Off To The US Go Congress

In less than one hour I will be on my way to the US Go Congress in Lacaster, Pennsylvania. This is the first time I had attended the congress since retiring and having more time to study go.

I hope for interesting games and a peaceful mind with which to enjoy them as they unfold. Other than that, I have no expectations.

Anyone reading this who is also at the congress, please look me up. My name is in my web address... Terri Schurter, so it's no secret. I am 11 kyu AGA. You'll find me at a table with a triple digit number.

To keep me focused on the questions I should be asking myself during my games I have brought with me a mug that I made. It has a montage of photographs of Yilun Yang, 7p circling the surface of the mug. I will try to play each move as if Mr. Yang were watching.

Given the fact that Mr. Yang will be there and has been known to roam the room he might be watching at any moment. I am reminded of the time Mr. Yang was watching one of my games during the 1998 Congress shortly after I had started taking lessons with him. My opponent and I met up with Mr. Yang later in the cafeteria lunch line after the game was over. My opponent mentioned to Mr. Yang that he won the game. Mr. Yang's only comment was, "It should not be." Apparently I had been ahead when he had stopped observing.

My First Audio Go Lessons SGF

I have been viewing the audio go lessons quite often in the past couple months. The only thing I don't like about the site is that you only get to view each lesson you purchase for a month. This isn't going to keep me away though. You can view your lessons as often as you like during the month that you have access to them, which does encourage a measure of restraint concerning how many lessons you purchase at one time. I can understand the reasons why audiogolessons is set up that way. Some people might be tempted to be dishonest and build up a library of lessons and then share them with others, robbing the professionals of the income they deserve, so it makes sense to create a distribution model which makes it less likely that people would do such a thing. Still, my ideal setup would be a flat monthly fee for all the video you can watch similar to what is available for technical educational videos at lynda.com.

Having honestly purchased a lesson I would like to have a way to review the material whenever I want. There are a number of ways to accomplish this. I could take notes, make screen shots, or make an sgf. Initially I had done some screen shots of some of the early "Step By Step lectures". It was my plan to incorporate them into doc files with notes that would maintain the flow of the lesson. But I never got around to putting those pages together, so I decided to make an SGF of a lecture which is due to expire soon to see if this method would work out better for me.

I picked "Common Opening Lecture 3" for my first sgf lecture file. It took me somewhere between between two and three hours to create the file working in chunks of time rather than all at once. I got my money's worth right there. Where else can you get two hours of entertainment for one Euro?

The Common Opening #3 is the one where black ends up with a shimari consisting of a small knights move approach to a 3-4 which is facing a black hoshi stone while white has both hoshi points on the opposite side of the board. Picture the shimari in the right bottom corner facing up to a black hoshi stone.

This was a particularly good lesson for me to transcribe because as black I always begin with komoku in the upper right often resulting in a downward facing shimari with a black hoshi below it. This lesson showed how to handle the variations that result in a white play on the 3rd line below the starpoint between the black shimari and hoshi. This is definitely a lecture I need to devote time to studying.

I found the process of creating the sgf file more than just clerical. It was a study process in itself. As much as this file will be useful to me for review, it was useful in its creation as well. I don't think that it would be nearly as useful for study without having seen and heard the lecture because it doesn't follow the flow of the lecture since varitions sometimes appear in the file before they are referred to in the lecture. An sgf file isn't a movie afterall.

I am not sure if it is possible to do, but I think the most valuable way to review such a file would be to create a set of hyperlinks within the file that would take you from one part of the file to another in the same order as the lecture.

I highly recommend Audio Go Lessons to anyone who has not tried it yet. They have some free lessons you can sample. Give it a try.

Guo Juan 5p Joseki Lecture Today on KGS

Today I was able to watch a KGS Plus lecture live. I usually end up replaying them afterwards, which isn't nearly as much fun.

The lecture by Guo Juan was about joseki with emphasis on their proper use. I was pleased to watch this lecture given my newfound interest in joseki study. Guo Juan had given another lecture on joseki a couple weeks ago, which I had missed and plan to go back and watch soon.

