Bram Vandenbon
Bram Vandenbon
- Born: 1984
- Learned Go: very young, about 7 years old I think.
- Started taking it serious: march 2003
- Current Strength : 26/01/2012 : 1d BGF
- Local Club : Roeselare
http://www.bramvandenbon.com
http://www.brugo.be
KGS handles: Spook, LordVader? Old KGS handles: BramGo, WuQingYuan, ShinJoseki, Nimita, ... DGS handles: not playing there anymore
Always ready for a game.
Software
In the past I have been working on several sotware projects. To name some.
- Go-Software for sony Ericsson Monile phones T300
- A life and dead application for Nokia 6300
- A KGS-IRC bridge that allows to vote moves for a gobot (finished, but not really used)
- A fuseki patternsearch and browsing website
- A life and death program
- Webcam based kifu creation. (Creates an sgf file while playing real life.)
And at the moment, not my most prestigeous, but certainly my most serious one: an online Joseki Dictionary! http://www.brugo.be. It started as a website for the Bruges Go Club. But I got carried away a bit and decided to dedicate it to joseki after all.
My Graphs
LordVader, is just one of my accounts.
Spook, is just one of my accounts.
GuitarHero,
one of my new accounts.
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 of course. 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. So we hardly even knew the rules of the game, we didn't know concepts such as "eyes, territory counting" but nevertheless we played on 19x19. So the game was rather boring for me at that time. 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.
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 a 21kyu (registered in the BGF). 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 helpful. I was a joseki freak: "if it's good enough for the pro players, then it must be good enough for me". I tried to memorize some opening moves of which I hardly understood the meaning, but in the longer run it did pay off! The Japanese way: "copy the master, the rest will come by itself". And it really did.
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 Get Strong At Invading by Richard Bozulich, Positional Judgement by ChoChikun, The Middle game Of Go by SakataEio and The small fuseki dictionary of the Nihon Ki'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 as a price I got 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 my results went down again, I didnt really improve that much any more. Maybe I was still too much thinking about the tournament I played (too much focussed on what was behind). During this period, 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 the 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 because 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 had several students myself. It is a nice system where people try to help out weaker players. Although 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 already 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. Of course 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 (recommended by Velirun), The Endgame, Get Strong At Joseki Volume 2 and Yoshio Ishida's Joseki Dicationary - Volume 2. I was looking forward to reach 1d by March. But I was terribly wrong. I had more pressure from school than ever before.
October and November passed without having the chance to play regularly. I wasn't improving, but fighting to stay in shape :)... And I assumed it would take till february, to get back in shape. And so it happened
In February I had a training period in a software company in order to complete my bacheler studies. During that period I suddenly found the time to play go again. I was surprised how much I had run behind, but pretty fast everything came back to the old. I was as strong as before but more experienced.
I have the strange feeling that every time I quit go for a certain period it is actually a step forward. Sometimes you need to take a step back to make 2 steps forward. It seems as if go-knowledge is structured in layers, every time you restart playing you are putting a new layer on top of the previous knowledge. All what is behind becomes an instinct by doing so. And instinct is more reliable and faster. Every time the previously learned concepts have become instinct, there is a chance to start exploring new concepts. My play became more reliable, knowledge became wider and all-round, experience grew and I felt more confident.
In June I graduated as a bachelor and I had to make an important decision. Searching work, continue studying? ... I felt that I could do better and continued my studies to become an industrial engineer (master) in the electronics and computer science. Good for my IT-carreer, but terrible for my go-carreer.
Suddenly my time to play disappeared again, and so did my strength. At the end of November on a Wednesday evening I was surfing the internet and I read the following on the website of the Belgian Go Federation "Preliminaries of the Belgian Go Championship" (in Namur). I made the very impulsive decision to do some life and dead exercises and to participate the day after :). It was also the first time I played dan players in real life.
I was totally out of shape but three days later I was amazed by the results of my efforts in that little time. The tournament took 2 days. And I was 1 victory away from being qualified.
After that I started making time for go again, although I didn't have any actually. But I forced myself to play at least a couple of games every week. But I didn't play on KGS any more, because it took me too much time to find an opponent there. Instead I played on Orobaduk. And very soon I become 3k, ... 2k, 1k, ... The rating system of orobaduk is so much more transparent. On kgs it can take over 15 straight victories to gain a rank. On orobaduk only about 6 victories are needed. The consequence is that solid 5k players on kgs could as well be 2dan in real life.
