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How I Got Acquainted to Go

Before 1988

Though my wife and some of my friends are Asians, I did not learn go from them. It actually started much earlier when I was a little boy and watching my grandaunt doing crossword puzzles. The answer to the very common question "Asian boardgame" with two letters - - - that was "Go" of course. I wondered how that game would look like and how to play it, but there was no one to ask, no Asian people in my village, and of course no internet. So I forgot about it. Instead I learned chess from a friend and we played many nice games.

1988 - 1993

On my second computer that I got with 18, there was a reversi game (also called Othello), and I started to get more interested in strategy board games generally (especially on computers), artificial intelligence and game theory. A few years later I learned programming during my studies and I created some games (on a IBM 3090 machine, MVS ESA, TSO ISPF environment, programming language PL/I for those who are interested). Among them were a very weak chess engine (which was not allowed to use more than 0.1 cpu seconds per move on the company's test machine), rather strong reversi and Go-moku programs (that could beat me easily), and other games that I invented myself. In 1993 my life changed and I had no more opportunity to pursue this hobby.

1996

Later when I dived into the arising world of the internet in 1996, I decided to find out about things that I couldn't find out about otherwise. Among many other things I also learned the very basic rules of go (black and white setting alternately on intersections, black first, capture possible, ko-rule), just to satisfy my curiosity. Unfortunately I didn't follow up, so I forgot about go for a while.

2002

The next encounter with go was around 2002. At that time I was busy with chess programming on my personal computer (I had learned the computer language C/C++ just for that purpose), running chess engines against each other and finding out about other strategy games, such as reversi, checkers and - I guess you know what is coming - go of course. So I found the program IgoWin and played a few games on the 9x9 board. Of course I got creamed (even with a handicap of 5 stones). Besides I played on 19x19 boards against the engines Augos, Aya and some others (maybe also an early version of GnuGo). I knew that no strong go engines existed (in contrast to checkers and chess, where computers are better than humans or at least equally good), so I got angry at myself and asked "why to pursue a game that you don't understand at all?". Besides, it appeared unesthetic to me that the go coordinates omit the "I". But the actual reason why I did not follow up was, that no platform existed that would have allowed me to run two go engines against one another. The chess project did not finish either - the program crashed too often for my taste and there were many good chess engines out there, so I gave up on this.

June 2008

In June 2008 I tried out a game named Hex, created a board and played a few games with my children. When learning more about Hex, I found out, that it has the same complexity of Go, and since it is also (or mainly) a game of cutting and connecting, I thought "why not getting the real stuff and learning Go?". So it was on July 1st, 2008 that I started learning go more seriously.

My Time with Go - The First Year

July 2008

The first intention was to learn go in order to write a strong program, but for such a weak player that would be useless, so I needed to get stronger first. Sensei's Library and GD became my favorite reading and I playing around at goproblems.com and followed the online go course at [ext] 321go.org (which is very recommendable for beginners). I signed up at KGS in the mid of July and could make a rank of 20k.

September 2008

I also taught the game to my kids in order to get suitable opponents, although I knew that I was surely not in the position to be a go teacher. But as they did not practice regularly, I could soon give them nine stones and still win.

October 2008

In October I showed up four times at my local go game evening. At that time I was around 25k (beginning of the month) to 20k (end of the month). The weakest player there was 5k, so the average difference between me and them was around 20 stones. Although all of them were nice and patient, I could feel that it was no fun - neither for the regular players nor for the newbie - to get crushed easily in spite of nine handi stones. I decided not to go back there until I am 4k KGS (or 7k EGF which is about the same) which will allow meaningful games for everyone.

November 2008

2008-11-01/02: Instead I found out that there were some go tournaments in the environment of 100 km (60 miles) every year, and that there are also beginners with ranks between 20 and 30k. Since I was around 15-16k at KGS I decided to start at the Sankt Augustin tournamet in the beginning of November as 20k EGF, though at that time the conversion table suggested 24k EGF. So I expected to get crushed, but intensified my studies to not let this happen. The efforts were rewarded since I could win four out of five games. I had my first ko fight and my first snapback "in the wild", both in my favor and decisive for the game. I got acquainted to many nice people, for two of my five opponents it was the first tournament like me. It was really fun. Looking back at that time (as it is July 2009 now) this was the best tournament that I have participated in.

2008-11-22/23: The next tournament was only three weeks later in Düsseldorf. Since it was announced that many children of a local school participated in that tournament, I could motivate my children to participate as well. Besides, it was free of charge since it was sponsored by the Nihon Ki-in and Japanese Airlines (thanks for sponsoring). My kids started at 30k, and I as 19k. But this time I was not so lucky, since I lost three out of five games. I met one of my opponents from the previous tournament - the one to whom I had lost - and I lost again. But still it seems that I learned a lot, though that were only five games.

December 2008

By the end of the year I had advanced to 13-14k KGS in half a year. Not very good, but not too bad either.

January 2009

2009-01-10/11: 13-14k on KGS is about 18-19k at EGF tournaments according to the worldwide rank comparison list, so I intended to start as 18k at the tournament in Essen. There was a prize offered for the best beginner up to 18k. Since some guys in the German go discussion forum thought I would be sandbagging, I just started at 17k, expecting to get crushed. The first match was a loss accordingly. But then I had a run and won four games in a row, including against a boy to whom I had lost in Düsseldorf. However I could win two of the matches by just one and two points respectively. That was thrilling!

2009-01-24/25: Three weeks later there was the tournament in Bonn, and I started as 16k. This time the result was balanced, three wins vs. three losses. I lost again to the boy that I had won against in Essen, so in total I had a 1-2 against him. I started to take him as my rival (he doesn't know of course).

February 2009

2009-02-28/03-01: A smaller tournament with less than fifty participants took place in Paderborn, but nonetheless a very nice one. I met again the young man whom I had beaten by just one stone in Essen (and who had shown my daughter some life and death matters), but I wasn't allotted to him. This time I had three losses and only two wins, but since two of the losses were to much higher ranked players (four and six stones stronger, as I was only a 15k), it was not as bad as it looked.

March 2009

2009-03-28/29: It is good to live in a densely populated area, so there are many tournaments. This time there was a medium sized tournament in Castrop-Rauxel, the heart of the Ruhr area. I had three wins out of five games, including against my secret rival, so we have a 2:2 now. The match was even until he missed an atari of one important group (the situation was very chaotic though, so it was not easy to see). This was the last tournament for that season, the next one would be end of August in Cologne, almost in front of my door.

April 2009

I had improved to 11k KGS/15k EGF and was at a plateau, so I decided to do some more tsumego (life and death problems and tesuji) and read more go strategy books about opening and middlegame ("Attack and Defense" and "Making Good Shape").

