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Journal of an American Go Player
   

Journal Of An American Go Player
Welcome to Naustin's Journal Page

9/03/04--Well looks like the old Journal here might be on hold for a while now that schools started again. It's unfortunate that my university doesn't offer a go program though we do have a couple of classes in chess.

Bad news on the Go Seigen book project. Looks like my computer science friend and I have hit a brick wall with the sgf to latex conversion. If anyone has any great ideas about this either knows where I can get a better free one or would know how to write one, please let me know by posting here.

I've been studying the opening, both fuseki and joseki. If I remember rightly there's a specific word for the two together. Either that or that the fuseki word is commonly misused. Any way that seems to be productive and hopefully will improve my game.

Unfortunately I was unable to get into the Panda Net Amateur Championship tournament. I had to start a new account there 'cause I had lost my passwords but then even though I played over 40 games I wasn't able to get the account rated in time. Maybe it's for the best. I'll probably never be a pro go player but philosopher yes as long as I pay attention in my classes. They definitely offer excitement of their own.

Have a Happy Fall!

8/26/04--Another poker term I've been thinking about: "On Tilt" To me this means that if something goes wrong or I lose a game getting upset so that it affects my play in the rest of the game or the next game or even the next many games. Any one whose read a couple of entries here can see this is one of what I consider my biggest weaknesses as a go player (not to mention just plain lack of knowledge). I've been on kind of a winning streak lately. It seems to go that way for me. When I win I feel positive and little setbacks don't affect me as much. I belieive I can find a good move etc.

I remember reading a book about chess by I.A. Horowitz. He talked about playing the person not the board. This seems like kind of a controversial idea as you will also hear people say the opposite. He wrote about his club where person A will almost always beat person B, and person B will almost always beat person C, but person C will almost always beat person A. It's not about some absolute scale of power. Especially in a game as big as go where two players of equal strength don't necessarily overlap in all or even most of their knowledge though of course there are fundamentals.

I guess the hope is that by recognizing the fact it will help me to even out my performance.

8/11/04--I have just picked up a copy of The Protracted Game from my library and started reading it. One interesting thing I have noted is that this goes along with something Arthur Smith wrote in his book published in 1908. In comparing chess and go he makes the observation that chess resembles ancient warfare more with specific individuals who can make a big difference to the whole battle and the goal of capturing the king, whereas go is much more like modern warfare with lines of supply, and overall strategic maneuvering.

New page for Metaphorical Names for the Game of Go as kind of an offshoot of the Mathematical vs Metaphorical Understanding page.

Took the Hikaru No Go personality test and it showed that I am most simialar to the charachter Akira Toya, which I thought was cool.

8/07/04-- Well basically it looks like it would probably be easier to just try to incorporate the cultural links into the timeline page so I have turned the history page into an alias and moved the few links that weren't already listed over to the timeline page and turned that page into a path. I have tried to keep the new links in the misc. category at the bottom until they can be worked in more appropriately.

Inaugerated Mathematical vs Metaphorical Understanding page in order to discuss issues involved in trying to understand this game.

By the way, you can just call me Dragon Slayer from now on as I killed two huge dragons to win two seperate games at my club last night.

8/06/04-- Investigating Murase Shuho at go base I decided to search the history of the Honinbo's here. Found a good page but starting to expand my investigation found that there is no general History path. So I hereby invent a new path. I have decided I will make that my next big Senseis project. Hope it doesn't become as turbulent as the last project I took on here.

8/06/04--P2- Just Downloaded ZeroKun's game package from [ext] thegoban for use with Kombilo.

8/06/04-- Joy! I finaly got a copy of the English translation of Hikaru No Go! I felt like a kid at the comic shop with a feeling of real joy that it was in. I sat and read it all in one fell swoop and now I can't wait till September when vol. 2 is supposed to come out. I really enjoyed it and am glad I finally caught up with this one. The only small point of dissatisfaction was the phrase "move of God". I think they are refering to what I have seen translated here as "hand of God" which strikes me as a more apt and poetic translation. I really liked how seriously they treat the game and actually have real game set ups in the art work etc.

