I Found a Pair Go Partner For the US Go Congress

I like to play pair go at the congress. Women are at a premium at the congress and never have a problem finding a partner. I could go without a plan and easily find a partner and have a good time.

However, I wanted to make a good choice in advance, so I asked the advice of my long time teacher Yilun Yang. During our lesson on Thursday I asked him if he thought it would be better for me to seek a partner of my own strength or if I should seek a stronger partner. His advice was to seek someone a little stronger than myself.

I know someone from the DC area who I have played a few times at tournaments because we have been progressing/stagnating at the same pace for a little while. Recently he rose to 7k and hopes to feel strong enough to promote to 6k for the tournament. That puts him at just the right level for me. I suggested this to Yang and he said that a couple stones higher will be good, and that I may even play better than him sometimes. I assured Yang that my potential partner had read "The Fundamental Principles of Go", so he "knows something" as I put it. Yang thought it was great that we would have a common foundation.

Last night we talked online and I asked him if he would be my pair go partner and he agreed. Even before he knew I was coming to the congress he had asked if I was interested in some slow games for analysis with his teacher as he prepares for the congress.

When he said that he might not be good at pair go, having never played it before, I assured him that the important thing is to have fun. I think we will try to play some rengo games on KGS so he gets an idea of what it feels like to lose control of the game. I think that is the most important thing to know about pair go. That, and the fact that it is sudden death, so you have to watch your time, and you have little time to read because you can't depend on byo yomi at the end.

I'm getting excited.

Let's Hope I Can Now Get Line Breaks

A helpful reader responded to my request to figure out how to get my line breaks to work.

I went to the posted URL and followed the directions. Hopefully this post is two paragraphs rather than one.

Coming to the US Go Congress This Year

I've attended a total of twelve congresses since my first tournament in 1997. Unfortunately, I have missed two congresses in a row.

Three years is just too long to go between congresses, so I have decided to bite the financial bullet and attend this year. For one thing, it is on the East Coast. Next year it will be in Seattle, which will increase the cost of attendance for me, so I will probably pass on that congress. Another reason to attend this year is that I'm looking forward to going back to North Carolina.

I remember the 2006 congress fondly, and expect this one to be even better. I am currently 8 kyu AGA, and will be entering as such. Let me know if you plan to attend. My comments are moderated because I had a lot of trouble with spam a little over a year ago, but I will be notified of comments via email and will approve them quickly if they are relevant.

By the way, this post actually has paragraphs in it, but for some reason they aren't showing up when I publish the post. I have observed the same problem in a blog that I started with wordpress.org. I don't understand the problem, but because it appears in both blogs I am assuming it is something local on my computer. If anyone has any suggestions on how to get my carriage returns to show up I would really appreciate it. If I can't solve this problem I will be reluctant to post these dense unending paragraphs. They are so ugly.

Since learning how to fix the problem I have gone back and edited this post to add in the carriage returns I had originally wanted, but I left the content about the problem in the paragraph above.

Recent Go Activity

I got a kick in the butt today by a comment to my last post where I said I was going to post more often, but then I didn't. Thanks for that kick in the butt.

I'll try to do better. I've actually been doing things. I just haven't been writing about them.

I finished Book 1 of the Level Up series as promised.

What is even more exciting is that I am currently reviewing the digital versions of two books that will soon be available in GoBook format. I can't say the names of the books, but I can say that they have been out of print for years, so it will be exciting when they come out.

2011 Appears to Have Been a Bad Year

I can't believe that I made it all the way through 2011 without a single post to this blog. The truth is that I had been focused on other things besides go: running, lowering my cholesterol, worrying about my mother.

However, during that time I continued to take private lessons alternate weeks with Yilun Yang, 7P. I also continued to take group lessons with Guo Juan, 5P. I have enjoyed both activities, but have not been working particularly hard on trying to improve.

I am pretty happy to be a solid single digit AGA kyu player now. Maybe my subconscious wants to keep my rating the same as my AGA ID number. Rather than focusing on rank, I am mostly just enjoying the interactions with my teachers, and the social interaction with my fellow students in the group lessons.

It has also occurred to me that I don't really have a plan for how to study go. I have so many resources. I noticed that my last post was about the Level Up series. I have the series, and I pick up a book from time to time, but I have not worked my way systematically through them. That is something I am hoping to do in the next few months. I wish they were in GoBooks format. That way they would always be with me, and I would be likely to pay more attention to them.

