are welcome to play in a breakout room with their opponent.

Mikito offers a structured class on Tuesday nights where he takes some games of players who usually attend. He creates multiple choice questions about positions in those games. He usually offers three choices for the next move.  He will select about three to five positions per game and cycle through the participants asking them to say the best move from among the choices and to explain why is the best choice.  Sometimes he asks for the worst move. 

On Mondays Michael offers a less structured class where students can suggest videos to watch together and discuss.  Sometimes we will look at a game someone brings to show.

I've told Mikito that he can stalk my OGS profile for class material whenever he wants, and he often brings forth one of my games with multiple choice questions for the Tuesday night DDK class.

In addition to the work that Michael does teaching for the MGA he also offers private lessons. If you are interested in private lessons please contact him on the MGA Discord where he is Mikito.

Mikito is shown below playing go. He is on the left in the front.

Now for my usual Go Content:

It was a very active week with nearly 29 hours spent on Go Activity. Over 11 of those hours were spent on Live Play.

I played 14 games last week. All of them were league games. I spent an average of 48 minutes per game.

Early in the week I decided to get competitive in the BenKyo League so I really packed in a large number of games in the last four days of the month.  I'll report on my results next week.