In other news. I've been playing more games on IGS trying to get my account up to snuff for the tournament I registered for. Competition is much tougher there. Winning games is more satisfying in some ways because I feel like I have to fight harder and stay more focused.

I have been feeling good about winning some games at the 25k level there. It's probably time I moved up and started playing higher ranked players. It's just the last time I was seriously playing at IGS it seemed like I could never win. My rank was plunging toward this level (22k and falling). I may have been taking alittle undo pleasure at winning some games here against players that weren't fairly compensated though I have lost 3 of the 10 or so games I've played. Oh well, we'll see how it goes. I don't want to be sandbagging but winning once in a while feels good too.

8/03/04-- I think I am beginning to understand how joseki lead to middle game positions. I have started to pick up enough joseki ideas that every once in a while I actually play one. It seems like the position I obtain as result is much better than before and I am beginning to see how you would actually be able to make a purposeful position that involved the whole board if you made the right sort of choices.

[Diagram]

This is my favorite joseki right now. I like to play the white side.

Shaydwyrm: This might have been a typo, but normally B7 is played one point below or one point to the right. This is one of my favorite joseki too, btw, though I like to be on the black side!

Thanks for the correction Shayd. Good thing too otherwise I might have ended up trying to punish the genuine version as an overplay :)

I also found a cool free joseki dictionary on the web. [ext] Kogo's Joseki Dictionary

Big break on the computer frontier for Go Seigen book. Looks like I should be chugging along quite shortly. The start of fall semester will probably slow this project up but I am excited to be working on it and am looking forward to the time I will spend on it.

8/02/04--Registered today for the [ext] IGS Amateur Championship in the handicap division. Got another great review on the game with Carcer through the Go teaching ladder. Slowly progressing towards beginning work on the Go Seigen book project. Having difficulty sorting out some of the computer aspects of the project but gradually finding solutions with the help of a friend.

The goban is shaped roughly like a square and that is why it has four corners.

7/29/04--Welcome to teaching of the sweet and salty hand!

I discovered this teaching in an "ancient" American Go Journal (1976!! Sept/Oct-Vol 11, No.5 p 18 by Masubuchi to be exact :) I found in a local sages office. I felt it must be shared with this society.

[Diagram]
19x19 diagram

B8 shows a salty hand. This is the severest attack open to Black. It is a fight in his sphere of influence and seperates Whites two stones.

K17 labeled here as 'a' though not a bad move shows a sweet hand. One not commited to fighting when it favors Black.

O14 labeled here as 'b' is 'super sweet'. Masubuchi referred to the koan like comment of a master on this move 'An arrow is shot, but there is no enemy.'



7/26/04--I think I am finaly beginning to comprehend that there are four sides to a goban. And that it is symetric in each of those directions.

7/25/04--Redid my homepage here and am feeling quite satisfied with the results. I think this is probably my best version. Otherwise I am still floundering in the low double digit kyu range. I know, I have promised not to worry about rank so much but it is hard not to sometimes. Looking at my first entry here doesn't seem very helpful. Perhaps plateaus are a natural part of the learning curve and one shouldn't invest too much energy in trying to "beat" them.

Played a game against Carcer recently which I also lost. Have sent this in to the GTL also after getting a great review on my game with Blake from Scartol.

Also got a neat icon of the Japanese charachter for Go from Scartol's [ext] Go Art website. So my KGS account finally has a picture to go with it which I have longed for for quite awhile.

Also got Sakata Eio's Tesuji and Anti-Suji of Go again through interlibrary loan. It had a great explanation of relationship between suji, tesuji, and shape. I look forward to looking at it more in depth.

7/16/04--Awesome news in the contact from PatrickB. Also, I joined the Sabaki Go Club last night and had the most incredible welcome. I am now member #169. I have been assigned to House Hayashi. I also played a great game against Blake. I ended up losing but it looks like it would be a good one to send to the Go Teaching Ladder to renew my membership there.

7/15/04 Part II--Further reading/studying experience. I have been trying to read more pages here at SL particularly fellow bloggers pages. Have come across some interesting reading. I also seem to be catching the recent changes bug I read about somepeople getting when I first came here.