Today I am opening up the Level Up book number 1 and I am going through it from cover to cover. The truth is that I actually study go every day in one form or another. I just haven't been writing about it, and I haven't been very efficient either. I'm going to be more public about my study habits in the future. So look forward to another post tomorrow.

Level Up Series

In the past week or so I have completed books 1, 2, and 3 of the Level Up series.

I downloaded all of the answer PDF files available for the books and installed them on my iPad under the iBooks app. This makes it easy to check my answers. I go through a book one time without looking at answers and then I go through it one more time checking one page at a time against the PDF file.

I am currently working my way through book 4 of the series.

I notice that books above level 10 are currently available, but they do not appear to have PDF answer files ready for those volumes yet. I hope they will by the time I work my way through volume 10, which is as high as I have purchased so far. I won't buy any higher until the PDF files are available.

While answers to books 1 through 5 appear to be really easy, I imagine that above 10 the answers will be harder.

I am really enjoying these books.

Audio Go Lessons I Have Been Watching Lately

I have been concentrating on the Basic Course lectures in the past few weeks.

Recently I watched the following lectures:

All About Eyes Lecture 1

All About Eyes Lecture 2

All About Eyes Lecture 3

Efficiency For 30K - 10 K Lecture 1

Efficiency For 30K - 10 K Lecture 2

Efficiency For 30K - 10 K Lecture 3

Double Atari Lecture 1

Double Atari Lecture 2

Double Atari Lecture 3

I Am Moderating All Future Posts

It came to my attention that someone was spamming my blog. I had seen a number of foreign language posts in the past and left them because I assumed that someone actually had something worthwhile to say even though I could not understand it myself.

Today I found over 20 comments on my most recent post, which is months old. Many of them have links to obscene web sites.

It is a sorry thing when one has to moderate her blog to avoid such things. Please do not comment to this blog simply to agree with me on this point.

Thank you in advance for your patience when you make a comment to a future blog post and must wait for it to be approved.

Maryland Open

I played in the Maryland Open last weekend. I played four games, winning two, and losing two.

I wasn't too unhappy with my results, since my losses were both less than ten points, and my wins were close to 20 points. I was pleased that my victories were more decisive than my losses.

Upon checking the KGS ratings of the two opponents that beat me, I found that they are 5K and 6K on KGS compared to my own 8K, so I feel as if I performed well against them. I did feel rather pushed around by both of them.

An interesting reunion occurred during the third round with an opponent who remembered me from the San Francisco congress eleven years ago in 1999. We had played that year. He must have been a mere child at the time since he is in graduate school now. That was eleven years ago. I was quite frankly surprised that we had progressed at the same pace given the difference in our ages. He recalls that we were both about 15K at the time of our previous game. Now he is 10K and I am 9K. Our game at this tournament was interesting in that he was way ahead, but I managed to isolate and kill a number of stones leading to my victory. He tells me that something similar occurred eleven years ago, and even pointed to the area of the board involved. I was impressed that our game had been that memorable for him.

I had my iPad with me and I recorded my games with it. But even more interestingly I played a 9x9 game with another iPad owner over the internet on KGS while we sat across from each other at a table at the Maryland Open. We accomplished this through the use of remote desktop software. I was using LogMeIn Ignition. We both have 3G iPads so we could log in to our home desktops (both 24" iMacs) even though we did not have wi-fi access at the playing site. I won that 9x9 by 1.5 points even though my first move was an obvious miss click.

March Audio Go Lessons - My Watch List

I purchased the year long subscription to the Audio Go Lessons web site at the middle of the month in March.

Following is a list of the Lessons I watched during the month of March:

Step By Step Series Lesson 1

Step By Step Series Lesson 2

Step By Step Series Lesson 3

Typical Mistakes Lecture 1 Level 30k - 20k

Important Stones Lesson 1

Important Stones Lesson 2

Efficiency for 30K - 10k

Invasion Lecture 1 30k - 1k

Important Stones Lesson 3

Efficiency for 30k - 10k Lesson 2

Some of these are lessons I had previously purchased, and which had since expired. It was good to go back and view some of these lessons again. Some of these lessons were new to me.

If I continue to watch lessons at this rate I will be able to watch twice as many videos in one year as I could have watched if I had rented them one video at a time, and I can go back and watch them as often as I want for a full year rather than a full month.

I'll make it a point to report on my usage for the month of April.