May 2009

But it wasn't until May when I created a new account on KGS that suddenly my rank boosted up to 8k, though I don't have a clue what exactly had improved.

The Second Year, Starting With My Intensified Tsumego Training Program

July 2009

Until recently I did tsumego without a concept. But as my (secret) rivals threaten to overtake me, I felt the need to get some structure in it and to start an intensified tsumego training program. So I chose my "go birthday" (i.e. July 1st, 2009, exactly one year after I decided to learn go) to start it. First I defined a goal that I want to reach: The short-term goal is to improve two stones until my next tournament in Cologne end of August, and the long-term goal is to become EGF-shodan (that's about KGS 2-3d) until summer 2012 when the European Go Congress takes place in my home city.

In order to work on my main weaknesses, I am trying to achieve two things: develop the reading abilities, and strengthen the intuition in order to easily spot key points. That is something which could be done by doing lots of L&D and tesuji problems, so I am going to focus on that before I'll do other problems like opening or joseki problems. The detailed plan looks as follows:

During lunch break I have one hour time in my office every day, and at home I will spend another hour in the evening, and two hours at the weekend, so I will have two hours every day to work on it. In my office I will start with life and death problems and at home I will do tesuji problems.

Before I start with the problems I make a list with the numbers of all problems to make a note each time I have worked on a problem in order to control the progress. The maximum time I allow myself to solve each problem is five minutes, which is (more or less) the longest time I've ever needed for a move in a tournament game (it was a crucial move that ensured me the victory). Everyday I start at the beginning of the list and try to solve problems until one hour is over. In case I am absolutely sure that I know how a problem is solved - i.e. when I have hardwired it and can solve it on sight - I cross it out of the list and it won't be repeated any more in the following days. If I got on a problem once (or more often), I also have to know why the wrong move doesn't work (or why it is inferior) before the problem can be crossed out. So I can be sure to know the problems before I go on to new problems, but it allows me to go on even if I get stuck on a few problems.

Easier problems come first. I have analyzed the books for the complexity of their problems and determined the order in which I intend (or have begun) to study:

For L&D problems:
A-1) "1001 L&D Problems"
A-2) "Graded Go Problems for Beginners", vol. 3
A-3) "Get Strong at L&D"
A-4) "Life and Death (elementary series)"
A-5) "Graded Go Problems for Beginners", vol. 4

and for tesuji problems:
B-1) "Get Strong at Tesuji"
B-2) "Tesuji (elementary series)"
B-3) "501 Tesuji Problems"

After I have finished them, there are some other problem books in the pipeline which I will continue with. I am not sure yet about the order to do them, but probably it will be as follows:
C-1) "501 Opening Problems"
C-2) "Get strong at Joseki 3" (this one first because it contains the star point which is most important for handicap games)
C-3) "Get strong at Joseki 1" (deals with the 3-4-point, also very important, so it's next)
C-4) "Get strong at Joseki 2" (5-3 and 5-4 points to complete the joseki knowledge)
C-5) "Making Good Shape"
C-6) "Get strong at Invading"
C-7) "All About Ko"
C-8) Some tsumego about endgame, that I don't own yet. Maybe "200 Endgame Problems" or "Get Strong at the Endgame".

These are about 5700 problems. As the last weeks have shown (as now it is 2009-07-24) I can finish off about 20 problems per day (ten L&D and ten tesuji problems), so it will take me about eight months to finish the program. After that I will check whether I can solve all these problems on sight, and repeat the problems that I can't, so the complete program will probably take about one year. I wonder how much I will have improved on my second go-birthday.

August 2009

2009-08-31: I am progressing with the tsumego program, the current status is as follows:
Get Strong at Tesuji: finished (534 problems)
"Tesuji" of the "Elementary Go Series": 60 finished (out of about 260, excluding examples)
1001 L&D Problems: 710 finished
altogether: 1200 of 5700 (in 48 days, i.e. about 20 per day)

Now that the tournament in Cologne is over, I am trying to figure out whether I have achieved my short term goal to improve two stones since the beginning of my training program. My [ext] EGF rating from end of March showed me as 14k, but as I had improved a bit since then, I started as 13k.

My results were very mixed, and since the McMahon pairing was done according to EGF rating, all my opponents were either ranked 3-6 stones above me (all games without handi stones), or I had to play first-time tournament attendants who had no rating previously. Hence my result of two wins out of five games was not too bad. All games were very close, except for the win against the 7k player who gave up after I had killed a large group at the side with a snapback. Two games were within the komi range (I lost both), and another (very strange game, but the most fun one) depended on a two stage ko and a seki (which I also lost). Since my current rating is now at the threshold to 12k, I think I have improved one stone in the last two months.

When looking back at the games, it seems that I won those games, where I took more time to really read out the situations and played more aggressively. My playing style was too soft, so that I couldn't apply my obtained tesuji knowledge. My next tournament will be in Bochum in October, and there I will try to fight more, not allowing the opponent to take too large areas.

September 2009

2009-09-15: I've been neglecting my tsumego program since the last tourney. There are two reasons:

1) I feel exhausted from learning tsumego, especially the tesuji ones. It could have to do with that I've been feeling a little bit sick for the last two weeks, but I rather think that I suffer from a kind of information overload and no more new patterns want to find their way into my mind. Hence I have reduced the weekly amount of tsumego from 150 (of which half L&D and half tesuji) to 50 (L&D only). However I am still learning tesuji: I am reading "Basic Technics of Go" and this book contains a fair amount of tesuji tsumego. But I am doing them in a more relaxed way.

2) The second reason has to do with the tourney itself, or more precisely: with the great game I had with one of my opponents. Usually I exchange the KGS id with my opponent after a game, but this opponent said that she does not play on KGS or any real-time server at all. She has just played on DGS which is a turn-based server. I have never signed up on a turn-based server (except on a small German board game server where those who play go seem to be at least 9 stones weaker than me - not very much fun). Actually I had already intended to give it a try a long time ago but couldn't persuade myself to do the final step. Now I did. I signed up at both, DGS and OGS, the leading turn-based servers for Westerners. And I got hooked. I have about a dozen games running simultaneously on each of the two servers. Finally I am back into regular play after I haven't done this for more than half of the time I've been into the game.

I am not too sad about slowing down the pace of my tsumego studies. Actually I had already intended to get back into play during the tournament season (which is from end of August until end of March), but felt so reluctant to really do it. But now with playing on the turn-based servers the feeling of reluctance is wiped away and I get good training for the next six or seven tournaments.

2009-09-18: I have actually paused my tsumego program. After two and a half months and 1400 solved problems I feel a kind of saturation: The patterns of the problems refuse to enter my mind, especially the tesuji problems. When I open the book and look at the next problem to solve, a voice comes from my inside and screams "oh no! not now!" and the grey matter declines to start reading out the problem, so I have to close the book again. It seems that I have to get back to play in order to consolidate the new skills. With my new activities on OGS and DGS I am doing this and still have some daily exercise though it's different from what I intended to be my exercise.