In mean time I tried to retrain myself on KGS too and my ranks were improving again. I had been doing a lot of life and death practice during that year and I grew into a real life and death monster. I was starting to feel more and more confident in my play and I saw myself playing very beautiful games.
In September I discovered that my girlfriend to who I have always been very fateful had cheated on me and we broke up. Although I loved her, my girlfriend had always been the bottleneck of the time I could spend on Go. So, I knew right away what to do and I reached 1d on KGS just about a month later.
But strangely enough that didn't give me satisfaction. It more felt like "Is this now really it? Is this what I've been trying to reach so hard???". I had put up too high expectations and was kind of disappointed. Now when I look back on it, I have no idea what had gotten into me to think that I would find "inner peace" when crossing the dan line.
I was so disappointed that I just quit playing go. For the Belgian readers: yes, that's why I wasn't at the Belgian Championship Preliminaries in November 2006. I simply didn't play any more. It didn't interest me any more
A couple of months later during my exams I restarted playing Go in my breaks. The game felt fresh again, but still familiar as if it had been waiting on my return. As always the damage caused by the long break was big.
At that time I was living in Kortrijk, and I got informed about a game-club just 3 streets away from my room. So, I went over there to have a look and played regular with Doneagle in his club. There was a lot more people over there than in the go club of Bruges (which is dying and reviving all the time, and which I visit a couple of times a year). But only 2 players where actually playing go: Doneagle and I.
What really annoyed me was the new release of KGS. My computer started crashing during the first 5 minutes of every game. As a result of that I had to play on other servers. I started to slack, and played only weaker players on small go servers. But I did make some new friends who supported me and pushed me to play more and more. Eventually KGS got repaired and I restarted playing on KGS where the rating system was heavily changed so that I was suddenly 2d (?!). I decided to create a new account to get a more realistic view on the situation. I played and played and finally I became a real solid reliable dan player.
What happens then? In July 2007 I graduated (Industrial ingeneer in the field of MIT) and I picked up my go again. I beat several dan players, at peaks I even reached a solid 3d rating. Still I was more focussed on my career as a Software Engineer. I programmed more than I played go. Then in September 2007 I met a really cute Belgian go playing girl, who motivated me to pick up go and to take it serious again. I try to coach her (technically and emotionally and to be honest, she's pretty strong already).
March 2008 I went on a trip to Japan where I visited the Nihon Ki'in (and of course many other cultural places, temples, ...). I bought myself some very nice (but expensive) stones in the Nihon Ki'in. And I bought 4 japanese exercise books in the local go shop (of which 3 are of 3dan level, and 1 is of 6dan level).
From my point I still had the feeling I was not at the level I was. My rank went up and down. I won a lot of games, but always seemed like a small miracle. I guess I'm good at making comebacks and starting big fights. Well, I just didn't have time to take it as serious as before. I guess I'm not a go player but a software engineer and I always will be. ... With that in mind I decided to put more effort in designing go related software than playing itself. My current project: http://www.brugo.be - An online joseki dictionary.
I think it was November, we started a new club in Roeselare (West-Flanders, Belgium). Kristof, Dries, Jo, Bjorn, Ivan and myself played go every Friday evening. Actually I never was part of a club which played every week, and with players of reasonable strength. Once I played a game of 4 hours. We started at 9pm and finished it at 1am. We even had visitors from Gent once. And our team had a 6-0 victory. So I am really proud of the level of our club!
Nevertheless it has to be said that Gent has always been important for the several Go clubs West-Flanders had. While our clubs closed and opened the club of Gent has always been far more reliable.
On a Wednesday evening I decided to visit the club of Gent. At that time I was playing twice a week in real life, (luxury). I had no idea what had happened that very morning. 2 days later I heard that one of our key members and friend Ivan had passed away in a traffic accident. I guess we should take a lesson from this about how short life can be and to enjoy every minute of it. We'll miss you Ivan, things will never be the same at Roeselare.
The more I play and study go, the more I understand that nobody really has a fixed strength. Sometimes I easily beat 2 dan players, the day after I make stupid mistakes against 1k players. Officially when asked I say I'm "1k or maybe 1d", but I think if I want to be fair to myself I must admit I am certainly stronger than 1 kyu. I am at least 1 dan. But at dan level it are the little things which make the difference, being in shape / silence / concentration / health / energy /... So, I can not assure I am ALWAYS stronger than 1 dan, only 80% of the time.