Also have been working through some of Go Seigen's games. I found a free e-book at the Wings Across Calm Waters website that had some of his games commented by him, with some additional material. Neat book. Only problem is that most of the variation diagrams have serious errors, lines displaced left, missing stones that most of the time are noted at the head of the variation, errors in words 'black' or 'white'.

Interestingly enough this seems to have in a way been a good thing. It's almost like working in a workbook or something. I really have to pay attention and read through the variations so I can get them right. (I am entering them into the CGoban SGF editor.) That work seems to pay off in terms of understanding.

I have also been downloading some from the Collected games of Go Seigen collection at gobase. This is cool too though I tend to gloss over these games more, looking more for oddities like big kills, unusual corner plays, big ko fights etc. I can't hope in some ways to get as much out of these as the commented games but hopefully they will help me with my analysis skills because I will be looking at games that are good examples.

It's extremely amazing to me to look at all the variations in the commented games. It's almost as if most of the game were here. Both in the ones the players did see and the ones they didn't. The cliche of the iceberg (used in Davies Tesuji for example) springs to mind.

  • PatrickB: Note that this book was semi-automatically generated (by me) from .MGT/.SGF files that Jim Z. Yu put together, and the LaTeX and SGF source files are available if you'd like to take up the task of fixing up the various problems in the book. The main thing that is needed on that front is editing of the SGF files to use more standard ways of placing variations, and break lists and boundaries for diagrams to make the book and variations more compact. I unfortunately don't have the time right now or likely any time soon. :( Anyway, leave me a message on KGS (or my home page here) if you're interested and I'll get you what you need and give some basic guidance about how to get started. -Patrick

7/15/04--Thanks Bill for the reference. I checked it out. In my opinion taiji seems alittle overly concerned with his rank but he also seems quite attached to the account name and feels it's misrepresented. People there seemed reasonable in their responses.

Ok. Regardless, looking at his home page here he seems to be pretty balanced and able to discern constructive criticism from comments of a less constructive nature. On that page it seems that a trend he has encountered on servers holds somewhat true. That people feel very inclined to argue his rank or ambition to rank. Considering that he seems reasonable in handling comment here I am inclined to believe that some of the comments he receives are less than constructive. Especially when someone saying he sucks admits it even with the caveat that they think every kyu player sucks including themselves.

For the rest I am going on my own experience of people. My only point is that it seems that people often take someone elses ambition as personally threatening and seek to prove the absurdity of the ambition. I think the idea of turning pro even at the lowest level is exciting and someone setting out to that task from the level of 1kyu seems particularly interesting to me because 1kyu seems like a level I can imagine myself rising to. Maybe perhaps...

I don't mean to attack or defend anybody only to voice alittle support. I just wanted to point out that someones ambition isn't really relevent to any one else unless that ambition were to cause that person to do things that were harmful in the name of it or if that person is to serve as some sort of model.

7/13/04--I've been reading taiji's page here at SL. I just want to write in support of his project. I have not reviewed his games. I have no idea how likely it is whether he will turn pro someday or not but I think it's a cool project.

I think go is like sports in that there is that question as to how much of what makes a pro a pro is due to physical/genetic factors and how much of it is due to hard work.

I like to think about the idea of turning pro. I tend to class my own thinking about it as fantasy but who knows if there were a web page out there to tell me how someone else did it maybe I would gain the hope to do it myself.

I think taiji also has a point about people trying to tear him down. If taiji thinks he may be able to make the leap that has nothing to do with anyone else. Why should it be a matter of concern.

Bill: Writing as Fu Ren-Li on reg.games.go, taiji has put some people off with claims about his go ability and problems with ratings systems that do not do it justice, in his view. Some people may be trying to tear him down, some may think that he needs a reality check.

If you are interested, I think that the relevant history starts with his note,

 <vAbPb.5303$lGr.4466@twister01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>

which I located on Google.

7/06/04--Resigned as an assistant on KGS. Didn't feel very comfortable with the authority especially in light of ambiguities in policy. WMS was very nice about it.

7/04/04--Happy Times! I won my first eight stone game against one of the 1kyu's at my Friday night club.

I have been studying alittle bit through some books that I checked out via inter library loan. This is a very useful resource particularly for players who like me are too poor to be able to buy books or just those who are too poor to buy books without knowing what they are getting. Another advantage is that you can find things that way sometimes that are out of print.