I was suggested to learn some other parts of the game, e.g. the opening. Since the opening was on my list directly behind the "life and death" and the tesuji exercises and as it is another precondition for joseki studies, it could be a good idea. I have noticed that the opening has become relatively weaker comparing to the other parts of the game, and often I feel uncertain about the move during the opening phase. So I will start with "501 Opening Problems" and look how I will get on with this.

I was also suggested to get back to the problems that I have already solved to see whether the feeling of saturation remains or not. I will give it a try at the weekend.

October 2009

2009-10-26: It is futile. The feeling of saturation remains, so I have paused the tsumego program for the time being. I still play on goproblems.com though every now and then, but just for fun and not to do a serious program for improving. Instead of the tsumego program I fill the time with reading books that I found too difficult previously. Also I am rereading "Attack and Defense" which is [ext] being discussed at Godiscussions.com, though I am reading it at a much slower pace, since other books seem more interesting to me right now (e.g. Robert Jasiek's "Joseki Fundamentals").

As for improving, this has obviously ceased to exist. Recently I took the opportunity to play a few games on KGS to get back a stable rank. It turned out to be 8k, just like a few months ago.

Also my last tournament in Bochum two weeks ago showed that I am stuck. Oddly enough I had exactly the same result as in Cologne: First two wins and then three losses. Only the fact that four of my five opponents were 1-2 stones stronger than myself kept me from dropping a rank. In Bochum I have discovered a huge gap in my play. Against a 10k I considered myself to be behind about 70 points after only 50 moves, so I had to give up. Back home I had a look at the book "Enclosure Josekis" which I hadn't touched before, and I found out that there are lots of possibilities to invade the opponent's territory. Invading and reducing seem to be my major weaknesses right now. That's why I plan to purchase the book "Keshi and Uchikomi".

The only vague hint of improvement comes from DGS where I play with increasing fun (together with OGS). One reason could be that I really try to read out the situations, just like in a tsumego. I also sometimes count the score of the board, and in some cases that gave me half-point-victories. I rarely do all this on KGS - ok, sometimes I read out situations, but I never count the points. That takes too much time. Currently I have a peak at 8k on DGS, but there are still two probable losses against a 13k, so after that the rank will likely be consistent again with the ranks of the other servers.

After all these bad news, there is also a good one. I am going to attend the upcoming go tournament next weekend in Sankt Augustin. This is the place where I had my very first and best tournament last year, that's why I am looking forward to it.

Comments:

tapir: Ich schreibe mal auf Deutsch... Dein letzter Eintrag "Against a 10k I considered myself to be behind about 70 points after only 50 moves, so I had to give up." scheint mir - wenn du nicht eine Ecke komplett verloren hast - unwahrscheinlich. Gerade auf dem Level auf dem du spielst, solltest du das ernsthaft ausprobieren, wieviel nach Reduzieren, Invadieren usw. noch übrigbleibt. Und beim Zählen nur mehr oder weniger sicheres Gebiet zählen und nicht das ganze Moyo... das ist wichtig, sonst macht das Zählen nur Angst und nützt dem Spiel wenig. Da das am Anfang eher schlecht geht, würde ich mit dem Zählen auch erst nach der Eröffnung anfangen und bis dahin zählen wieviele Steine schlecht stehen für jeden und so "zählen". (70 Punkte wären so etwa 5 völlig sinnfreie Züge, die nichteinmal Gebiet machen, während der Gegner effizient steht).

sh: Soweit ich mich erinnere, hatte ich zwei winzige Ecken und er hatte von dort aus massive Mauern zum Zentrum inklusive Erweiterungen. Die Erweiterungen sahen zwar zu weit aus, aber wegen der Stärke der Mauern sah eine Invasion irgendwie nicht machbar aus. Im Nachhinein weiß ich, dass Invasionen sowohl in seinen Ecken als auch an den Seiten machbar gewesen wären. Ich werde mir jetzt nochmal "Enclosure Josekis" und "Get Strong at Invading" vornehmen und die gängigsten Invasionen lernen, sozusagen für meine Taktik-Toolbox :) Mal sehen, ob ich das auf dem Turnier nächstes WE benutzen kann.

November 2009

2009-11-02: Since I like playing on tournaments here a small report from the Sankt Augustin tournament last weekend.

I know that I am not a fast player and that I need the time to play a game properly, so I should have listened to my inner voice. I disregarded this in my last game on Saturday. My opponent was the 7-year-old 10k-prodigy from Finland. As an excuse I could say that I was driven by heavy stomach ache, so I welcomed the fact that he plays very quickly and did likewise. I was also curious how I would do if I played quickly since I have very little experience in doing this (I do not play blitz games on KGS). It turned out to be a complete disaster. All my corners were lost, even the larger groups that I had there. Now I know that I need to do more for my intuition, e.g. to spot the vital points. I have a book called "Vital Points of Go" which I haven't read yet, so I'll give it a try.

But back to the tournament in chronological order. Actually I was optimistic since the Sankt Augustin tournament last year was my first tournament at all, and I had a good result (4:1) at that time. But I had a bad start against a tournament novice. He was a slow thinker like me, and when we ended our match, only a few high-dan matches were still running. It was a hard fight that he won by a few points. In view of my black-Sunday-series (lost all Sunday games in the last two tournaments) I was a bit under pressure then. Furthermore for the second round I was matched to someone who had already beaten me twice. But it seemed that she was busy with other things, so finally I managed to win. But the hope to get a good tournament result were quickly squashed by the Finnish prodigy.

I didn't want to make a 1-4 result, so I put myself much under pressure on Sunday. My first opponent on that day was my secret rival. I had mixed feelings, since my two wins against him were pure luck (an overseen atari of a big group and a connection of two weak groups that he had missed - I still remember these games) and my losses to him were clear. So I tried another opening with a shimari. That worked, and when the middlegame started, I had a lead of about 10 points. He also noticed that and started an invasion in one of my corners. He said that his corner group would live, but I could only see one eye, so I tried to kill it anyway. I tried to connect to one of his groups at the edge by crawling on the first line, but then I could kill his corner and the edge with a cut and a throw-in so that he finally resigned. This was my first real victory over him, i.e. without help of a big blunder of my opponent. I felt relieved after that and when I was matched to someone three stones weaker (softened by a handicap stone though, so we played without komi) I went easy on that. Too easy obviously, he had a clear advantage so I was forced to invade his large territory. Unfortunately almost all of the 20 stones of the invasion got lost, so I had to come up with something else. I noticed a weak group of my opponent adjacent to my obviously dead group, so I chased it down from the top center to the bottom edge while my opponent tried to catch my dead group. I could create a strong wall that helped me to kill one of my opponent's group at the bottom edge and to invade his territory at the bottom until the corner. My opponent knew that he had almost lost, so he tried to make several invasions himself. In the meantime my oldest daughter had come to watch my game, so I could show her how to kill one of the invasion groups with a snapback "in the wild" (she had difficulties seeing snapbacks and thought that they would never occur in an actual game). Eventually my opponent resigned. After two negative results I finally had a positive one.