So I participated in the preliminaries of the Belgian go championship again. My first games went really well. I won a crucial game against Kristof (another member of our club). In the opening there was a slight joseki mistake from my opponent which made the game easier than expected. I lost 3 games all together: (Kwinten 1d, Michael 1k and François 3d). Because of that I ended only at 8th place. I had to be in top 3 to be able to participate. But it was a good performance for my rating in the Belgian go federation. From a statistical point of view. I was slightly dissatisfied nevertheless, because 2 of the games I lost were only lost by 6 points difference.
Usually the top 5 players of the preliminaries join the top 5 of last year, to play the finals. However there were 3 players who could not participate. Because of that I suddenly was at 10th place and could participate as last member. A delightful surprise. "I'm playing with the big boys now" :) hehe. So I went to Brussels to play in the finals anyway, and the results were far better than expected. I expected to lose every game, but nevertheless I was looking forward to learning a lot. But to my big surprise I won my first game anyway (from Christopher 1d), the 2nd game I played François (3d) again, whom I lost to in the preliminaries and lost to again by resign. The game started a bit too aggressive. The next morning I lost from Alain (3d) by only 4.5 points. And again lost from Kwinten (1d) by a couple of points. So even though I'm satisfied of those results there was a bit of a turning point, I was on a losing streak.
The second weekend I unexpectedly won 3 games in a row (Wang 2d, Thomas 3d, Won 1d). The game against Wang was a big fight which was in my advantage from the start. I think maybe Wang thought that any fight would be in his advantage against a (officially) "2k player". Oh well it's hard to predict and I did feel a bit like a "sand bagger" running around with a 2k rating winning from a 2d. I started the next game with the right attitude: "make influence, tempt them to take small risks, play with power, not territory". The next game was a success as well. My best result in official tournaments so far, beating a 3d player. The victory was big, but there were lots of phases in the game where it could have turned around at any point as big groups were on the stake all the time. Maybe my life and death knowledge saved my day. The day after I lost from Pieter (2d) and finally I had to play Jan (4d) but lost. Jan became champion because of this. If Jan had lost the game François would have been Belgian champion, so nevertheless there was some pressure. In fact things looked in my advantage for a while. I pushed 2 groups of Jan in a position where I honestly thought they would die, but Jan's reading ability outclassed me, he found key points I didn't know they were there.
I moved to an apartment with my girlfriend. During the first days internet connection was really bad so I couldn't play. So I bought a 30 meters UTP cable. Because of that I was finally playing with perfect connection and was suddenly winning about 70% of my games. I managed to play about 20 games/week. All my 1d accounts climbed to 2d. And I kept excel files to keep track of the number of games I played against equal or stronger player (results are less important than the actual number of games).
I made myself a member of the club of Gent as well, and tried to visit both clubs. Although I probably learn more from playing an evening at home ... So, I was invited at the birthday-party of the tournament of Gent. And also played some inter-club games for Gent. Although the level in Roeselare is higher than the level of Gent, the number of players in Gent is higher and it's more about go, less about chatting.
I participated in the Preliminaries of the Belgian championship again, hoping to break through the finals in an honest way this time. I am pretty sure that I should have been qualified but again, I placed only 6th. The first day went perfect and I won all my games as expected. The 2nd day I had to start out against Lucas (4d) and expected to be slaughtered. Nevertheless, we played a very exciting game and I found myself winning by 3.5 point. An unexpected result. But I must have been really exhausted, I lost my next 2 games. As I result I was only placed 6th. Unlike last year, nobody cancelled their appointment, so I did not manage to qualify. I did follow the finals on the internet which were very exciting.
June 2011, It looks like there's a new wave of strong players is coming (Stijn from Bruges has almost reached kgs dan level and the same can be said from Wout (Gent)) Stijn beat me a couple of times (I think 3 times now). Which is no reason to be depressed since we played perhaps 100th games. But it does show that his level is increasing. At the same time Wout has been very near at winning and has played some really strong games also against other players at the club. Still if I'm honest I think I have to admit that my own level has decreased. This is perhaps because I've been very busy with writing an iPad application for the brugo website. Now finally the application is available in the apple store and I hope to pick up go again. Although keeping a serious level, while having a hard job, and performing 24h support at the customers and maintaining a website, and taking care of my girlfriend is VERY hard to combine. No wonder the last 4 years have passed so fast.
The tournament of Antwerp and Gent were both really exciting this year. I had a nice result in both tournaments and I am slowly approaching 1 dan BGF level again. At the same time I realize that it's not good with my go level. I'm not improving ... I hope to change this soon nevertheless.
