Monday, September 6th
I played an NAOL game today in the afternoon. My opponent is a fellow member of BenKyo league. I won that game, and am now 3:0 for the 23rd season of NAOL.
Tuesday, September 7th
I attended my usual Tuesday afternoon tsumego session. We are currently working with a combination of the categories Making Eyes and Taking Eyes at Level 2 and Level 3. I spent time later in the day chipping away at some Level 2 problems in those categories.
I played another NAOL game in the evening. I fully expected to lose this game since I have not done well recently against this opponent, who happens to be another member of BenKyo League. BKL members make up 50% of my division this season in NAOL. I didn't prepare for this game except to decide that since I would be white, and unable to use my opening, I would play two 3-5 moves as white. This was an attempt to take my opponent outside of his comfort zone. It is something I have before, and an attempt to play my usual opening as white. It was a departure for me since I usually play two 4-4 points as white.
I was doing better than usual in the middle game, and got really lucky to cut off a chunk of 13 stones with a wedge. Based on the graph I had a chance to win without the wedge, but it would have been a much closer game, and there is no guarantee that my end game would have been good enough to pull off the win without that capture.
Here is a link to the game on Better Baduk which ought to take you to the wedge:
And heck, let's just memorialize it with a screen capture.
My move, as large as it was, is indicated as an inaccuracy because there is something that neither I nor my opponent had seen in the game. I should be playing at b5 apparently.
When the game was finally over I noticed that we had drawn a crowd to observer the game. It turns out that our game had been under discussion on the MGA Zoom. I hopped onto the Zoom to join them, and they shared the highlights of the discussion with me.
For someone who has convinced herself that she doesn't care about winning, I am on a bit of a high from this game. It feels good to win a game you didn't expect to win. I really don't care about my 12k rank in NAOL. I find it almost laughable. The competition in NAOL is fierce, but I think that anyone with an active AGA membership ought to play in the NAOL. It does feel good to think that I might nudge that laughable rank a little closer to my AGA rank of 9k in the next season.
Wednesday, September 9th
I played Kyle again at the Princeton Go Club. I lost this game by 22.5
Thursday, September 10th
I didn't have my usual lesson with Ben today. I worked on some tsumego.
Friday, September 11th
It is funny how reading miscellaneous go Discords will send me to watching videos. Today I opened up a video by Nick Sibicky about Bent Four in the Corner. It is specifically his #255 lecture Bent Four Situations. He mentions at the beginning of the lecture that he had done a similar one four years earlier, and I think I watched that at some point, or perhaps had watched this one before. After getting twelve minutes into the lecture I am convinced that it was the earlier lecture I had watched.
I watched the entire video, and now I think I should probably be watching them all to watch the evolution of his go lecture series. Maybe I can make it a point to watch one lecture a week. If I do that it would take me more than ten years to catch up to his most recent lecture. He actually stopped doing videos a few years ago, and I think he has recently resumed doing the occasional video.
So I opened this one. Nick Sibicky Go Lecture #1
This lecture reviews a game played by 5 kyu players on KGS in 2012, so it is 14 years old.
An important quote from the above video is, "If you make moves like this in go you are a chicken, or you are blind and you just can't find your opponent's weaknesses." How about both?
I lead my usual tsumego group in the evening.
I spent time after the tsumego group to play a couple of games with a new player who I have been talking about go with over the phone for the past year and a half. I am going to work on getting him to come to the Princeton Go Club.
Saturday, September 12th
Ben did a great class today which went a bit over two hours. It was BenKyo Class #150 - Inventing Opening Patterns.
After class I tuned in to watch Patrick stream a BenKyo League game, and then Patrick decided to stream his lesson with Ben, and I was treated to a review of the game that Patrick just played, followed by a teaching game with Ben.
Later in the evening I watched Patrick play another BenKyo League game. Not streamed this time.
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