Araldo
Hallo, my name is Araldo, playing go since 2002. You can find me playing at the Drienerlose Go Vereninging almost weekly (wednesday in the theater cafe at the University of Twente in Enschede).
I have an account on KGS (Araldor), but I rarely use it. Furthermore I play sometimes on the Dragon Go Server.
I took part in the following real-life tournaments until now (reverse order).
- 1st place dutch championship (3rd class)
- Apeldoorn, 2007 (1 out of 5)
- Hannover, 2007 (4 out of 5)
- 2nd place dutch championship (3rd class)
- Groningen, 2006
- Amsterdam, Oza 2006
- Eindhoven 2005
- Apeldoorn, 22 May 2005, 1 kyu, 14 out of 58 (2 out of 5). Paired two times against 3d players, lost both. 2 out of 3 against 1 kyu players.
- Nijmegen, 19-20 March 2005, 1 kyu, 24 out of 69 (3 out of 5)
- Amstelveen, 12-13 March 2005, ING memorial, 1 kyu, 26 out of 53 (3 out of 5) (first time I defeated a Dan player (actually a 3d from USA who participated as a 1d (and lost all his games)))
- Enschede, 26-27 February 2005, 1 kyu, 13th place out of 33 (2 out of 6), dissapointing result in the Dutch Student Championship, in which I became 4th (out of 14).
- Arnhem, 20-21 November 2004, 1 kyu, (3 out of 6), lost against a 3 dan and a 2 dan. Still no wins against a dan player...
- Groningen, 7-8 November 2004, 1 kyu, 31th out of 75 (2 out of 5)
- Almere, 26 September 2004, 1 kyu (0 out of 6), I'm really a lousy rapid go player.
- Aalst (Eindhoven), 11-12 September 2004, 1 kyu, 22th out of 59 (2 out of 5)
- Amersfoort, 16 August 2004, 1 kyu, last place (1 out of 6). Handicaptournament.
- Apeldoorn, 2 May 2004, 3 kyu, 13th place out of 26 (3 out of 5). Lost again from the same 1 kyu person.
- Leiden, 11 April 2004, 3 kyu, 1 out of 4
- Nijmegen, 13-14 March 2004, 3 kyu, 47th place out of 77 (2 out 5). A pity I lost with 2.5 moku from a 1st kyu, due to a stupid endgame mistake of my own.
- Amstelveen (Oza), 7 February 2004, 4 kyu, 138th out of 207 (3 out of 4)
- Amstelveen, 24-25 December 2004, 4 kyu, 36th place out of 52 (3 out of 5)
- Groningen, 8-9 November 2003, 4 kyu, 35th place out of 42 (2 out of 5)
- Bochem (Germany), 11-12 October 2003, 4 kyu, 61 place out of 141 (2 out of 5), first time I won from 3k.
- Aalst (Eindhoven), 7-8 September 2003, 4 kyu, 36 place out of 58 (3 out of 5 wins, won twice from 5k but lost twice from 3k). The official results report 2 out of 5 wins, because of a wrongly reported match-result.
- Amersfoort, 10 August 2003, 4 kyu, Last place (1 out of 7). My weak excuse for this terrible result is that I did run out of time in four games where I otherwise had a good chance of winning (of course this is still my own stupid fault), and in the three other games I had to face a 140+ reverse komi.
- Utrecht, 28-29 June 2003, 7 kyu, 37th place out of 45 (3 out of 5 wins, won from a 6 kyu)
- Apeldoorn, 18 May 2003, 10 kyu, 28th place out of 38 (4 out of 5 wins, won 2x from 9 kyu's)
- Nijmegen, 15-16 March 2003, 10 kyu, 61th place out of 71, (2 out of 5 wins)
- Amstelveen, 1-2 Februari 2003, 12 kyu (weakest again), last place (4 out of 5 wins)
- Arnhem, 17-18 November 2002, 14 kyu (weakest), last place (1 out of 6 wins)
Rank development:
End of each month (Europe rating estimated)
- Jul 2002: 30k IGS
- Aug 2002: 27k IGS
- Sep 2002: 27k IGS
- Okt 2002: 20k IGS
- Nov 2002: 18k IGS, 15k KGS, 14k Europe
- Dec 2002: 15k KGS, 13k Europe
- Jan 2003: 13k KGS, 12k Europe
- Feb 2003: 12k KGS, 11k Europe
- Mar 2003: 11k KGS, 10k Europe
- Apr 2003: 11k KGS, 10k Europe
- May 2003: 9k KGS, 9k Europe
- Jun 2003: 9k KGS, 7k Europe
- Jul 2003: 5k KGS (new account), 5k IGS, 5k Europe
- Aug 2003: 5k KGS, 5k IGS, 4k Europe
- Sep 2003 - Dec 2003: 5k KGS, 4k Europe
- Feb 2004 - June 2004: 3k (next: 2 months go-lessons in china)
- July 2004 - June 2007: 1k (dissapointing)
Books I own, have ordered or have borrowed (#1 and #15 I don't own):
- in order of first reading -
1. I don't remember the title of my first book anymore. Explained the rules, eyes, life and death and other basic stuff in Dutch. Borrowed it from the library about 7 years ago.