November 2011, myself and Stijn were participating in the preliminary of the Belgian championship. The results were amazingly good. The first day I had to play against Kris Boyen, who seems to be slightly out of shape lately. There's been a time that he was about 2 or 3 kyu, but looks like he has lost the spirit a bit. The next game was against Daniel French (4k) which was harder but still a clear victory. The third game was against Kevin Prist who defeated me last year very closely. But this time I managed to win it. But I lost the last game of day 1 against some 2 dan player who just restarted playing. A heavy day. Luckily we could stay with the sister of my girlfriend. This saved us a lot of travelling time. So the day after we continued at full strength. First against Yue Wang, who I had won against last time. But this time he played a much harder game. There were a lot of exchanges back and forth. In the end I had killed 3 big groups of him, he one huge one of mine. But then I made a silly mistake which made one group of him back alive. In the end I was 4.5 points short. So I was a little irritated with the result. With only 3 wins and 2 games to go, I now had to win all games that would come. First I had to play against Kevin Annachachibi who has improved a lot since last time I played him. He has also reached 1 kyu level now. But I must say even though I had tons of bad luck, dead groups of him managing to get back alive, I still won by a huge margin in the end. But he's still very young and already 1 kyu, so I think he has a lot more potential. My last game was against Alain Wettach, which is a former Belgian champion and with 3 dan level clearly one of the best players in the running. But somehow he lost already 2 games, so also for him it was very important to win that last game. But somehow I managed to win this almost impossible battle. Perhaps Alain was a bit tired, I don't know. Nevertheless, thanks to this result I came in 3rd. On top of that I think a promotion to 1 dan will probably happen as well.
So indeed I reached 1d level as expected. Months went passed and I started hiring teachers from time to time. I must say it changed my way of thinking in several situations. But especially I found it interesting that when 2 strong players review the same game without knowing of each other's comments they will often pick out different moves to criticize. From experience there grows decisiveness: "there is only 1 correct move here". It is better to have multiple teachers than to have 1. On the other hand the advantage of playing a lot against the same player is that you tend to make the same mistakes again, making it easier to discover them.
The Belgian championship 2012 was a big success. Well, that is to say, I ended in 5th place. That means, I do not have to go through qualifications to take part next year. Again I had to play against Alain Wettach and managed to win again, thanks to a slight endgame mistake of Alain, without the end game mistake the game would have been very close, but I do think I was a bit ahead. Secondly I beat Kwinten because of a middle game reading mistake of my opponent. The game was really complicated and in the end it was very exhausting. Usually Kwinten has a very solid playing style with no weaknesses what so ever. He is a very patient player. The third game (1st of second day) was against Wang Yue. A very big capturing race which I had miscalculated and cost me the game. Thanks to an aggressive "overplayish" counter attack I managed to get back in the game and indeed it looked like the tables had turned after all, but at the crucial point of the game he found a tesuji to decide the game. One of the most exhausting games of the tournament. Being so exhausted I played a bit too reckless against Kevin Prist. He won with a very small margin of points, I should have been more patient in this game. But I took a little too much risks, and a couple of slight reading mistakes as well. Finally I was way too tired to play against Jan Ramon. Jan showed me I was absolutely not ready to win against him. He outplayed me in early middle game with perfect timing of attacking and defending moves. The next weekend I started of by having 3 straight wins against François Gonze, Christopher and Kevin Annachachibi. I have troubles remembering the game against François probably because François has a very steady style of playing (just like Kwinten). Christopher and Kevin on the other hand purely play on fighting spirit. I think Kevin played a bit too fast, in the beginning I was dragged in his high playing pace, but I made up by taking my time to solve the problems I had put myself into. In the game against Christopher I played very soft all game, but bit by bit I came back and in endgame I was just half a point ahead (I played white). This is in fact the second time that I won from him with just half a point. And then finally I had to play against Lucas (broadcasted live on kgs). Most people watching this game seemed to have no clue at all what the game was really about. They made it seem like I was lost after 3 moves, but in fact it was only in late middle game that I lost because of a reading mistake. I was kind of irritated after reading all poor kibitz. :) Perhaps this is all part of becoming stronger. Either way, Lucas his level is extremely high and I can only show much respect for his humble appearance.
