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Alex Weldon
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I'm a Canadian, living in Korea and teaching English. I took up Badouk as a hobby in January 2002, but have only made serious efforts to improve since maybe the beginning of September 2002. At that time, I was about 23k* IGS. I still suck (11k* IGS as of February, 2003), but 23k* to 11k* in 6 months isn't bad. Single digits, here I come!

In Korea, my play has been assessed at 6 Gup. Note two things, though. First, I don't think the Gup system still works the way it used to; every Korean I've talked to says that there is 1-9 dan after 1 Gup, so 1 Gup is no longer the same as a 6-7 dan amateur. I think Gup levels have been adjusted to be the same as kyu. Second, the person who told me I'm 6 Gup is someone who was 5 Gup in high school, but hasn't played much since, and now guesses he's 7 or 8 Gup. He says I'm 6, because I can consistently beat him with White, giving 2 stones. My guess is that he's slipped farther than he thinks, unless I really do play much worse on the Internet than in real life.


My strengths, as I see them:

  • Better at whole board thinking than other players my level.
  • Good at fuseki, and the middle game, except when complicated life and death issues arise.
  • Good at positional judgement, timing invasions and reductions, expanding my own moyo, etc.
  • Good at seeing multi-purpose moves.

My weaknesses:

  • Play too quickly, especially when I'm winning. Often get ahead and then lose by blundering in yose.
  • Bad at reading things out, poor ability to visualize complicated sequences of moves before they're played.
  • A lot of players my level seem to have keener life-and-death ability than me, particularly the Japanese players. When it comes to life and death on the side or in the corner, I die more often than I kill.
  • Don't know very many joseki. (although some people would claim this is a good thing, since it means I actually think about my plays in the fuseki, instead of just playing some sequence I memorized)
  • Not good at sabaki... although who is, at my level? I'm getting better though.
  • Often find myself falling into single territory strategy.

My playing style:

  • Leaning more towards influence than territory.
  • Like letting my opponents take the corners and build big side territories instead.
  • Dislike excessively complicated fighting and life and death.
  • Equally dislike one huge moyo vs. one huge moyo games.
  • Try to win with calm moves, aiming for a small victory, rather than trying to destroy everything in sight (no kyu disease for me, thankfully).
  • I like playing shoulder hits more than I probably should.
  • I like to invite invasions into my moyo which I can attack to build strength, and then use that strength to destroy my opponent's territory.


This is a copy of the living page "Alex Weldon" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.