2. Tesuji, James Davies: Really good, finished it in just a few days.
3. Kage's Secret Chronicles Of Handicap Go, Toshiro Kageyama: I won this one in my first tournament, because I finished last:). It contains 9 games with 2 to 5 stones handicap. Lots of funny dialogs and humour in this book.
4,5,6. Dictionary of Basic Joseki (I, II and III), Yoshio Ishida: A few hundred joseki with variations, mistakes you should avoid and a way to punish those mistakes. Will take a lot of time to learn all this, another year probably
7. The Endgame, Tomoko Ogawa and James Davies: I've read only the first part about the theory, and was somewhat useful for me. Maybe a little boring.
8. The Art of Go, Volume 1: Connecting Stones: Problems which deals with connecting your stones. However, I don't really like a book with problems only. Did a few chapters but is a little boring. Problems are not very easy though.
9. Attack and Defense, Akira Ishida: This is a good book. But difficult to implement all those ideas in a real game. A summary would be nice.
10. Keshi and Uchikomi, Reduction and Invasion in Go, Iwamoto Kaoru: I won this one because I won 4 games in my second tournament. Has some standard paterns in it and ways to reduce or invade those patterns. Contains almost only patterns with 3-4 opening. A little too advanced for me at the moment, I will start with this one if I'm 5 kyu or so.
11. Life and Death, James Davies. I have won this in the Apeldoorn 2003 tournament. Will start reading it soon.
12. 501 Opening problems, Richard Bozulich. This is really an excelent book. Each problem comes with a hint, what the purpose of the move is (i.e. make/prevent moyo, attack/defend weak group etc). First you can try to solve the openings problem without the hint, then check if it is what you thought, maybe try again and finally look at the answer. After doing 100 problems I really got the hang of openings strategies (that is, positions after about 10-20 moves). Note this book is not about joseki or fuseki.
13. Lessons in the fundamentals of go, Kageyama. Nice to read, but I don't think it will improve my go skill more than a fraction of a stone. I agree with the criticism on Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go / Discussion.
14. Dictionary of basic shapes, Unknown autor. Korean Language. Difficult to use, since I cannot read a single letter (or character, whatever) Korean. Still it is somewhat useful. A lot of frequently occurring patterns appear in it. The book shows what the standard reply is, and what can happen if another move is done or if it is omitted.
15. Get strong at the opening, Richard Bozulich. Borrowed this one from my neighbour. It has about 150 openings problems, about well known fuseki mainly based on 3-4 and 4-4 points. The answers are explained quite well. I like this book.
16. Jungsuk in our time, Seo Bong-soo, Jung Dong-sik. The first korean book translated into english. It is about 3-4 joseki. Often the josekis are discussed with the complete board in mind (or at least multiple corners). A nice addition to the Ishida dictionaries I think. What I like about this joseki book, is that they are discussed in more detail than the Ishida one and easier to read because it is not so much a dictionary.
17,18. Fuseki dictionary volume 1 and 2, Rin Kai Ho (japanese language)
19. Invincible, John Power. Seems like a nice book, about Shushaku's life and his games. Contains over 100 of his games, of which 80 are commented.
20. Tesuji dictionary, Go Seigen (japanese language). This stuff is way too advanced for me. So difficult I can only solve like one out of ten correctly.
Books I bought in Beijing (for almost nothing)
21-22. Life and Death dictionaries (2 volumes). Very good.
23. Joseki Dictionary. Basically the updated version of Ishida.
24. Fuseki Dictionary.
25. Book about attacking (?)
26. Game collection of Kobayashi Koichi
27. Game collection of Ma Xiaochun
28. Life and death problems (hard)
29-35. Series of 7 books with Tesuji problems, by Lee Changho
36-38. Series of 3 books about endgame, by Lee Changho
39. Book about mini-chinese opening
40. Positional Judgment - high speed game analysis
41. Basic Tesuji (Attack)
Still here? I cannot believe it.