I got Otake Hideo's Opening Theory Made Easy, James Davies Tesuji, Nagahara's Strategic Concepts of Go, and Ishida's Joseki Dictionary. I will write notes on the review pages for these books.

Also been trying to relax more and enjoy the game for it's own sake rather than worrying so much about ratings and winning and losing. I feel like it's going pretty well.

I wish you enjoyable games.

5/28/04--Well I suppose it's time to compensate for some of the negative strain this journal has had. Today I want to write alittle bit about the big wins. Again I like to classify things so I will do so here.

Firstly there are the crushing victories when you simply outlclass your opponent. Today I had one. I won by over a hundred points playing white with .5 komi against someone ranked one kyu lower than me. It in some sense is not the greatest form of big win as it is clearly in some sense an uneven match. Partly in this game I just seperated a large group of stones. These are good to atleast remind me I have improved and I am not the lowest creature on the food chain.

Secondly come my favorites. The hard fought .5 or 1 point wins. I have had several of these on KGS or IGS. I am not good at estimating the score so it is always something of a surprise when a game is counted up. There is something very satisfying in knowing that if you had given up even one more minor endgame point you would have lost. Knowing that basically I was stretched to my maximum and every move counted.

Lastly are the fighting spirit games. Back and forth contests where you are both up and behind by alot at various points. It is alot of fun to come back after a big local loss and make it up somewhere else, not giving into the temptation to break down. I had a league game this last winter like this. These are the ones that truly feel deserved.

Such are the ups and downs of go!

5/28/04--Well so much for my protestations and self doubt. I continue to play the game regardless and yes enjoy it. Tonight I was watching the Soprano's on DVD. Going along with the idea of American go player. I remember reading in Lessons in the Fundamentals... how he talked about watching samurai movies and taking inspiration as a go player from that (never mind he denigrates "ganster go"). Well I guess I feel some of that watching Tony Soprano. At least I want to play sometimes after watching that.

Makes me think of a couple of things. Maybe go is a healthy way to vent anger. You can be as ruthless and destructive as you want on the board and as long as you can be civil in actual conversation there are no consequences.

But I am also reminded in watching this show of an important fact about go. It is much more like business then it is like war. For example chess is very much like war. You try to kill the other player's pieces, you try to checkmate the king, but mostly defeat is complete. In the end there is one victor one loser.

This isn't really true in go. Winner loser yes. But I think the most progress I have made in the game has come from not letting the small defeats in games prevent me from keeping on. You cannot prevent the opponent from scoring something. The way to victory is to score more.

5/17/04--Thanks to Anonymous for the suggestion to insert blank lines to break up the text and hopefully make it more readable.

I'm thinking tonight more about the idea of what it takes to win. I think as I said in the last entry alot of times I don't seem to want to win. Tonight I sat there looked at a move that was clearly a bad move, no subtlety involved and played it anyway. It wasn't a mouse mistake or clicko either.

I have been reading a book about Erwin Rommel. Something that sticks out especially from his first world war career was his sheer determination. He would pull these incredible feats of repeatedly without sleeping or eating for days subjecting himself to extremes of temparature. He just had something inside determination or whatever, I see it in the friend I wrote about last week. That patience care and effort. I wonder if that is something that can be gained with effort or whether it's some sort of psychological issue or whether you just have to be born with it.

I wonder if there should be something you are fighting for. Not in any literal sense maybe, or maybe so. Maybe just pride.

Perhaps I should give up the game of go.

5/10/04--The subject today is bad beats. You know what I'm talking about. The losses that make you angry. The ones that hurt bad enough to make you want to cry. Having spent hours playing a game tonight that I started quite well only to have a blunder in the middle game fighting allow my opponent to win by about 30 points I feel I am well prepared to talk about this a little bit. I tell you I honestly felt like telling him I never wanted to play go with him again. Especialy because he was pissed because I narrowly avoided him taking a huge group of mine.