I Subscribed To Audio Go Lessons For One Year

Guo Juan has offered a new payment plan for her audio go lessons web site, which can be found at her Internet Go School. For 99 Euros you get a full year of unlimited access. I decided that this was an attractive plan for me because it meant that I wouldn't have to worry about access on individual offerings expiring after one month. 99 Euros is significantly more than I would have paid in the course of a year to watch individual titles if I had rented each one separately. However, now that I will be trying to get my money's worth, I will probably watch many more videos. I won't have to ask myself if I want to bother to spend the single Euro for a particular title. It's really nice not to have to worry about the videos expiring after a month.

My first order of business is to go back over the easiest Step By Step videos that I had watched in the beginning. Those are excellent videos that I might otherwise not have bothered to rent again.

NJ Open Round 5

These pictures were all taken by Don DeCourcelle.

This was an incredibly peaceful game. Not a single stone was captured during the game. The final position has one dead stone of each color near the center of the board. This is not unusual for me since I am basically a very peaceful player.

The first image is a picture of the board just before scoring. I played black in this game and the bottom territory is worth 49 points. After confirming that fact, we simply removed the lone stone on the first line and placed it elsewhere, and didn't bother to arrange that area any further.

Here I am with my gray hair pondering the board. Don posted these images to Facebook, and I find it amusing that I had made an appointment to color my hair as a reward for reaching my goal weight about an hour before I saw this photograph on Facebook. Seeing it only confirmed the wisdom of my decision.

This is my worthy opponent Iris Lin, who had won all four of her games in the New Jersey Open before our game.

Here is a graphic representation of the board position that Don made for me.

New Jersey Open

I played at the New Jersey Open again this year, and had a great time.

Many of my old friends were present. One old friend who had been conspicuously absent for years made an appearance. Don DeCourcelle, who hosted the New Jersey Yang Workshop for two years, made the NJ Open his first tournament in his return to the go scene after an absence of at least five years.

I played at the rank I "earned" at the Hoboken tournament last year, which is 9k. I was very close to 8k and would like to have played at that level, but I know that the AGA has a policy against one stone self promotions, so I didn't try to push it at registration.

I came to find that, as last year, they were lax in enforcing the policy against one stone self promotions. I found this annoying. I guess it doesn't pay to know and follow the rules.

I went 2-3 and solidified my rating of 9k achieving a revised rating of 9.11 with a sigma of 0.48.

I took my Macbook with me to the tournament and used it to record my games, which drew some attention from the younger set. During the fist game I carelessly misplaced a stone, and recorded only up to the point where it mattered. With the remaining four games I was much more careful and recorded up to the last move of these games. I actually think that recording hurt my games rather than helped them, but at least I have the game records for analysis.

I have already had Yilun Yang review Round 2 and Round 3. I will have him review Round 4 and Round 5 during our next lesson.

Round 1:

I played white against a Chinese Opening. I won that game by 13.5, and did not find myself feeling under pressure during the game at all.

Round 2:

I played white again. This time it was a very close game which I lost by 0.5. I was able to pinpoint a totally unnecessary move on my part which cost me the game. I was so ashamed by the offending move that I was tempted not to show it to Mr. Yang because I knew what he would say about it. I showed it anyway, and he said exactly what I expected, "This is a 25 kyu move." I definitely didn't deserve to win that game. I did take comfort though in knowing that I was playing at the right level by coming in so close in spite of such a terrible mistake.

Round 3:

This game was with a young girl who I had played at the Oza two years before. She had won all her games when she played me, and I think she may have gone on to win the rest of them. I lost this game by 14.5. I was surprised, however, when Mr. Yang reviewed it I was told that I should have won the game. I made some bad errors that prevented me from doing so, but apparently I started out well. This game was the third game of the day, and I don't really like to play more than one serious game per day, so by the time this game was under way I was exhausted. I actually stood for this game to remain focused. It probably worked against me though by making me even more tired.

Round 4

I was refreshed the next morning, and this game I had high hopes of winning. Early in the game I captured quite a large group. Unfortunately my opponent fought back valiantly, cutting off a couple key stones which added significantly to his territory. I lost that game by 3.5.

Round 5

This game was against a young woman who had won all four of her previous games. At the end of the game she told me that I had offered her the biggest challenge of the tournament. During the game she actually said at one point that she would really like to get sente. I know the feeling well. I won that game by 18.5.

I'm not disappointed with my results since two of my losses were so close.

Go Takes A Back Seat To Fitness

I noticed recently that I hadn't posted on this blog since September of last year, and I'm going to tell you why. I've still been playing go, and taking lessons. However go has taken a back seat to my efforts to trim back down and to improve my general level of fitness.