Now I am looking forward to the next tournament in Düsseldorf - together with my children who seem to increasingly love playing on tournaments. My oldest daughter (around 25-27k) was very proud of having beaten a real 18k, that gives her a lot of motivation for the next tournament. I hope this will last for a while...

2009-11-23: The Düsseldorf tournament had no surprises for me. There was only one opponent that I had met in a previous tournament. Luckily I was able to beat him again, so the tournament had a good start for me and I could relax for the next games. Finally I could win three out of five matches. Oddly enough the last match was almost a blitz match. Usually I don't like to play fast, but since we played rather fast from the beginning on and since I considered to be ahead in the game, I continued to play fast. So did my opponent. At the end he resigned, after I had enlarged my lead, ensuring my third victory.

2009-11-30: The tournament surprise came a week after the tournament itself. My son (and his opponent whom I had played exactly one year before on my second tournament when I was a beginner myself) made it into the local newspaper where they reported about the tournament. He didn't tell me anything about the interview, so I just found out about it in the German go forum where someone mentioned the newspaper article.

December 2009

2009-12-18: I've been feeling burnt out related to go for the last few weeks. I remember I had a little bit of this feeling in September when I closed down my tsumego program, but this time the feeling is much stronger. The reason is obviously that I am playing too much on the turn based servers (DGS, OGS and some others). You cannot take a break there (well, actually you can, but then you have to use up your holiday reserve), so you have to make your move in 15 or 20 or 25 matches every day. Together with the burnout feeling I got a slump which caused a rank dropping of two stones on all servers. The peak was last week where I decided to shut down all my go activities for a few weeks or months. So I resigned all the matches where my opponent had a clear lead. I even played some chess matches again to get some variation - after a break of 20 years from regular play (I have lost most of my previous strength, but it was fun nevertheless). But I still had some commitments which then appeared as a burden to me: Some ladder matches (GD ladder, OGS ladder), and the "kuchinashi tournament" on KGS organized by a member of GoDiscussions. It would have been unfair to withdraw, so I continued. I had a loss streak of four games in a row. But it seems that I have overcome the worst phase, and that my previous strength is getting back slowly. And bit by bit I am fancying tsumego again, so I did a few L&D and tesuji problems yesterday. Nevertheless I will shut down my online game activities to be fit again for the next RL tournament which will be on January 9th/10th.

January 2010

2010-01-05: Actually things are getting worse right now and the plans to shut down online go activities are going on much slower than I thought. I still have matches/tournaments running on all servers, though most of the matches seem to be coming to an end soon. I think I will take a longer break from online go at all. It doesn't mean that I won't play online at all, but only on appointment with people that I got acquainted to at tournaments, GD or elsewhere. I've had some time to think about where that burnout came from. Apparently I have exaggerated the use of turn based servers, so the fun factor disappeared and it became a burden. Every evening I had to get online whether I wanted to or not, without break, and once I am online I usually spend the rest of the evening in front of the screen. This doesn't leave much time to read and study go books or to do some life and death problems or tesuji problems. I haven't had any significant progress in the last eight months - even worse: my go strength is currently deteriorating. I had my best improvements when I had a good mix of tsumego, studying books, very few online games (around five per month on average) and real life tournament matches every 1-2 months. So in order to improve again I need to get back to the roots.

In view of my current burnout slump I have no idea of the rank that I should use for the upcoming tournament in Essen. Tournament directors in Germany use the McMahon method for matching players, and the basis for it can either be the EGF rating or a self estimation. In Essen it will be the latter. My EGF rating states that I am at the threshold from 11k to 12k, but my gut feeling tells me that I am rather around 13-14k. To avoid being reproached with sandbagging I'll start as a 12k though.

2010-01-11: I had considered to cancel the tournament in Essen, because the weather forecast had announced a snow chaos, but finally I went there and haven't regretted. Having started as a 12k had been the right choice. In the first match I lost to an 11k (I had already played her three times, but could only win once when she was a bit sick). Actually I should have won easily, but then I didn't notice that she could make a false eye to one of my corner groups. After I had noticed that the group was dead, I fought fiercely on the other parts of the board, but eventually I couldn't avoid a 2-points-loss. Then I had a win against a 10k and a 14k - both tournament newbies. On Sunday I could beat another 10k, but I would estimate that both 10k's are actually around 13k. So I was very happy to have gathered three wins, which led me to go too easy on the last game that I lost to another 11k (with whom my tournament results are 3-3 now - he's one of my longterm rivals).

It seems that the online-go-burnout does not have any influence on my real-life-tournament go. I was motivated very much to avoid a 1-4-loss (or even a 0-5-loss). Besides, I changed my playing style a bit. Before this tournament I had always opened with 4-4 corners and I used to tend to build larger edge territories and tried to defend them. This time I tried 3-4-Shusaku opening with black and 4-4 / 3-3 corners with white and played more aggressively to avoid larger opponents' territories even though that meant that my own territories would be reduced/splitted. Mutual damage leads to heavier fights, but I like this, so next time I will do it again. And I will start as 11k on next tournament, which will probably be end of February in Bonn.

February 2010

2010-02-28: I've planned to stop playing on turn-based servers for three months now, but actually never did, because whenever there is a chance, I join tournaments, ladder matches etc. etc. So does it seem that I am obsessed playing online tournaments? I don't know, I just feel to have an obligation to finish these games, and when I see that the matches still take long to finish, I join another tournament. It's a vicious circle. However I haven't played on real-time servers for quite some time. It's the first month since I've started playing go that I haven't played a single game on KGS. A first step to take a break from online go.

On the other hand go in real life is still motivating. This weekend I've been at the tournament in Bonn and have started as 11k as I had already announced last month. Since my children have been busy with other things, it's been the first time since my first tournament that I went to a go tournament alone. So I had no distractions and other false excuses for bad play. And indeed I had a good weekend: I could win four out of six games, against an 11k, a 10k and two 9ks, and lost to a 10k and a 9k. One of the 9k's was the one who could beat me twice at my very first two tournaments, and the other 9k was my opponent exactly one year ago, when he was still six stones stronger (and had to give me 3 handicap stones, so I had no chance at that time). But the best match was the win against the 10k: It's the first time I had a double ko in one of my matches, and it was in my favor, so I could save a big corner. Apart from the double ko that match had several turning points. One of my center groups had only one eye, so it should have died, so I played elsewhere. Another fight drifted into the direction of the dead group, and suddenly I could save it with a throwin and a subsequent oiotoshi. The next tournament will be in two weeks in Castrop-Rauxel, in the heart of the Ruhr area, then I will start as 10k. The SDK ranks are getting closer.

