Chris Hayashida

I live in Los Angeles, California. I started playing Go in June 2001. I'm a member of the Santa Monica Go Club. I was an AGA 2-dan, but I haven't played competitively in almost a decade. I play on KGS and IGS as chayashida.

I helped out with the Cotsen Go Tournament from 2003 to 2010. I was the tournament director from 2006 to 2010.

Table of contents Pages You Can Blame on Me My Proverbs My KGS Rating Graph AGA Rating History

Index of sub-pages Chris Hayashida Go Blog

(Congratulations on twenty years in the game! -- bugcat)

Pages You Can Blame on Me

• Chris's Go Pages - Some pages with the beginner in mind

• 24 - Games that were in the background on the TV show 24.

• Caring For Go Stones

• Hikaru no Go problem 9 - Shirakawa-sensei's tsumego

• Positional Judgement Problem 1

• Positional Judgement Problem 2

• TsumegoFromGames101

• Tsumego from Games 64 - A position from one of my games in the Third Toyota/Denso North American Oza in Las Vegas

• JBQM - Questions about the Japanese language and Japan

• BQM116 - followup to the wedge?

• BQM152 - which direction to play?

• BQM158 - middlegame question

• BQM179 - fuseki question

• BQM181 - Get Strong at Attacking problem 11

• BQM185 - Avalanche in the Chinese Opening

• BQM187 - Corner invasion after "honte" connection

• BQM287 - Endgame question about The Endgame by Ogawa and Davies

• BQM289 - Opening question

My Proverbs

• The most inefficient stones are in the lid of your opponent's bowl.

• Tesuji is Japanese for "Damn, why didn't I think of that?!?"

• The Chinese Fuseki is more than three moves.

• Just because your opponent is nodding, it doesn't mean you made a good move.

• If you've read something out but it contradicts a proverb, do it anyway. It probably means one of three things:

1. You probably don't understand the proverb.
2. It doesn't apply in this case.
3. You made a mistake earlier on.

At any rate, you'll learn something.

My KGS Rating Graph

2015-10-27: I recently started playing again. No one would play a ? player, so I beat GnuGo to get 11k, and have been playing other people to slowly raise my rating. I heard that there is a stronger Go bot that I can play against, so maybe I can raise my rating back to normal.

2015-11-01: I spent the weekend trying to get games with the stronger bots in the Computer Go room on KGS. There was a queue. I gave up, and played real people. It was hard - people would escape from games when they saw how strong I was.

I ended up playing a handicap game with Tyler. Losing still raised my rating to 3k? After that, an automatch game got me to 2k? This is probably where I should be, and I'm getting matches that are a lot closer now.

2017-01-06: I started playing online again in December, after not playing since March 2016. They're mostly fast and blitz games, often while watching TV with family or doing other things. I think playing faster has helped with my snap judgement strategically, but the games are still blowouts on one side or the other. I'm hovering around the 4k/5k border.

2017-06-12: I logged into Tygem, and have been able to play as a 1k there. I raised my KGS rating to 4k (even got to 3k for a bit), but it's a lot harder to get a game there nowadays. I'm wondering if I can stabilize (or raise) my Tygem rating.

AGA Rating History

• 2003 8k
• 2004 2k
• 2005 1d - breakthrough to shodan
• 2006 2d
• 2010 1d
• 2012 2d
• 2013 1d
• 2014 1d
• 2015 1k - breakthrough to shodan, the other way
• 2016-22 1k - no tournament games