Retirement has been a blessing. It's been good for my go, but it wasn't good for my figure. So for the past year I have been working to take off the 30 pounds that slowly crept on at the rate of a little more than a pound a month once I was no longer on my feet eight hours a day battling teenagers. I used to be a high school art teacher.

I've been putting a lot of my energy into my other blog which I maintain on Spark People. I post to it at least once a day. Starting in October I began training to run a 5K race, and I ran my first race on Sunday, February 28th.

I have replaced the picture from when I was a high school art teacher with a photo of myself crossing my first finish line below my goal weight.

You can read about my 5K on my Spark Blog.

I attended the New Jersey Open this year and will post about that experience soon.

I Think I Know What Happened

I am feeling a little bit better now after researching my opps from Hoboken. Apparently I was paired in all four game against someone weaker than myself. The system punished me severely for my one loss, and it didn't reward me at all for my three wins. Being on the borderline to begin with, I got burned. It's as simple as that. I will be checking the stats of my opps from now on before I allow myself to expect anything.

It was a mistake thinking that I couldn't drop after a winning tournament.

Win A Prize - Lose a Rank - What?

Last week I checked my rating to see if the results of the Hoboken tournament were in yet. They weren't, but I found that my rating had increased to -8.92, which was up from the -8.98 I had achieved immediately after the congress.

I checked my rating again this morning.

Imagine my surprise, having gone 3-1 in Hoboken, to see that my new rating had dropped to -9.10 after having achieved prize winning results in my last tournament.

WHAT ?

It just doesn't make sense.

I would rather that I had stabilized at 9 kyu as a result of my 2-3 record at the congress. At least that would have made sense.

I came back from Hoboken feeling that my 8 kyu rating would at least be solidified. I didn't really expect it to change for the better by more than a couple hundredths of a point.

It just doesn't make sense to win and have your rating go down as a result.

At least my sigma is up to 0.47773

But now I have to enter as 9 kyu at my next tournament.

Hoboken Tournament Report

Yesterday I played in a tournament in Hoboken. I was lucky enough to get a ride to the playing site with five other players from the Princeton Go Club. We had a nice time riding up and back together. I met up with them on campus for the ride.

I saw lots of people I know from previous tournaments and enjoyed my time chatting between rounds.

I went 3-1 to defend my tenuous rating of -8.98, which I earned through a two stone self promotion at the Congress this year just the month before.

I will admit to having been very nervous about this tournament because I did not want to slip back to 9 kyu. There is something nice about having a rating that matches one's AGAID number. However, it seemed unlikely that I could defend this rating, especially in New Jersey where ratings are particularly tough due to the location of the Fen Yun Go School. We are lucky to have such good competition, but it makes New Jersey events particularly tough when the young strong locals come out in force.

My four games were all with opponents under the age of 20. Three of them were with young students of Feng Yun, so it was quite a challenge to go 3-1, and I am particularly pleased with my record.

My first game was a loss, and I braced myself for the rest of the day. I recorded my first game, and sat down with Masaki Hamiguchi, one of my strong long time go buddies, and we went over the game. He is such a good teacher, and showed me where I went wrong. Primarily I failed to reduce the Chinese opening with a shoulder hit at the proper time, making it difficult for me to reduce it later. I had taken a smaller move along the side instead.

My first opponent was a young boy who made sure I knew before the end game started that he was winning. I am sure that was my subtle hint to resign, and in a club game I would have. But I was there to play go, and if I resigned every game I played with a child under the age of ten once i was behind, I would have some very long waits between rounds. I told him that I agreed with his assessment, but that I would enjoy finishing the game nonetheless, and so we did. I lost by 36.5, which was less than I would have expected given the massive kill. This boy was so committed to the Chinese Opening that he chose to play it as white. I am not sure that I have seen this before. It is time to review my Guo Juan Audio Go Lessons on the Chinese Opening.

My second opponent was the only one who was not a student of Feng Yun. She was a sophomore in college who was attending her first tournament. She had been playing go for about three years, which she had discovered in high school by way of Anime. That game turned out to be a decisive victory for me at 56.5, and I recorded that game as well up until I was about ten minutes away from byo yomi.

As much as I like having a recording so I can benefit from my mistakes, I found that I had worn myself out considerably with recording those first two games. I ended up in byo yomi in both of them, which was no surprise given that I was playing what looked like an eight year old boy who didn't need long to decide his next move, and a college student who was a self proclaimed fan of blitz.

