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KarlKnechtel

 

Karl Knechtel
PageType: HomePage    

Hi, I'm Karl Knechtel, Zahlman on NNGS (and just about everywhere else on the internet for that matter, except where it seems more appropriate to use my real name). I played on KGS for a few months until recently - like many, I can no longer access it due to support for my outdated OS being dropped. I ought to upgrade for a lot of other reasons, too, really...

(Update! I have recently been forced for other reasons to obtain a PC, and thus I can access KGS while I am working on that machine. I may also be upgrading the OS on my Mac in the near future, too. Good news for my KGS friends. Good to see I am well remembered :) )

My Go history as well as I can recall:

Sometime in my childhood or early adolescence (thus, early to mid 90s): I see a brief description of Go in a book of "practical diversions" or some such thing published by Reader's Digest. I don't remember any details except that:

  • the ladder formation was described
  • there was a vague reference to professionals playing seemingly at random, as if cooperatively making an abstract painting, or something like that.
  • the text suggested that handicap stones could be placed freely and ranged up to 13 in number. (Odd.)

Sometime in 1997 or so, or perhaps earlier: My quest to find worthwhile diversions on the Internet - which are supported by my ancient Mac Classic (outdated since before its manufacture date in '91) and 2400 baud modem - lands me in the world of MUDs. The first that I try out is located on a server in Germany, and thus my 'net identity is born. (Later I find that most of the players are American, but I keep the name anyway.) One of the rooms in the main city had a mob you could interact with, who would present you with very easy tsumego. Thus, treating them simply as logic puzzles, I knew how to identify the vital point of a straight three before I'd ever actually played the game.

Sometime after that, possibly in 1999: I start playing on NNGS and for a bit on IGS, and meet shanghai?. I get up to about 26k and give up because I don't have the time, or something.

June 2002: I have come back to the game, probably in February or thereabouts, and run into shanghai? again. She doesn't recognize me at first, but the name is etched in my consciousness for some reason. Upon coming back I find that I have magically jumped up to about 18k, and start improving at the rate of about one stone per month. At any rate, I am about 14k at this point.

From my original June 2002 entry: I'm not really sure how that sort of thing happens; I think I just got older and wiser. Or something. ;) I'd say it's fair to attribute most of the rest of the 4-stone improvement to SL; I feel like my fuseki and sense of EyeShape have much improved. (I didn't used to have any concept of a "base" and very little idea how to defend corners; and I thought it was magical how GnuGo would play these bizarre looking moves and end up killing my big groups by destroying the EyeShape... of course, it still happens now and then :) ) I'm still not confident about fuseki though.

November 2002: Around now I seem to get stuck at 10k on NNGS, which is a big barrier. I start playing on KGS a bit later, and breaking 10k there proves even more difficult. Oddly, I attain 5k on LGS? at a time when I am 12k on NNGS - most players had a three-stone difference between the servers; GnuGo and I had a seven-stone difference.

August 2003: I stopped playing again on NNGS for a few months while I was addicted to KGS - I insist it's not the pretty interface that lured me, but the sheer availability of opponents - and came back to find I had "lost my star". I had just earned it back (8k*), when NNGS made their rank adjustment shifting everyone two stones stronger, allegedly to bring ratings more in line with the AGA ratings. KGS had recently made a similar shift - but by only half a stone, and most of my friends from both servers already had the same, or lower rating on KGS as on NNGS. Strange.

September 2003: I met Alex Weldon at the Toronto Go club and had the pleasure of two rather exciting even games, with me taking black. Without komi, I won the first by 7 (after managing to cut off and capture a clump of invading stones) and lost the second by 27 (a violent game involving several ko fights, one of which resulting from rather mangled joseki - my fault). Perhaps 2 or even 3 stones handicap is appropriate, but I feel more assured about my strength now (still climbing through 5k* on NNGS).

I observed in June 2002 that my results still seemed to exhibit "amateur instability" - and they still do :) Anyway, I've recently become addicted to the concept of miai values. I'd like to write a program to solve them, but the difficulty of pruning the search trees and removing dominated? options seems overwhelming. Does GnuGo have good code for this?

Some proverbs/concepts/wonderings by me:

It seems that many of my old pages - especially ones where I didn't really know what I was talking about ^^; - have been dug up recently and are showing up on the RecentChanges. How embarrassing! Oh well. We all live and learn.


I liked Alex's summary of his PlayingStyle on his home page, so I will copy the format here. Actually I think my style is not very different from his... and I expect that further games between the two of us will continue to be exciting. :)

My strengths, as I see them:

My weaknesses:

  • Too confident in my ability to rescue groups in danger. Actually, too confident in my life and death to recognize "non-fatal" danger, so that I let my opponent leave/exploit aji and never get around to playing honte.
  • The opening
  • Attack and defense
  • Going for the kill when an opponent decides not to defend a group in mortal danger, daring me to try it

My style:

  • Build influence early but also look for the beginnings of moyo; I like to think I take after Otake Hideo in this regard. Best role model I can think of for fuseki, really, and I need one :P Fuseki is difficult for me because you can't just read things out; you have to have heuristics for everything.
  • Invade whereever possible early in the chuban. But I don't feel I'm very good with sabaki - my use of thickness is flexible but my invasions are not, strange as it sounds. I start out playing some kikashi and trying to make good shape (normally succeeding) but have sometimes unrealistic expectations about what I can make live. It's difficult to know when to connect for extra liberties vs. sacrifice for "tempo".
  • Tend to play NiRenSei as either White or Black, occasionally low Chinese as Black. I rarely play "three-corner openings", preferring to let opponent make shimari and then block the extensions and/or make interesting-looking wariuchi.
  • Trademark: centre plays in the fuseki which are a point or two away from the tengen, rather than exactly there. Usually after a bit more thought than I normally put into a move. Not always a good move. I do play the actual tengen if really does look like the center of symmetry?, but usually there is more development in one direction than another, and I let play away from thickness guide my placement.

[Diagram]
A personal icon - the symbol for the set of integers, in contrasting colours.

Normally I use blue and green, with slightly curved lines.



This is a copy of the living page "Karl Knechtel" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.