...It seems to me there are a variety of such losses. First there's the ones where I make a mistake in the very very endgame but it's one that costs me a group or something. Secondly there are the ones where I fight my heart out only to realize it wasn't good enough and no matter how hard I search my memory I can't figure out how I could have played it better and there seems no hope for improvement. Thirdly there are ones like this one where it is very back and forth and yet in the end I believe I am winning only to find out it wasn't as good as it looked. Lastly there are the humiliating ones where from the beginning my opponent has sente and the game rapidly becomes so lopsided I begin to make bad mistakes just out of dejection.

...It seems these are all times when I have to learn to toughen up. I feel I have gotten alot better at not letting a hard turn make me give up on a game. The same thing needs to be true for go. I play go because I enjoy the strategy. I like the game itself. I think it is important to remember that if all I like is winning then this is probably not the game for me. It's also a lesson in endurance and focus. I think I lose to this guy alot because in some ways he just wants it more. He sits there and thinks things through. I am good at the overall strategy of the game. Using different parts of the board to achieve an effect in a local situation and setting up an intitial position which is good. Tonight was a case in point. I had him running a whole lot from the begginning on. I was forcing him alot and keeping him small. Then in the process of chasing a group out into the center I got careless. I don't know whether it is arrogance or laziness though I know I am guilty of both. I notice that I eyeball situations alot without actually reading them out. It's kind of a cycle. I don't read because I'm not good at it and I don't get any better because I don't practice. That's laziness I guess. If I want to get better I have to build up the skills it takes to be better. Interestingly enough it seems that these are valuable skills in and of themselves. Focus, patience, thoroughness, determination.

This is part of why I believe this game has spiritual value. I was thinking today though of a woman I like. I have just started talking to her alittle in a personal sense. The idea of sabaki came to mind. You have to play light, especially to begin with. Many other metaphors are possible to express the same idea. I have been working in a restaurant the last couple of days and I realized the same idea can be expressed in terms of a meal. In a meal you start with light flavors and work up to heavier things. You don't come right out with a chicken in thick cream sauce. Anyway maybe I am straying from the point alittle. Basically I am taking this opportunity to renew my determination to get better at the game of go but also to relax and enjoy it as much as possible.

4/09/04--I'm not quite sure what it is about this game that inspires the creation of journals. I have seen several people here at SL create these types of pages to record their progress or lives as Go players. I myself started a journal (at home) last year when in desperation about my future I set out to become a professional. Let me tell you a couple chapters into James Davies "Life and Death" and I had serious doubts about my prospects. Anyway, glancing at Holigor's Log today inspired me to think about putting up a page here under the same title I gave to my home journal.

.... I think the topic of blocks, or bottle necks at various kyu strengths is a topic that it is interesting for kyu players to read about. This is something I have some experience with. Last year I experienced a block at about 15k KGS. It was not a very long lasting one. I would say that it was due to internal forces. By that I just mean by some lack of understanding on my part. I say this because I spent some time researching openings and I came up with a sequence for my first three moves as black. First a star point and then an ikken tobi shimari on one of the other adjacent corners oriented so the line of the stones points toward a third corner and the height of the stones toward my hoshi stone. I went on a winning streak. I was playing and studying alot at that time. My focus particularly into the first few weeks of this new year was great.

.... This idea of focus seems to be another important aspect of the situation but also seems to have to do with external forces. I am at a wall now around 11k KGS. It seems to have more to do with the fact that I returned to school this January. I don't have nearly the time or energy to devote to the game that I did last year. When I play it's not nearly at the same intensity it was earlier in quantity or quality. There are definitely some conceptual points about the game I could understand better and the lack of which holds me back but I feel as if I can make some good progress when school lets out for the summer.

.... So this is my recomendation for those who are experiencing these sorts of blocks. Look at external factors. You may just have to accept that you have higher priorities than Go right now and that as a result you are going to have to accept a certain amount of stagnation in your game. Also look at things like sugar, caffeine, or for smokers nicotene consumption. Do these things affect your ability to concentrate effectively? When you have done all you can about that I would recomend looking at some key area of the game you just don't understand as well as you would like. Pick something that seems interesting. I often seem to get more out of following up on my interests than by studying what someone else tells me I need to even if they are dead on in their criticism or advice. Study that thing until you can say you have a substantially different understanding of that topic and how it relates to the game as a whole.



This is a copy of the living page "Journal of an American Go Player" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.