March 2010

2010-03-29: The Castrop-Rauxel tournament went fine for me. As a fresh 10k I could win three out of five matches. That doesn't sound bad since all my opponents had better ranks: four 9ks and one 8k (even though two of them had a higher rank than their EGF rating suggested). In the first game I was a bit lucky since my opponent resigned prematurely. The middlegame fighting was still ongoing, and it seemed that my opponent get frustrated that I could save a weak group. In spite of this group the game still looked balanced when he resigned, though I didn't count. I was just surprised that he resigned so early. The second match was against an 8k. I had met him one year ago and he could beat me even though I had three handi stones. This time it was an even game, and after the corners were settled, a heavy fight in the center started with lots of weak groups. We chased each other's weak groups around the board, when suddenly I could capture one of his groups with a snapback. This one looked exactly like the one that I had learned from James Davies' Tesuji book, that's why I recognized this at once. Immediately after that my opponent resigned. Snapbacks are cool :-). My third opponent was the 9k against whom I had won in Bonn. The match was balanced until the early endgame, and I thought I was leading by a few points when suddenly he made a brilliant move that killed one of my corners. I still fought but couldn't avoid to lose by around 20 points. On Sunday it started the same as on Saturday: I was lucky that my opponent resigned prematurely. At the beginning it looked bad for me, and as the middlegame progressed it seemed to get worse. She chased down a large group of mine from the top edge to the bottom right corner. Then she made a minor mistake and I could make life with a smaller group at the right edge. The minor mistake turned out to be decisive since I could use the living group to attack one of her groups on the right side that was surrounded by my small living group and my large weak group. When she noticed that she couldn't avoid being captured she resigned. In spite of the capture I was less than five points ahead, so I guess it was rather a psychological issue. In the last match I fell back into old bad habits. Actually I was optimistic, because I had already played with my opponent on DGS and OGS and both times I could win the matches. But on the real goban he seems to be significantly stronger than on the virtual ones. My intention for this tournament was to pay more attention to weak groups. But this time I was too careless and lost a large group of about 25 stones. It didn't help that my opponent's invasion failed and I got almost 20 stones in return. It was a strange game and at the end both had two large territories, though his was a bit larger, so at the end I lost by 15 points.

All the matches were much fun, and I can consider myself a solid 10k now according to the EGF rating. For the next tournament which will be in Cologne end of August, I will start as 10k or 9k, depending on my progress. In more than five months it is possible to improve another stone, but I am not sure yet what I will learn the next months. I am fancying with learning life-and-death and tesuji patterns by heart, e.g. from the books "Life and Death" and "Tesuji" of the Elementary Go Series.

April 2010

2010-04-30: It seems that I have taken a break from realtime online go for some months now. Even though I have managed to get a very short account on KGS ('sh'), I couldn't bring myself to play some games with it. Instead I have made a little experiment and done something that I dislike usually. I have reactivated an old account of mine and played some blitz games (max. 10 min) to see where I would get with that. I had already supposed that I am a few stones weaker at blitz, and that was confirmed by these seven experimental matches. It turned out that the blitz account settled at 10k, that is 3-4 stones weaker than playing with one of my "serious" accounts. It is also possible that my general go strength is deteriorating since I've been neglecting my studies for too long now. To get used to that I will repeat that every now and then.

May 2010

2010-05-01: Someone who I know from tournaments has offered some of his go books for sale, so I took the opportunity to purchase them in order to get over my major weaknesses. For the mentioned weakness at blitzing I got Cho Chikun's 'Positional Judgment High-Speed Game Analysis'. Another severe gap concerns joseki knowledge. Since someone at the new discussion platform [ext] Life in 19x19 has recommended "The Great Joseki Debates" for players in the mid SDK ranges, I thought it was appropriate for me. Another part of the game that goes over my head is the endgame, and since I didn't own yet an endgame problem book, I got "200 Endgame Problems" which is recommended for SDKs. The biggest treasure that I got was "All About Thickness" by Ishida Yoshio, because it gets tons of good recommendations and it is out of print. I am looking forward to reading these book, I just need more time to study though...

2010-05-21: The [ext] Kuchinashi Tournament is the reason that I've had the opportunity to play some real matches on KGS after several months. I know that in tournaments I play better than in ordinary matches, but this time it was different. The fatigue that I felt during the matches was the same feeling that I have when playing turn based games, and it kept me from reading out local situations so I made lots of DDK mistakes. I am sorry for the other participants for my poor play. It was just like playing blitz games with longer breaks between the moves to relax a bit and get some distraction. The logical consequence is that I've fallen back into the DDK ranks, where I had last been in February 2009. The conclusion sounds harsh: No progress within the last 15 months, that's so frustrating. I am considering to take a complete break from go for a while.

Comments:

SoDesuNe?: Alles halb so wild, ich habe gegen meinen Gegner auch extrem bescheiden gespielt und mich eher selber besiegt, vor allem in den letzten beiden Spielen. Danach brauchte ich auch erstmal fünf Tage frische Luft. Man muss halt seine Motivationsquellen kennen, ich bin zum Beispiel immer noch anfällig für Hikaru no Go. Die Novelle "First Kyu" soll auch sehr gut sein, für alle, die Go mal wieder aus der dritten Person genießen wollen. Ebenfalls kann ich sagen, dass ich bisher immer etwas aus meinen verlorenen Partien gelernt habe und das mein größter Schwachpunkt meine Konzentration und Ruhe ist.

Im Endeffekt ist natürlich die Hauptsache, dass es dir Spaß macht. Aber überleg' dir vielleicht einmal, was dich am Go fasziniert und versuche dir davon ausgehend Motivationsquellen zu suchen. Wenn du einfach nur mal ein ruhiges, stressfreies Spiel spielen möchtest oder so, dafür bin ich zu haben : )

sh: Danke für die Aufmunterung, ich werde natürlich keine Schnellschüsse machen :-) Was mich motiviert sind einfach gute Spiele, Mausefallen, Doppelkos, Tesujis, große Kills und derlei Dinge, die das Go-Herz begehrt. Dabei kommts gar nicht drauf an, ob man gewinnt oder verliert. Ich hatte einige tolle Spiele auf Turnieren, wo ich mich gerne dran zurückerinnere, verlorene und gewonnene gleichermaßen. Was sich aber in den letzten Wochen und Monaten abgespielt hat, finde ich in dieser Häufung erschreckend. Mit zahlrechen 20k-Patzern beleidige ich nicht nur meine Gegner, sondern auch meine eigenen Ansprüche. Aufgrund von blöden Patzern zu verlieren (aber auch zu gewinnen) macht keinen Spaß und verdirbt (zumindest mir) die Freude am Spiel. Ich geb mir erst mal bis Ende Juni Zeit, bis dahin habe ich noch viel Zeit zum Überlegen, wies weitergeht.