One of the things she said today is that early on we should learn 10 joseki, then increase that to 20, and that by the time we are 1 dan we should know at least 50 joseki. That sounds reasonable to me.

In applying joseki she suggested that you know the final outcome(s) of the joseki you are considering, and to imagine those outcomes with the current board position. If none of the outcomes are pleasing to you, then it is time to make up your own move to deviate from joseki. I like that thinking.

She emphasized that it is not necessary to try to learn all joseki, but to learn the basic ones. She has audio go lessons on joseki, and also recommended taking a joseki book and picking the simple variations to learn. That's pretty much what I intend to do.

Played In A Real Club Sunday

I managed to make it to a real club Sunday afternoon. The club is near where my mother lives. It takes me over an hour to get there, so visits to the club at the Barnes & Noble in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania are few and far between.

The night before my visit I contacted one of the members online and told him I would be there. It's a good thing because as it turned out we were the only two people to show up for the club on Sunday, and he might not have bothered to come were it not for my having talked to him the night before.

I got there first and reviewed joseki for at least a half an hour before my opponent showed up. He is 1k KGS and I am 8k there. We started with a six stone game. I made some big mistakes and lost a couple groups so I ended up resigning. We decided to try seven stones, and it seems to be the right handicap for us. I managed to cut off a few white stones and won by about 15 or so. If I had not cut off the stones I would have lost the game even though white didn't manage to kill anything. That tells me that I got lucky, and 7h will still be a tough game between the two of us.

I take a go board with me when I visit my mother because I don't have internet access there. I spent at least an hour on life and death while I was there. I am currently working on the "black to kill" three move problems in "1001 Life and Death Problems". I am finding them easier than the "black to live" three move problems.

More About Studying Joseki

I have started to work my way through the three volume joseki dictionary by Ishida. I am laying the stones out on the board and reading all of the comments as I do so. My plan is to go straight through all three volumes without attempting to remember any of the sequences the first time through the set of books.

I mentioned this plan to my long time go mentor who is an AGA 4 dan. He said that any study is good study. But he recommended that I read through the two volume set "Whole Board Thinking in Joseki" first by Yilun Yang before tackling the Ishida books.

I told him that I thought it made more sense to actually see the joseki variations before attempting to choose a joseki for a whole board position. If I didn't know what finished joseki positions looked like, how could I choose among the various continuations to solve the problems in the book?

He suggested that I simply read the books without attempting to solve the problems. I decided to give it a try, and am more than halfway through the first volume, which is the low knight's approach to the 3-4. The second volume covers the high one space approach the the 3-4. I'm going fairly quickly through the exercises since I am really only reading the book, and not placing the stones on the board. Although I did not intend to solve the problems, I could not resist trying to do so after I started to understand how the positions in the adjacent corners affected the choice of continuation. I was pleased to discover that I can make the correct choices in many cases.

Audio Go Lessons

I have known about the audio go lessons for a while, and took a few lessons a couple months ago. Recently I decided to get more involved in studying this way. The site is run by Guo Juan 5p, and she has a number of other professionals who prepare lectures for her site. If you have a KGS Plus membership you will recognize the interface.

Since my opening is generally considered to be pretty good (thanks to lessons and workshops with Yilun Yang 7p) I decided to work on my middle game through the audio lessons. The web site has the middle game training series completed for the C level, which is 30k through 10k. In the past few days I have worked my way through all five level C middle game lectures. I have enjoyed working through the lectures and intend to view them each two more times before the time expires. You pay one Euro per lecture and you are allowed to view it as often as you like for a month.

I would recomend anyone who is not yet ready for private lessons and looking for an ecomonical way to supplement their go study to consider giving the audio go lessons site a try. There are a number of free lectures there which you can view before you make a committment. They have one called the 2007 Chinese New Year Lecture which is about handicap play.

Finally Studying Joseki

I say I am studying joseki as opposed to learning joseki to distinguish between just memorizing the moves, which would be learning joseki, and understanding the reasons behind the moves, which would be studying.

I have the book "38 Basic Joseki" which I have attempted to traverse at various times in the past. I also have the "Kogo's Joseki Dictionary" sgf as well as the three volume "Dictionary of Basic Joseki" by Yoshio Ishida, from which I am told the "Kogo" work is derived.

