Alex Weldon
Canadian 3d amateur. I live in Montreal and play at the McGill go club Tuesday nights. I also play on KGS as Xopods, IGS as Karoth?, DGS as Spodox and Cyberoro as Xopods. I'm generally willing to give teaching games on KGS to anyone who asks.
September 7, 2005: Went 3-3 in this year's Canadian Open, having entered as a 3d. This perfectly average result leads me to believe that, although playing at a 4d level at the McGill Go Club?, I'm not yet ready to claim that as my official CGA rank.
My style:
- Love to sacrifice. I've been playing on IGS a lot, which accounts for this - most IGS players have stone-capturing disease?, so throwing them a few stones here and there in return for forcing moves gets good results. The downside is that it occasionally results in me miscounting the score and losing by a few points because I forgot that the opponent had ten more prisoners than me.
- Kikashi crazy. Goes with the love of sacrifice. It's easy to trick IGS players into overconcentration by making a forcing move, then luring them into capturing it, so they've played twice and you've only played once. I also like to give people influence and reduce it lightly with a bunch of kikashi. The downside is that I play a lot of them too early, so there's an element of aji keshi, perhaps, and it also makes it hard for me to find ko threats later.
- Obsessed with sente. Again, goes with the sacrifices and the kikashi. If my opponent answers an invasion or attack with a "safety first" move, I'm generally quite happy to treat it as a forcing exchange and tenuki. I often choose joseki on the basis of what will leave me with sente. The downside of all of this is that I sometimes tenuki when I really should have defended something.
- Moving away from territory, and towards mid-sized moyos. This is the most dramatic shift in my playing style in the last few months.
- Think of shape as a goal in and of itself, rather than as a means to a specific end. If I see a way to make good, light shape, or to ruin my opponent's, I'll take it. Shape is magic - you rarely know how, exactly, it will pay off, but it usually does in the end.
- Put this all together, and you end up with my usual strategy: "get around the board quickly and develop on a large scale in good shape, discarding stones as necessary and hoping to play on the opponent's greed to trick him into overconcentration."
How to defeat my strategy:
- Attack me on a large scale. Refuse to be tempted by petty gains.
- Be patient. The downside to my speed of development is that I leave myself thin. If you attack immediately, I'll dodge, but if you play thickly, I'll fall apart eventually.
- Watch out for the "surprise moyo". That is, a position that appears somewhat flat, but can grow much taller all of a sudden, due to forcing moves on both sides.
- Force me into bad shape whenever possible, even if it means bad shape for yourself, too. I'm obsessed with pretty moves and "good" (textbook) style. If the game gets ugly, my poor reading ability will usually bring about my downfall.
- Aim for a close game. My endgame is a bit sloppy, because most of the time, I either fall apart and resign before then, or get so far ahead that it doesn't matter. I lose by a couple of points more often than I win by a couple.