June 2010

2010-06-26: For those who have followed this blog it's probably not a big surprise that time has come for me to take a break from go. Now that all my online tournaments are over, I have shut down all my activities on KGS, IGS, DGS, OGS etc. Now that the decision has been made I feel the burden disappear - what a relief!

It is now exactly two years ago that I started with go - time to reflect a bit about the past and the future.

Past: When I started playing go I had no I idea what would expect me. There were lots of cool and nice things, but also lots of frustrations. But I don't regret at all to have invested such a lot of time in a single game, more than I have ever invested in any other game, even more than in chess in my youth time. So what went wrong that a break is needed? Until October last year I had a steady improvement, but at that time the clouds had already become dark, and the thunderstorm that followed led to a heavy go related burnout together with a slump of several stones. There were two reasons: A too tight tsumego program and playing on turn based servers. Usually one would expect that after a while the slump is over and one comes back with new strength. But it was different: Eight months after the initial slump the playing strength has been continuing to deteriorate slowly but steadily. Going on this way is futile. Probably I have already waited too long to take the necessary steps, but I wanted to avoid overhasty decisions. Sometimes a go players' strength increases after having taken a break. Now I'm going to check out this option.

Future: First of all I need to get a clear head, so I'll have no planned go related activities for the time being. As for the tournament that will be held in Cologne end of August I'm not sure yet whether I will go there ot not. Since my children liked to go on tournaments in the past, it will depend on them, however my eldest daughter has already announced that she will not play go any more since she has other interests now. My little daughter has never shown particular interest in go, even though many months ago she made it to 18k on KGS. My son asks every now and then when the next tournament will be, but he just wants to meet some of the kids he had made friends with. He never plays except on tournaments. Right now I feel too exhausted playing go at all, so probably I'll not go, except if I have an itch to take these black and white stones between my fingers - and that could well happen!

I am not sure yet whether I will ever return from the break, but in case I do, it will probably be a short time before the European Go Congress 2012, because this event will be almost on my doorstep. I've ever wanted to meet and play with people from all over the world on a real board face to face. Ah! I can't miss that!

If I have the urge to do some go related things again some day, then there are over 50 go books with thousands of nice tsumego that stare down to me from the shelf demanding to be read and studied. It would be a shame to have all these nice book just in order to collect dust. They don't deserve that. In case I decide to do tsumego, it will be on a casual and lax base - no tight'n'tough program as I had started it one year ago. I'll just relax and have fun doing them. At the moment I am going through "Graded Go Problems" vol. 3 this way. No pressure, no obligations, no goal to become x-dan in y months, just enjoying.

The Third Year, Overcoming the Burnout

July 2010

2010-07-30: After having taken a few weeks off from go, I have continued doing problems in "Graded Go Problems Vol. 3". Doing it in a relaxed way is much more fun than if you pressure yourself.

Actually I had planned to take a longer break from playing online, but often things come different from what you have planned. Someone of my go mates pointed me to the fact that my kids had won the first, second and sixth prize in the "Kids' and Teens' Cup" for 2009. I would never have known about the prize, if she hadn't pointed me to that, so thanks again :-) The prize is awarded once a year to kids (up to age 12) and teens (up to age 18) for participating in tournaments. Luckily I took my kids to the tournaments. Next to the obligatory certificate they got a nice fan. Of course that gave them additional motivation, and when I asked them who wants to go to the next tournament in Cologne end of August, the two younger ones immediately raised their hands. Well, that means, that Cologne will propbably be my next tournament. In order to avoid a complete fail, I need to get some practice. Except for the "Kuchinashi Tournament" and the "L19 Title tournament" (where I lost all my matches) I haven't had serious online matches for more than one year. Not sure whether I want to get involved in the [ext] Pandanet Tournament or in the [ext] Trollnament VI, but these would surely be a good opportunity to get some serious matches. In order to be eligible for the ranked Pandanet Tournament I needed to get a stable rank. About one year ago I was 12k? there, so I played a few games. Although I won all of them, I got a stable rank at 13k. Very funny.

I guess I'll get into the adventure then...

August 2010

2010-08-29: I had three weeks of holiday in August and I had intended to spend some time with go again. The Trollnament was a failure for me. Not because I played badly there, but because I wasn't able to register. The registration period closed prematurely due to too many players who wanted to participate! I've never experienced that a tournament's registration was suspended because of overcrowding. What a bad surprise! Well, never mind, so I took part in the Pandanet tournament, and it gave me the opportunity to play some more serious games. The matches proved again how volatile my play is. I was able to defeat someone three stones stronger only to lose to someone three stones weaker in the very next game. But with 55 matches I got back to practice as compensation for the lack of (real time) matches over the last six months. I guess that's pretty much for someone who is just on a go hiatus ;-) I've never had more games in a single month. Apart from the matches I was also diligent in doing tsumego. I have finished "Graded Go Problems for Beginners Vol 3" and will resume "1001 L&D Problems" starting on Monday (during lunch break at work; I got stuck at around problem 830). I noticed that the 5-move problems are considerably harder than GGPB vol 3. But I want to finish that book before I move on to "Magic of Placement" or "200 Endgame Problems" which look very interesting to me right now. As for theory books I had picked up again Kageyama's "Lessons in the Fundamentals", but put it away again when I was at chapter 7 (joseki). I hate joseki and feel reluctant to learn them. Probably I have too little understanding about tactics yet. Then I reread "In the Beginning" which was my very first go book. This time I got much more out of it. Only now I noticed that it also covers the beginning of the middle game and has many good principles for it (for those who own "Opening Theory Made Easy", I can say that both books complement each other and the overlapping of topics is surprisingly small). Even though I don't like Kageyama's "Lessons" I will continue with it and then put it away forever - well at least until I have reached the dan levels, but since it will take infinitely long, it is quite save to say that I'll put it away forever.