I always found the bigger compilations of joseki information to be overwhelming. Where does one start? The "38 Basic Joseki" book is less daunting. I suppose it just makes sense to start at the beginning and work one's way through step by step, but I would read, and skip around, and never really get anywhere.

But the day has finally come for joseki study because Solaris has assigned joseki study for our study group. He asked us where we wanted to start and the majority voted for the 3-4. Although I was the only one in favor of the 4-4 this is okay with me because I always start out with 3-4 when playing black, so I will have plenty of opportunities to see these joseki in my game. (Is the plural of joseki, josekies or joseki? I'll use joseki.) I secretly believe that the others in the group, being so much stronger then I, already know the 4-4 joseki.

We are beginning with the high one space approach to the 3-4. And for the first week we are focused on three responses, none of which are pincers. We are saving the pincers for the next week. Things have been kept simple by limiting the number of branches provided. A cursory glance at Volume 2 of the Ishida work indicates that there are more options to consider, but I think it is the right thing to work on a little at a time. This is reassuring to me. I actually feel like I could understand and retain what is being covered.

Comments are provided in the study file. Once I feel I understand a branch I have decided to replay it to make myself familiar with how it would appear in the various corners of the board, not just the one in the sgf file. At first I thought this meant I only needed to play it eight times since it needs to played twice in each corner given that none of the positions are symmetrical. I then realized that I actually needed to play the branch sixteen times. What if black approaches white? Will I recognize the position? I can see myself brooding over a board and thinking that I could play that joseki if the colors were reversed. I know it is silly, but this could really happen.

Starting Group Lessons With Solaris

Yesterday I started taking weekly group lessons with Solaris on KGS. So far we have a group of four students. We will meet once a week for two hours. Solaris will be sending us homework via email which will include some life and death problems and a joseki to study for the following week. One of the reasons I have chosen to participate in the group lessons is because I think a lot about studying, and intend to do so, but I haven't done enough of it. Paying for a regular group lesson seems to be an economical way to motivate myself to study and to play regularly. I anticipate it will also feel less isolated than private lessons, which certainly are great, and have their place, and I may take them again at some point.

Our first lesson with Solaris involved a six stone teaching game with one of the students. The game took about 40 minutes. We spent the remainder of the class reviewing the beginning of that game. We used the situations that arose to discuss the strength of groups in comparison to each other, and to examine possible moves for each side. We didn't go very far into the game, but the opening was quite enough to provide material for discussion.

I came away from the game with a new appreciation for the outside vs. the inside, especially in a handicap game. This was well illustrated by showing the difference for black between enclosing white and allowing her to live small along the side, vs. stealing the base and forcing her to run to the center.

Solaris works with groups of from four to six players, preferrably of a similar level. Our group ranges from 8k through 1k, so we probably have a greater than optimal spread of ranks. At 8k I am the weakling in the group, but I don't feel out of place because I know a few things about theory from having taken professional lessons for five and a half years ending four years ago. More about that in a future entry. There's so much I haven't written about yet.

I started out fairly quiet in the group yesterday, but spoke up more as I found myself suggesting the optimal moves a few times.

If you are interested in group lessons, or private lessons, with Solaris please visit his online go school.

Played In Connecticut Tournament Last Saturday

Saturday, April 28th I played in an AGA Tournament in the Hartford, Connecticut area.

I entered as an 11 kyu. I had dipped from 11 kyu to 12 kyu at the New Jersey Open by self promoting unsuccessfully to 10 kyu. I didn't do well enough at the NJ Open to hold onto my promotion. But since my rating is more volatile after my previous self promotion I should rise back to 11 kyu since I won two games out of three that I played.

In the second game of the tournament I made a bent four against my opponent, which I have never done before.

What was amazing is that that even though there were only six tables at the tournament all three of my games were even or only 0.5 komi, which is really close to even. For such a small tournament it is amazing that there were enough players close enough to my rank to provide me with so many even games.

At the same tournament two years ago I got two nine stone handicap games as black where I was actually under handicapped by 1 stone and 2 stones respectively, bringing my stagnating 13 kyu rating up to 12 kyu for the first time.

