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Araldo
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A warning in advance, this is a very boring page. Please leave now, before it is too late.


A few fact about me.

My name is Araldo van de Kraats, age 24 years.

I'm from the Netherlands, Enschede. Student from the University of Twente, faculty Electrical Engineering. Almost each Wednesday you can find me in the "Theater cafe" with my club "Drienerlose Go Vereniging".

Playing seriously since august 2002, first on IGS, but now mainly on KGS. At the moment, I've got a rating of 5 kyu on KGS (playing as Araldo or Araldor). Also I play games on Little Golem.

I took part in the following real-life tournaments until now (reverse order).

  • Aalst (Eindhoven), 7-8 September 2003, 4 kyu, 36 place out of 58 (3 out of 5 wins, won twice from 5k but lost twice from 3k). The official results report 2 out of 5 wins, because of a wrongly reported match-result.
  • Amersfoort, 10 August 2003, 4 kyu, Last place (1 out of 7). My weak excuse for this terrible result is that I did run out of time in four games where I otherwise had a good chance of winning (of course this is still my own stupid fault), and in the three other games I had to face a 140+ reverse komi.
  • Utrecht, 28-29 June 2003, 7 kyu, 37th place out of 45 (3 out of 5 wins, won from a 6 kyu)
  • Apeldoorn, 18 May 2003, 10 kyu, 28th place out of 38 (4 out of 5 wins, won 2x from 9 kyu's)
  • Nijmegen, 15-16 March 2003, 10 kyu, 61th place out of 71, (2 out of 5 wins)
  • Amstelveen, 1-2 Februari 2003, 12 kyu (weakest again), last place (4 out of 5 wins)
  • Arnhem, 17-18 November 2002, 14 kyu (weakest), last place (1 out of 6 wins)

Rank development:

End of each month (Europe rating estimated)

  • Jul 2002: 30k IGS
  • Aug 2002: 27k IGS
  • Sep 2002: 27k IGS
  • Okt 2002: 20k IGS
  • Nov 2002: 18k IGS, 15k KGS, 14k Europe
  • Dec 2002: 15k KGS, 13k Europe
  • Jan 2003: 13k KGS, 12k Europe, 14k Little Golem
  • Feb 2003: 12k KGS, 11k Europe, 12k Little Golem
  • Mar 2003: 11k KGS, 10k Europe, 11k Little Golem
  • Apr 2003: 11k KGS, 10k Europe, 10k Little Golem
  • May 2003: 9k KGS, 9k Europe, 10k Little Golem
  • Jun 2003: 9k KGS, 7k Europe, 9k Little Golem
  • Jul 2003: 5k KGS (new account), 5k IGS, 5k Europe, 8k Little Golem
  • Aug 2003: 5k KGS, 5k IGS, 4k Europe, 7k Little Golem
  • Sep 2003: 5k KGS, 4k Europe, 8k Little Golem

Books I own, have ordered or have borrowed (#1 and #15 I don't own, #17,#18 and #19 I have ordered):

- in order of first reading -

1. I don't remember the title of my first book anymore. Explained the rules, eyes, life and death and other basic stuff in Dutch. Borrowed it from the library about 7 years ago.

2. Tesuji, James Davies: Really good, finished it in just a few days.

3. Kage's Secret Chronicles Of Handicap Go, Toshiro Kageyama: I won this one in my first tournament, because I finished last:). It contains 9 games with 2 to 5 stones handicap. Lots of funny dialogs and humour in this book.

4,5,6. Dictionary of Basic Joseki (I, II and III), Yoshio Ishida: A few hundred joseki with variations, mistakes you should avoid and a way to punish those mistakes. Will take a lot of time to learn all this, another year probably

7. The Endgame, Tomoko Ogawa and James Davies: I've read only the first part about the theory, and was somewhat usefull for me. Maybe a little boring.

8. The Art of Go, Volume 1: Connecting Stones: Problems which deals with connecting your stones. However, I don't really like a book with problems only. Did a few chapters but is a little boring. Problems are not very easy though.

9. Attack and Defense, Akira Ishida: This is a good book. But difficult to implement all those ideas in a real game. A summary would be nice.

10. Keshi and Uchikomi, Reduction and Invasion in Go, Iwamoto Kaoru: I won this one because I won 4 games in my second tournament. Has some standard paterns in it and ways to reduce or invade those paterns. Contains almost only patterns with 3-4 opening. A little too advanced for me at the moment, I will start with this one if I'm 5 kyu or so.

11. Life and Death, James Davies. I have won this in the Apeldoorn 2003 tournament. Will start reading it soon.

12. 501 Openings problems?, Richard Bozulich. This is really an excelent book. Each problem comes with a hint, what the purpose of the move is (i.e. make/prevent moyo, attack/defend weak group etc). First you can try to solve the openings problem without the hint, then check if it is what you thought, maybe try again and finally look at the answer. After doing 100 problems I really got the hang of openings strategies (that is, positions after about 10-20 moves). Note this book is not about joseki or fuseki.

13. Lessons in the fundamentals of go, Kageyama. Nice to read, but I don't think it will improve my go skill more than a fraction of a stone. I agree with the criticism on Lessons in the fundamentals discussion.

14. Dictionary of basic shapes?, Unknown autor. Korean Language. Difficult to use, since I cannot read a single letter (or character, whatever) Korean. Still it is somewhat usefull. A lot of frequently occuring patterns appear in it. The book shows what the standard reply is, and what can happen if another move is done or if it is ommited.

15. Get strong at the opening, Richard Bozulich. Borrowed this one from my neighbour. It has about 150 openingsproblems, about well known fuseki mainly based on 3-4 and 4-4 points. The answers are explained quite well. I like this book.

16. Jungsuk in our time, Seo Bong-soo, Jung Dong-sik. The first korean book translated into english. It is about 3-4 joseki. Often the josekis are discussed with the complete board in mind (or at least multiple corners). A nice addition to the Ishida dictionaries I think. What I like about this joseki book, is that they are discussed in more detail than the Ishida one and easier to read because it is not so much a dictionary.

17,18. Fuseki dictionary volume 1 and 2, Rin Kai Ho (japanese language)

19. Master of Haengma?, Baek Seong-ho (korean language)


email: a.vandekraats@student.utwente.nl


Let's try an ThreeColourOngoingGame


Still here? I cannot believe it.




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