Masaki suggested that I stop recording, and predicted that I would be two stones stronger if I did. Whether he was right about the increase in go strength, or not, I definitely found myself refreshed by not recording, and I felt a definite increase in stamina.

My third game was with a very young boy from the Feng Yun Go School who was playing as a 7 kyu. I managed to isolate some of his stones early on in the game to create a huge area of territory, which he added to by attempting unsuccessfully to live. It turned out to be an easy game, and I came out of it refreshed and with a 15.5 victory. We both played quickly so I had more than an hour to relax and do tsumgo before the 4th round.

My fourth game was with a young teenage female student of the Feng Yun Go School. This was also a relatively easy game. This opponent had won all three of her games to this point, so she was being matched up to play a stronger player even in the fourth round. Given that the handicap was inadequate for her stated rank, it was an important game for me to win. I did so by 26.5

At the awards ceremony I received some cash, and I got to choose a go book. They had more than a handful of books I did not already own, and I selected "The Go Companion: Go in History and Culture" by John Fairbairn and T. Mark Hall the Creators of GoGoD.

I came back seriously pumped and logged in immediately to KGS to look for my friends so i could brag. I found a few, and by 12:30 I had come down far enough to attempt to sleep.

It was a very exciting day, and I am very glad I went.

Exciting Evening At The Princeton Go Club

My first game was with an AGA 3kyu. I took 5 stones and ended up winning by 19 points. I counted the game a number of times, but aside from that, I played pretty quickly. We replayed the game up to the point where he felt that the he had suffered a meaningful loss, which was actually early in the middle game when I isolated two of his stones. It was nice to replay the game up to that point from memory. It is entirely different from clicking through it online.

I am keeping track of who I play and how I do, so I can come up with a reasonable handicap for each individual. He and I should try four stones next time and see how it goes. I know I don't do well giving handicap, so I am sure when I play weaker players I will be unlikely to give the proper handicap and win.

My next game was with a young girl who is 8 kyu AGA. But her mother wanted to get her and her younger sister to begin heading home shortly after 9:00 PM, so we discontinued play when the mother, being a strong player, offered to review the game for us.

Oh, and did I mention, the mother's name? She is Feng Yun, 9p. Just how cool is that?

It was quite an honor to have the opening reviewed by Feng Yun. I will be going to the club again next week. I feel really lucky to be at the proper level to give a reasonable game to both of Feng Yun's daughters.

Going To Princeton Go Club Again Tonight

In about a half an hour I will be out the door to attend the Princeton Go Club again tonight.

Since my husband wakes me up at 5:30 AM every weekday, my leaving the house at 7:00 PM to attend a go club feels like venturing out at 10:00 PM if I were getting up at at a normal time. I don't like playing at night, and I have stayed away from evening clubs because I have a fear of doing poorly. But let's face the fact that I have a fear of doing poorly online too, or at a tournament. I have such a fear of doing poorly that I will use almost any excuse to not play, but to watch instead. So I have decided that I am simply going to face the fact that I am likely going to show performance that is anywhere from one to two stones below what I am capable of at a decent hour, and I will just suck it up and play.

When discussing the club with my friend Charles, who has no fear of playing at all, I realized that what I like about the club is that if I go I am forced to play. Online I can say, "No". But at the club if I am not playing I look like a chicken. And if I am not playing, then what on earth am I doing there?

So, off I go, to be brave, and to play.

I am wearing the tshirt from the 2004 New Jersey Yang Workshop. That is the one that has Yilun Yang's face embedded in the grain of a 9x9 go board.

Went To The Princeton Go Club Last Night

On a weekday I get up at 5:30 AM, so by the time the evening rolls around I am pretty tired and reluctant to play go because I feel that I am about two stones weaker than I am in the morning. But I finally dealt with my fear of playing at night, and forced myself out of the house to go to the Princeton Go Club last night. It felt really great to play some casual games over the board.

There were only two other people there because it was the first meeting of the semester and the word had not gotten out to all the students yet. The three of us in attendance took turns playing and watching, so each of us got to play two games and watch one. It was great to play over the board rather than online. It was also great to play without a clock as I would at a tournament. I play quickly, so I actually play faster without a clock than with a clock. I had forgotten what club play feels like. It is a whole different experience from online play and tournament play.

The only thing I missed was actually reviewing the game in depth since no one recorded, and we did not attempt to replay.

I will be going back again next Wednesday looking for a ride to the Hoboken tournament on the 20th. Maybe I can persuade my friend Charles to come to the club.