I managed to record all three of my games on my tablet PC, just as I did at the NJ Open earlier this year and all three games have been reviewed by a strong dan player.

Great Go Blog - Shodan Challenge

Since I decided to start a Go Blog I thought it would be a good idea to actually read one that has been around for awhile, and to read it all the way through. I chose Nanny Ogg's blog Shodan Challenge . I wanted to get an idea of what kind of content people have included in their blogs. My intention in starting my own blog wasn't necessarily to provide riveting original commentary, but I also didn't want to give a day-by-day and blow-by-blow description of every tedious step in my study plan either, unless that is what people do. I was looking for a bit of guidance concerning balance by seeing what someone else had done to document her journey. I was also curious about the journey of another woman in the world of Go, so Nanny's blog was a natural choice.

As I read through the entries in Nanny's blog I became inspired by her dedication to the game, and the amount of time and effort she has spent to achieve her level of success, which I find to be quite impressive. Not only that, but the change in attitude about rank and even the lessening of the importance of reaching Shodan, I found to be very interesting and inspiring.

No longer can I feel as if I deserve to be stronger than I am. I haven't begun to pay my dues. I have read Nanny's blog from start to finish. It took me a few days a few hours at a time to do so, and it was time well spent as I gained an appreciation of what studying Go should entail.

It is my intention to pick other blogs to read in their entirety. I was initially inspired to begin blogging about my studies in the game of Go by seeing the blog maintained by ChiyoDad, ChiyoDad Learns Go. As an art teacher I was drawn by his images. I have not read the entire blog yet, but I intend to do that soon also.

So, is all this time I spend reading Go Blogs and posting on Go Discussions getting in the way of getting stronger at Go? Probably, but the name of the blog is "Enriching My Love of the Game", not "Busting My Bottom To Chase Unreasonable Goals and Setting Myself Up For Failure". Anything that enriches my love of the game I consider to be keeping me on track.

Results on Set One of Korean Academy Go Problems

As promised I am reporting on my level of mastery of the first set of problems from the Korean Academy. I had hoped for less than 10% error, which I managed to achieve with a 9% error rate, but that still seems like too much. I need to do better.

I made note of the problems which I missed when I went through them today. Soon I will go back over the problems again and see how much better I can do. I will shoot for 5% or less error next.

Thought Processes That Should Be Painfully Obvious, But Sometimes Aren't

I have been spending more time with "easy" life and death problems lately. I put the word easy in quotes for a reason. I need to go back to the first set of the Korean Academy Go Problems at gobase.org .

I had worked with the first set and thought that I had mastered them fairly well so I moved on to the second set. When I started to get some of the problems wrong in the second set I decided to keep track of how many I had missed. I wanted to get a percentage of wrong moves, which I think ought to be less than 10% if the problems are easy enough. (I instinctively though I had achieved this with Set 1, but I plan to go back and check that to be sure now.)

I had intended to do all 200 problems in Set 2, but after getting up to problem 50 it was obvious to me that it would be better to only go up to 100 to obtain a percentage. I got a nice round 40% wrong. While I was writing down the problem numbers I got wrong, which I won't bore you with here, I was also making some notes about things that I should be looking for.

I have read a little about solving life and death problems, and I have also many times sat through Yilun Yang's explanation of solving much more difficult life and death problems than the ones I have been attempting. So I am familiar with the importance of such things as hitting "eye points" and pushing from "the most open door first", Yet as I was looking at the solutions to the problems I had missed I was searching for some simpler, possibly more obvious things that a stong player would see without even consciously processing the information and would, therefore, not even mention in solving the problems. I came up with a few. They are presented from the perspective of black. I call them "Thought Processes That Should Be Painfully Obvious, But Sometimes Aren't"...