Now that I had some training, I wondered whether it helped me with the tournament. Yesterday and today I attended the Cologne tournment together with my children. The first out of five matches was against my long-term "rival". That was the toughest and closest match we ever had. I could win a battle in the center with my favourite technique - the snapback - but allowed an invasion at the edge (after the game he showed me how I could have killed it). At the end I won by 1.5 points. The next game was a quick but undeserved victory. My opponent resigned after the game had just entered the middlegame. She said that I would be leading by a wide margin, however I estimated the match to be even. I've had such wins in the past, and it is rather unsatisfactory to win this way. The third opponent was someone I had played - and lost to - exactly one year ago. At that time we were both 13-14k. Now we were 9-10k, but the result was the same: In the game I had a weak group and the trials to get it out of his claws failed. I lost by 11 points. Two wins and one loss was a good start on Saturday: no more fears to make a 1-4 and a relaxed play on Sunday. I know that I often play too laxly and lose when I am relaxed. So I had to come up with a new goal: I will promote to EGF-9k if I win both Sunday matches. But my fourth opponent seemed to be a bad omen: Again someone whom I had played and lost to one year ago. The match was dominated by reducing the other's territories: very small amount of captured pieces (mostly from useless ko fights) and very small territories at the edges. In the late middlegame I was able to establish some territory in the center, just the way I did in the 15-17k ranges when I liked to build up moyos. And this was the decisive part of the game, finally I won it by 15 points (the result seemed clearer than the match actually was). The last game was the strangest of the five. It started with san-ren-sei and the first battle was bad for me: I had to give up the bottom left corner with a few stones in order to get some more territory at the bottom edge. My opponent seemed to have a much better knowledge of joseki, because with the joseki at the top left corner she built up a huuuuuge moyo. And as I tried to reduce it from above the moyo more and more turned into territory. I looked for some other weaknesses, and found them in the cutting points in the wall at the bottom that separated my edge territory from her moyo. I used the cutting points to start a fight inside the moyo. At first it looked hopeless, but then I read it out that I could live within her territory - again thanks to a snapback. Snapbacks rule the tournament! Suddenly the dead corner stones resurrected and from there I was able to eliminate about two thirds of the moyo. I counted that I was ahead now by some 20 points. In the endgame I concentrated on fixing weak points, and finally I won by 20 points. Yeah! After one and a half year a 4-1 again. With that result I won a book prize, I chose "Vital Points and Skillful Finesse for Sabaki". It's probably still a bit over my head, but it looked interesting and was recommended by some member in the discussion forum who also played on the tournament. He said that now I have to promote to 9k. It's a honor for me to do this. I rechecked it with the EGF rating calculator, and indeed it suggested that I am 9k now. Welcome EGF-SDK ranks!

September 2010

2010-09-24: After the tournaments are over and the euphoria has ebbed away I am back to "normal" pace. I have finished Kageyama's "Lessons": I reread the "joseki" chapter with more patience than last month. It was a bit wearisome, but then the chapter "Tesuji" was much better - I like learning tesuji much more than joseki. The most interesting chapter was the last one: a commented game of professionals (Kage's "master piece"). I played through it with my magnetic board while reading the comments and reading on the board.

Another book that I have finished - finally! - is "1001 Life and Death Problems". The last 170 problems were tougher than the previous ones, and I only got a ratio of about 2/3 (before that it was about 6/7). The difference probably doesn't sound much, but for the motivation it makes a big difference. Being able to solve about 80-90% motivates, because you see a few problems that you can rework after you have finished a chapter or the book. Leaving a third of the problems unsolved or incorrectly solved is rather frustrating. But at least it revealed a weakness of mine: recognizing shortage of liberties. It seems I should take up an easier L&D problem collection for more training.

After having finished these two books, I have started to concentrate on another weak (and neglected) part of my play: The endgame. I have picked up again "The Endgame" of the "Elementary Go Series" and started practicing with "200 Endgame Problems". I have done the first 50 problems so far, endgame tesuji, and I get most of them right. That's much fun! I hope this will give me more motivation to get into the more complex and difficult part of the endgame.

As for matches I have a bit slacked off again after the end of the tournaments. I have two ongoing activities regarding matches: I am trying to beat the program Aya with four stones every now and then (maybe once in two weeks). The closest I've got to so far was a 1.5 points loss. Once I have made it, I will give the program five stones. This is to do something for my aversion against handicap games. The second activity is on IGS. During the Pandanet tournament I had the impression that I was underrated, but since all the tournament matches were unrated, the rank wasn't able to change. Now I had eight rated games in September, one loss and seven wins, and that led me from 13k to 12k. Maybe I can even make it to the SDK ranks there (though it seems quite difficult, since the EGF equivalent is about 7k and the KGS equivalent is roughly 4-5k). As for KGS.. ah, I haven't played there for about two and a half months now, though I like watching my go mates play there (and to chat with them). Maybe I'll get back to KGS once I have made it to IGS-SDK.

Last but not least: RL tournaments. In September there was none nearby, but in October there will be two: Bochum (October 9/10) and St. Augustin (October 30/31). Then I will see whether I can confirm the SDK or whether I just had a lucky streak in Cologne.

October 2010

2010-10-15: The Bochum tournament went ok, it was a 3:2, but it was my worst performance ever as regards EGF rating (which I use rather strictly for determining my rank). The reason was that I lost my first two matches to two other 9k players. The first one being someone whom I had already played in Cologne - but now she knows my snapback tricks and it seems I need to learn some one-space-low-pincer-joseki that she seems to love - and the second one being a tournament newbie, very nice person that I hope to play with again in one of my next tournaments. Then after the two losses I had to play a 12k who had won his first two matches. Well, I wiped the board with him, but that gave me practically no points. The Sunday went a bit better: I played with one of my most feared opponents and the only woman to whom I have a negative balance (1-3). Only once I was able to gain a victory over her when she was a bit sick. This time I played a bit more aggressively, not too much defending my own territory, but rather invade in hers, and that worked pretty well. The most interesting match of this tournament however was the last one. That was a fierce fight with tons of captured/dead pieces on both sides. While I was able to kill an invasion of him on the top right side, he was able to get the bottom right corner from me. In the late middlegame I counted that I was a few stones behind, and since the situation on the bottom side of that board had changed, I decided to check whether I could make the bottom right corner resurrect. After some complicated fight it eventually resulted in a large ko where 60 points were at stake. His first ko threat however threatened to take back the top right edge from me, and that was worth 52 points. It took me a few minutes to ponder on the next move. If I accepted the offer and took the ko, a fight would start for the 52 points at the right side, but it didn't seem impossible to connect at least some of the stones to the top corner to reduce the loss. The rest of the board didn't provide any other large enough ko threats, so I took the ko. He tried to stop me from connecting, but that gave me the opportunity to connect that group to another dead group by capturing three stones and make a second eye - if he didn't connect his three stones. He connected, but connecting cost him one of his large group's liberty, and this was enough for me to win the capturing race by one liberty. When he noticed that, he resigned. After that we reviewed the match and we came to the result, that the match would have been very close, if he had let me connect.

Well, at least it was not a disaster, and I was able to confirm the 9k rank, though I need a better performance next time. In the meantime I reached one of the goals that I had expressed last month: I could beat Aya on four stones. The program made some smaller mistakes and a bigger one, so that the victory was very clear (60 points). The next goal will be to beat the program with five stones, it's getting tougher and tougher.