A couple of months later I participated in the tournament of Gent again. My expectations were high, too high. The tournament turned out to be a total disaster. I started of by losing to Joost, who clearly improved a lot, but still I should have an easy win against a 3 kyu player. The next 2 games were versus Jean Rey and Dominique. My arch rivals for the tournament. I had a clean win against Jean, but Dominique won once again with just a couple of points. So basically after 1 day the tournament was over for me. The next day I had to play Stijn. Since I know Stijn very well I knew he would be a difficult opponent so I took my time and played the game very carefully. Apparently Stijn on the other hand (I think perhaps it was the pressure) played a bit inpatient. The result was an early fight that was in my advantage. So, the game ended soon with some disappointment from Stijn his side, although I must say I am convinced that he has all knowledge and skills to become a dan player very soon. The next 2 games were supposed to be easy ones. But once again I disappointed myself by making a reckless move in endgame of my last game: sinking even deeper, losing from a 5kyu player. The tournament was a disaster.
I was totally disappointed and right at that moment I received an invitation from Kristof who was looking for a third guy to play in Lille (World Mindsport Games). Basically it is a team-tournament. Each team consists of 3 players. The Belgian team had Benjamin Gigot, Bram Vdb. (me), and Kristof Bossee. We were clearly the underdog versus teams like Korea, China ... But in the end we managed to win 2 rounds (versus Italy and versus the Netherlands). That last victory was enough to call the tournament a success. Afterwards we took a quick tour trough Lille (by foot) following a Chinese masseuse that Benjamin ran into. She showed us the way to the best Chinese restaurant of Lille. The whole experience was great.
Not so long after we had a visit of Antwerp in Gent for the inter-club in which I had to play Tom. I had played him a couple of times before and had both lost and won. I knew he was a strong player and we had a fun game which I managed to win after an aggressive middle game fight. So, I was finally getting over the huge humiliation that I had experienced during the tournament of Gent versus 2 Antwerp players (3k, 5k).
But later that year we visited Antwerp for the same interclub tournament. And I had to play Joost again, and again I lost. So in the end I learned that I really have to watch out for Joost (and for Damian as well).
During the winter of 2012-2013 I really did not play much go. That also explains the defeat versus Joost. In fact I didn't feel like playing go any more at all. Perhaps this is a normal reaction when one gets the impression that it will take 2 or 3 years to improve to a higher level and that it will take weekly study and games just to stay in shape. But when March came closer I had no choice but to restart playing go. I had to battle in the Belgian Championship once again. I think I took it easier on myself than other years. No crazy marathon's. Just a lot of tsumego and a handful of internet games. I also get a game versus Kristof and versus Stijn. But those did not really have much effect this time I think. In the tournament itself I played every game with a different approach. The end result was better than I hoped for. Again 5 wins resulting in 5th place, just like last year. (win versus: Wang, Kris, Wong, Dominique and François) (lost versus: Kwinten, Kevin, Lucas and Jan). I do think that both Dominique and François are stronger players. So I was very satisfied with the result, felt on the top of the world again. Also for my rating the result was really good. I just need 1 more victory against somebody in 2k+ to reach the 2 dan level. That would be sweet.
July 2013 I had some doubts whether or not to participate in the tournament of Gent, because I did not play any serious games in long time. But as the tournament came nearer I gathered all my courage and decided to do so any way. I especially feared players such as Joost and Stijn, because their ratings are below their actual capabilities. The first day I won my 3 games without much difficulties. (vs Steve, Joost and Maarten). But the 2nd day would of course be the most difficult one. I lost versus Oscar Vasquez (a 10-year old boy full of talent). He was a notch too strong for me. (I'm having our game reviewed this evening with the aid of Cornel Burzo). Actually I think this was the hardest game in a long time. I think I lost it on time mostly. Apparently my opponent took better care of his time and when I came ahead in the game he decided to blitz the end game forcing me into a difficult position where I finally lost a group. The next game (versus Dominique) was also a very important one. But I think Dominique was not in his best shape this year (possibly due to the illness of his son). The game was a bit messy because I was very tired as well (recuperating from the game vs Oscar) In the end I won with a reasonably big margin. The last game was vs Dennis who I hadn't seen for a long time. He has improved a lot (and he even managed to beat Stijn in this tournament). So I knew I had to be very careful and managed to win it. So the final score = 5/6 wins, and an overall second place in the tournament. Unfortunately for my rating the tournament was not so good due to the fact that Oscar is still rated at 3 kyu now. Statistically the chance of losing from a real 3 kyu player is about : 10%. Oh, and Oscar, he won all his games, so he won the tournament. Congratulations to him he certainly was the best player.
Greetings