• Can I see an obvious dead shape that white could make if black doesn't play on a specific point?
• Remember that it is illegal to suicide, so look for an opportunity to crush white and he won't be able to connect, but you will be able to capture to get two eyes.
• Avoid giving white the opportunity to make ko (since ko is almost always not good enough). Keep looking if that is all you can see.
• Can I atari some stones? Does that make it possible to play an extension that takes away the possibility of a second eye, or threatens another atari, or creates some other mischief, after white responds to the atari?
• Can I set up a double atari, or avoid one?
• Can I set up a snap back or avoid one? Does the move I plan to make put me in a snapback? (This mistake is only slightly less embarrassing than self atari.) I found two examples of problems in this set where black could foolishly play himself into a snapback. They are #85 and #89.
• Can I prevent a move that white would like to make by creating a shortage of liberties?
• Can I avoid being disconnected, or can I disconnect white?
• If I make what looks like an obvious move will white be able to throw in?
• Be on the lookout for the move which seems to create the largest room to lead to trouble, while a move that gives up one more point might be the solid move.

If I come up with any more of these I will add them later.

Later today I will be going back over the first set of the Korean Academy life and death problems. I will report back on my percentage wrong. I sure hope it's below 10 percent.

Playing Across The Board In Pennsylvania

Sunday I paid my first visit to the Montogomery Go Club, which meets at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania. I wasn't sure if they would have extra go boards so I brought a really light weight set with me. It consists of a set of 6 mm stones in fabric pouches I had bought at a Go Congress and a leather 19 x 19 board which was part of a set I bought from Samarkand. (I have since discarded the bags that came with the set since I prefer the fabric bags.)

This was the first time I played Go across the board in six or seven years except for AGA tournament games. I forgot how much fun it can be, and I intend to do it again soon. Since my mother lives near the club I can combine an overnight visit with my mother with a few games at the club. That is definitely a dual purpose move.

I played two very close games. One of them was an even game that I won by resignation after I managed to set up a double atari. The other game was with an AGA 3 kyu. He had never played on leather before so we used my board. I took six stones and lost that game by 6.5 after getting caught in a shortage of liberties. Before that I was ahead by about five points. So it was a really good game. Since Sunday I have spoken with my 3 kyu opponent online in the Wings Go Club room on KGS a few times and have interested him in playing in the Wings Go Club monthly leagues.

The thing I really enjoyed about playing face to face is that the games stayed with me in a way that online games don't seem to do. I found myself thinking about them over and over again over the course of the next couple of days. It may have been the novelty of it, but it sure felt good.

Easy Go Problems

One recommended way of studying life and death is to work with problems that you can solve almost immediately. Up until now I was not able to find problems as easy as that. The closest thing I could find to that level were the first hundred problems in the book "One Thousand and One Life-and-Death Problems" from Volume 2 in the "Mastering the Basics" series from Kiseido.

Recently I came across the go problems at http://www.gobase.org The first set of The Korean Problem Academy series are just what I had been looking for. They are rated for 25k to 15k.

Doing these problems sometimes feels like nothing more than seeking the obvious vital point and clicking on it, which is something I'm told that you want to avoid in studying life and death. Upon closer reflection, however, I found that most of the problems were so easy, with sometimes only two or three places a stone could be placed, that I found myself seeing the vital point immediately, yet taking the time to look at the other points and see why they didn't work... all within the space of a few seconds.

It was empowering to rip through those problems and have such success. I'm working on the second set now rated for 15k to 5k. I'll undoubtedly be hitting a wall sometime soon.

Play Slow - Play White

Sometimes you just want to have a slow game online, but have a hard time finding one. I have a strategy for getting all the slow games you want, but you have to be willing to play white.

Here's my method. I put up a game with generous time limits: 45 minutes of regular time with 25 stones in 15 minutes for overtime. Then I wait. I always get a game. And I don't usually have to wait for more than a couple minutes. But I very rarely play black this way. Recently a stronger player took my offer, and I was actually shocked that I got to play black.

Either everyone likes black, or they just want to play stronger players. I think they want to play stronger players.

This is also a good method for getting games if you don't like rejection.

Replaying Shusaku Games With Mom

One of my young online Go playing friends suggested that I replay the games of Shusaku. He worked his way through the book "Invincible", and he credits that with his rise to dan status. I don't expect it to do the same for me, but I figured that it would probably help my sense of shape and wouldn't be a total waste of time given how much time I now have on my hands to enjoy Go.

