Bram Vandenbon
Bram Vandenbon
- Born: 19 oct 1984
- Learned Go: very young, about 7 years old I think.
- Started taking it serious: march 2003
- Current Strength : 15/04/2004 : 5k
- Local Club : Go Gezelschap van Brugge
KGS handles: BramGo, wuqingyuan, shinjoseki.
DGS handles: BramGo
DashN(mostly tsumego) handles: WuQingyuan
Always ready for teaching games.
I have a lot of different accounts. This is mostly because now and then I get bored to be stuck at a certain level. Then I like to start over. I also like to switch between them all the time. Every account gives me a different kind of feeling. Having a lot of different accounts also takes away some pressure. I don't always have to be in perfect condition to play.
- What have I done today: take a look at /Diary since 13 september
- Or look at my latest mistakes ... /Mistakes
- My thoughts on Belgian go: /Belgien Go - a vision
Also I have been working on several software projects. Such as Go-Software for sony Ericsson Monile phones (works fine, but not published yet), A KGS-IRC bridge that allows to vote moves for a gobot (finished, but not really used), A Joseki website that never got finished, ...
My Graphs
BramGo at kgs: this was my first account. I (re)started playing using this account.
WuQingyuan at kgs: after being 11 kyu for a long long time I got very confused and I restarted using this account. It gave me a boost and very soon I was 8k. (some people say that 11k is a difficult line to cross) Eversince I played mostly using this account.
ShinJoseki at kgs: when I was stuck around 3-5kyu I started this account, I wanted to start a different account to experiment with new joseki. I feel like my joseki improved a lot; allthough I am still at the same level.
BramGo at dgs: I started this account after hearing a lot of good stuff about the Dragon Go Server. playing whenever you have time; only a couple of moves...; use all the time you have ...
WuQingyuan at DashN: I started this account because I was curious about this server. After having played 5 games on this server I learned a lot. I was about 9k at that time and I always played the same joseki and mostly my opponents responded the same way. DashN players like other joseki moves. After having played there I started to get a better wholeboard view.
How I met Go
I started mind games when I was very young. I live in Belgium so one of the first games I learned to play was Chess ofcourse. When I was about 7 years old I learned how to play Go. I have 2 brothers. My older brother played Go with me now and then (about 3 times in a year) with a very old gamebox.
It was a Ravensburger gameset with a foiled carton board and white and blue plastic slices. I also had that very famous book of Iwamoto for beginners (translated to dutch). Back then I could hardly read boring stuff like that. So I never took a look at it. In fact when I asked what the book was for, they told me it contained nice pictures of animals you could reproduce using the stones.
I didn't play the game for ages after that. I did play a lot of chess and I was quit good at it too. I played a lot of chess at school, and against several chess programs.
Then last year when I was 18 years old, I restarted playing the game. My brother had restarted playing the game about a year before me. And I was determined to catch up with him.
I learned to know a lot of other go players on KGS. There's a Belgian room there "BelgianFridayNightClub?".
We decided to start a new go club at bruges... The first person I played over there was somebody claiming to be 21kyu. He played a very strange game with me. I was used to play corners and sides first. But he had no interest in those at all. But he did win by 20 points by closing of the center. At that time I played about 7 games a week. The other club members about 2 games/month
So I catched up really fast. It took me about half a year to equal my brother's strength (12k).
I have also learned a lot using TurboGo and Many Faces of Go. Many faces helped me to get to 11kyu really fast. Also GoBase was very helpfull
January 2004 I became 5k. School pressure became harder and I did not really feel confident in my rank. For the first time I bought a couple of books. I started with GetStrongAtInvading by RichardBozulich, PositionalJudgement by ChoChikun, TheMiddleGame? by SakataEio and theSmallFusekiDictionari of the NihonKi?-in. For the first time I learned the theory of counting points, invading and reducing. At first I did not feel much stronger. But these turned me into a 5k player with 2k moments.
I decided to give myself a chance in the first Iwamoto tournament (3th category 2k-7k players). And I was amazed as I won almost every game I played and won the tournament with 1 loss (out of 8 games). After that I received a very nice cup and I got the chance to play a simultaneous game with Liyue 9d from China.
The tournament took 8 weeks in total. And every game I tried to push myself to my limits of perfection. But after the tournament I fell in a hole and didnt really improve that much anymore. Maybe I was still too much thinking about the tournament I played. I was playing less frequent and I was not sure how strong I was. I won games from 2k players and lost from 5k players. I was scared to lose my strength I had worked so hard for. So, I tried a lot of different things. I was reading articles, replaying pro games, doing a lot of tsumego (because I lost 1 game in my tournament beceause I made a reading mistake).
Then finally I received answer from Velirun. He is a 2d player on KGS. He was looking for somebody to be his student (see the MentoringScheme?). I have a student myself too (Sarutan 17k). It is a nice system where people try to help out weaker players. Allthough it is not easy to help a weaker player it is certainly worth a try. It's a win-win situation. Velirun told me to do a lot of stuff I was actually allready doing at that time. He told me to discuss every game I played, to do a lot of life and dead and to study pro games by hard. Ofcourse it was nice to hear a 2nd opinion and I was reassured I was on the right path.
Shortly after I bought some new books. GetStrongAtLifeAndDeath, The Endgame?, [Get Strong At Joseki Volume 2[ and Yoshio [Ishida's Joseki Dictionary] Volume 2. I was looking forward to reach 1d by March. But it looks like I may not be able to reach it by then. I have more pressure from school than ever before. I am trying to force myself to do 1 page from my Get Strong At Life And Death book every day though. My reading improved a bit, but not enough so far!
October and november passed without having the chance to play regulary. I am not improving, but fighting to stay in shape :)... And I assume it will take till february, before I have the time to get serious again.
Greetings