As for my endgame studies I have neglected these a bit the last weeks. But I've had a replacement program: I started with GoChild and immediately became addicted. Until now I have done more than 4000 problems. I started with entrance level, but most of the problems were much too easy, so I did only those problems where ko, squeeze, capturing race and endgame involved and some life and death problems. After that I have continued with the intermediate level and have advanced to the "Lee Chang Ho" problems. Doing these problems will hopefully help me with my intuition. The most difficult problems so far are the endgame problems, since often you don't know what the goal is. It also shows me that I really have a gap of knowledge, so after having finished with the intermediate level, I will resume with my endgame studies.

November 2010

2010-11-05: Just after I had finished with the GoChild tsumego (about 5000 problems) I noticed that some of the packages had been disabled, probably there were copyright issues involved. Lucky for me that I had already finished.

Last weekend I played in my favorite tournament St. Augustin. This time I only played four of the five scheduled matches, because I had another appointment on Saturday evening. The strange thing was that all of the four matches had something in common: They ended by resign with a large dead group. The volatility of my play has now become manifest in my tournament matches as well.

My first match was with an 11 kyu, and it started well. I noticed a lot of bad shapes in her play and my feeling of winning the game was good. But then I made a too risky play. During a middle game fight I thought I could connect a group of mine in sente (instead of gote), but I misread and a large group of mine died. After a few further moves I resigned. A bad start into the tournament and I was about to spoil my good statistics against female opponents. My second opponent was a women, this time a 7 kyu. Before the second game I had a talk with the player who was able to beat my second opponent in the first match (and who turned out to be my third opponent later). I asked him for some tipps and he told me that he built up a large moyo in his first match. That reminded me of the time when I was around 15-17k where I liked to build up moyos. With that in mind I went into the game. Even though it didn't work well to create a moyo, the game was balanced until the transition from middlegame to endgame when my opponent made a severe mistake. That allowed me to capture a large group of her, so she resigned.

On Sunday my first opponent was the one that I had talked to the day before. Maybe he should not have told me that his favorite techique is building up moyos. Since I didn't allow him to do this he had to come up with something else, so he invaded on the top side. The outcome of the game depended on whether the invasion could live or not. At the end I was able to kill it, so he resigned. In the last game it looked fine in the beginning. I chased one of my opponent's weak groups, but he could make it alive, and one of my corner groups that was adjacent to my opponent's ex-weak group had too many weak spots and he exploited that to kill the whole corner. I resigned. So my result was a 2-2 for the weekend, a satisfactory result for me and the 9k rank seems to be stable now.

The day after the tournament my youngest daughter disclosed to me that she didn't want to go to the Düsseldorf tournament which will take place next weekend. Maybe she was demotivated due to her 1-3 result at the St. Augustin tournament. When my son heard that, he said that he wouldn't want to go either if his sister didn't go. I had said to myself that I would stop going to tournaments and take a break from go if my children didn't want to go to tournaments with me any more. So I was thinking whether to go alone or not. Later in the evening my son changed his mind, though he didn't sound convinced to go, so I haven't registered yet for the tournament. Just before I started writing these lines I asked them again whether they want to come or not so that I can register. This time my son sounded more convinced, and my daughter asked me that in case she comes whether she can take her best friend to the tournament as well. Ooooooooooooooooooh aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, I said "of course", and my daughter said that she had already taught some basics of the game to her friend so that she (her friend) would already be able to beat one specific of the children who is a regular tournament attendant (an eternal 30k who hasn't given up playing go in spite of losing almost every game - respect!). Ooooooooooooooooooh aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, what a surprise. My daughter and her friend would have to talk to her friend's parents first. But that's an interesting situation.

December 2010

2010-12-09: The last tournament is already more than three weeks ago, so I am a bit late in updating this blog. Indeed, my daughter's friend played in that tournament on Sunday, but it seems that she just wanted to find out more about my daughter's hobby. I wonder whether she wants to play in the next tournament.

As for me the tournament had some new things to offer: I had my first half-point-loss ever. But as I was 20 point behind throughout the game (I counted three times during the game), it was a surprise for me that the match was so close at the end. Maybe this is the reward for my endgame studies last month. Unfortunately I haven't done any studies for the last weeks. Too much stress at work these days. Then I had my first byoyomi match - it was the first match of the tournament at the same time. Playing in Canadian overtime was a strange experience, and I still need to get used to the faster pace. Luckily I won this game. Immediately after that I had another byoyomi match - that was the half-point-loss. The third match would have been a byoyomi match as well, if my opponent hadn't resigned a few seconds before the flag fell. The Sunday started - surprise - with a byoyomi match again, this time it was a clearer loss. After all those byoyomi games I felt too exhausted and the motivation to play dwindled. So the fifth match was a quick loss - my opponent was much more motivated since I was able to defeat him last time. Maybe next time I will skip the last game in such a situation. The overall performance was not bad though, in spite of the 2-3. May rating has remained almost the same. Next time I'll play as 9k then.

January 2011

2011-01-17: Some success and more frustrations. I seem to be more successful playing computers. When there was an electric power blackout (and I had no internet access) I played Aya on five stones, and was able to beat it quite convincingly. Next time I will give it six stones. It's getting harder and harder. I also tried out the new GnuGo 3.9 as it was said to be three stones stronger than its predecessor. Since I play GnuGo 3.8 on three stones, I played an even game with the new version. I had no difficulties beating it, though I noticed that it plays somewhat stronger than the old version. I also played Fuego with new settings: more nodes (2M) and two cores. I lost one match and won one. There is a winning strategy when playing with Fuego: Secure corners and edges and let Fuego make a moyo. Then invade the moyo from one corner.

The first frustration came from playing online again. My plan is to achieve an SDK rank on all the servers that I used to play on. So I played a few games on IGS where I was 12k. But I had a bad connection and lost two games of the three because of that. The GUI does not allow to resume a game - you have to dig through the depths of the console to find out how to resume, but you only have five minutes to find out. Playing on IGS under these circumstances is a hassle. I had more luck with OGS. I had fallen to 11-12k after I had resigned all my games due to the burnout. I played a few games against Fuego (100k and 1M; because the engines reply quite quickly) and advanced to 8k.

The second frustration came from playing tournaments. Last week I was at the tournament in Essen, and I had the same feeling that I had at the last game at last tournament: A heavy loss of motivation together with a feeling of exhaustion. After I had lost the first two matches on Saturday quite easily, I decided to skip the third match. On Sunday it was a bit better, but not much. I had two absolutely undeserved wins against 11k. In both cases I was lucky to capture a large group which my opponents could have saved easily. The groups had just left their focus as the game proceeded elsewhere. Then suddenly I had surrounded their groups and was able to turn their eyes into false eyes and kill them. Winning by pure luck is not fun. This was by far my worst performance at a tournament, in spite of the 2-2.


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