It was suggested that I play the games out on a real board. Last week I was planning a trip to visit my mother overnight so I packed my go board and took "Invincible" along. As luck would have it I got stuck due to inclement weather and ended up staying for two nights instead of one. With no internet connection I decided to start replaying the games in ernest and got through the first seven games while I was there.

Now for the interesting part... 37 years ago I tried to teach my mother how to play Go. It didn't hook her the way it did me, but then I didn't really know how to teach the game back then. My mother just celebrated her 80th birthday, and works Sudoku puzzles to keep her mind active. Go would serve the same purpose if she were interested in it. Mom was watching me replay the games and started asking questions. I suggested that she play with me and take white since I was still enough of a child to want to be the young Shusaku. We played out one of the games looking for the next moves on the diagrams. In local situations where continuations were fairly obvious Mom could anticipate the moves and we talked about them.

We enjoyed our game together, and I actually think it might be time to teach Mom how to play on a small board. Back when I tried to teach her I didn't even know that boards smaller than 19 x 19 existed and I didn't know any other way to teach than to give a nine stone handicap after explaining about two eyes.

I have decided to take the review of the Shusaku games off the real board while I am at home and do them with Smart Go since there are over 400 Shusaku games in the collection. I am using the automatic replay feature at 3 second per move, which gives me enough time to try to anticipate the next move locally or to at least anticipate a tenuki.

Smart Go - It Pays To Read The Documentation

http://smartgo.com

I love Smart Go but have not spent the time I should to explore all of its features. I am using it on a tablet PC at 1024 x 768 resolution. When I upgraded to version 2.0 I considered the default settings to be less friendly to the small screen than the those in version 1.0, so I kept the older version for recording games and reviewing my lesson files.

Today I decided to check and see if I could configure the layout to be more similar to the older version. Right there in the help files under "screen layout" I found the answer to my problem. Go to "View - Maximize Board" to put the comments on the left where I like them making the board can be as big as possible.

See the following screen shots to illustrate the older version on Smart Go, the newer version with default settings, and the Newer version with the board maximized.



Older version of Smart Go (version 1.5.4):

Current version of Smart Go without changing settings (version 2.6.0.0):

Current version of Smart Go with the board maximized (version 2.6.0.0):

Now I know that Smart Go 2.x is just as small screen friendly as Smart Go 1.x

Life and Death Problems On The Real Board

One of my favorite books is "One Thousand and One Life-andDeath Prolems" from Kiseido Publishing Company. I often carry it with me so I can do life and death problems in spare moments. Recently I decided to work through the one move problems in the book rather quickly. I did the first 300 one move problems within a couple days by looking at the book and making an effort to refute alternate answers before looking at the solution. Given the fact that there are only a few places one can move in these small problems that isn't terribly hard to do. (I do sometimes fail to visualize all liberties, however.)

When I got to the last set of one move problems starting with problem number 301, they started to feel a bit more difficult. I decided to get out a real 9x9 board and stones and lay out the problems to solve them on the board. I expected that I would need to work out variations with the stones before considering the problem solved, but I discovered something surprising...

I found it easier to read the problem when it was on the board than when it was in the book. I was really happy about this, but I found it surprising because my AGA rating from real life tournaments lags four stones behind my KGS rating from online games.

The way I am solving the problems now is to place them on the board and solve them without putting the stones down. Then after I think I have the correct solution I am trying the various lines of play with the stones to prove my answer before I look at the solution. This way I can see if I have failed to visualize a liberty. I am even trying to visualize what the final position would look like with obviously wrong moves. I am hoping that attempting to see the stones on the board will help my reading skills during games.

The Ear Reddening Move

This is a game in which Shusaku played black. The marked move is known as the ear reddening move because when Shusaku played it his opponent's ears turned red. This game appeared upside down in the previous post on my retirement Go cake.

You can read about this game at Sensei's Library

Retirement Go Cake

I posted this picture on my other web site, but it really belongs here. I have it on good authority that this is the Shusaku Ear Reddening game. However, the board is upside down. What it truely amazing is that my colleague, who found the game online with her husband's help, has no real knowledge of Go. They just happened to put a really cool game on the cake. I have the Go board part of the cake in my freezer.