jwaytogo

"When it is darkest, men see the stars." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is the J Way to Go.

I started to play go in 1991. I play primarily on KGS, although I can be found on DGS, IGS, wBaduk and Yahoo sometimes. I also use my other accounts such as "jenesis" for hanging out. I have some wyrd accounts like "only1010", which tries to live up to its name.

I am of amateur dan strength and I enjoy teaching the game to beginners. I am fluent in English, Chinese and reasonably competent in Spanish. I am currently learning Malay. I often see myself more as a sort of go journalist in various languages, as I enjoy writing about the game. Do not think I am all that decent a player.

From 2004 to 2007, I was actively involved in promoting go in the Upper Valley in New Hampshire and Vermont. The Upper Valley Go Club is a chapter of the AGA. If you reside in the area and are interested in learning how to play or meeting other players, feel free to leave Nannyogg a message on KGS or e-mail goclub@plomp.com for more information.

I have graduated medical school and am now a medical resident in Singapore, sidetracking a bit from baduk. For anyone interested in go/weiqi/baduk in Singapore, please drop by the Singapore Weiqi Association. I still enjoy participating in tournaments on occasion.

I am the author of the Sensei's Gazette page, which I have also not contributed to in a while due to other commitments. I am member #Twofifteen of the Sabaki Go Club, was the head of Honinbo House at Sabaki, although it seems the Sabaki Go Club has been quiet for some years now.

I have also started writing a Stone Capturing Tutorial for Beginners. Inspired by minue's Haengma Tutorial, I have also found the stone capturing and stone killing pages on Sensei's Library to be somewhat disorganized.

The following is a list of professionals who have taught me much and I am eternally grateful.
Yang Jinhua 6p
Hsia Hsien Yu Phillip 2p
Kang Zhanbin 6p
Guo Juan 5p
Li Ang 3p

The following professionals have kindly played teaching games with me over the years, both in US and Singapore.
Feng Yun 9p
Liu Xiaoguang 9p
Dong Yan 7p

I have met some other professionals along the way at tournaments and events that I have attended:
Chen Zude 9p
Otake Hideo 9p
Seo Pong-Su 9p
Yang Shihai 8p
Sakai Yoshimitsu 8p
Cho Mikyung 8p
O Yuinin/Wang Weiren 4p

Trying my hand at poetry, high fantasy baduk:

THE GAME
A sun is raised, a star is set
Stone by solid wood is met
As fields of grass begin to fill
Still hands belie the hands that kill
A gentle sigh, a storm is nigh
A dragon with an eager eye
Astray to save, astray to lave
Grave stone setting stones to grave
A broken beast with bated breath
Bereft of hope awaiting death
Heretofore it’s torn asunder
A stony tower bridge built under
A river runs out thru the fords
O’er mage and daemon swords
Stroke, poke, scheme and parry
Feint for forging foe unwary
Fearless eyes on eyeless fears
Blood, sweat, and flood of tears
Stepping time with timeless steps
Ending deep in endless depths

THEORY OF RAMEN
Ramen is good for the mind, body and soul. It has sustained generations of college students. If not for ramen, none of the college graduates you see today would have survived. If you find it hard to improve at go, it is clearly because you do not have enough ramen in your diet. Ramen is important for the development of healthy brain cells and strong muscles. Ramen will allow you to get in touch with powers that you did not know you had. So if you have never had ramen, it is time to start now! Do not forget to add miso or eggs. It does not give you superpowers like ramen does, but it makes ramen taste yummy.

My Go CV:
Upper Valley Go Club (Chapter of American Go Association), Hanover, NH, USA
Apr 2004 to Sep 2007
• Rated 5 Dan by the American Go Association (2007).
• 3rd place – 2007 Massachusetts Go Association Spring Tournament (Boston)
• Champion - 2006 Massachusetts Go Association Spring Tournament (Boston)
• Tournament Director – 2006 Upper Valley Go Club Handicap Tournament (Hanover)
• Participated - American Go Honor Society Cities League (Team New York Dragons, representing Eastern USA)
• Runner-up - 2005 Kato Masao Memorial Tournament (North American Youth Championships)

Singapore Weiqi Association, Singapore Jan 1992 to present
• Served as a substitute Go/Weiqi coach for primary school in Singapore in 2008
• Participated - 2008 Singapore Weiqi League (Team Meide)
• Participated - 2008 Beijing Mind Sports Olympiad Selection Trials
• 5th place - 2007 South East Asian Games Qualifying Tournament
• Played as 5 Dan in rank promotion tournament and subsequent event (but most likely overrated)
• 3rd - 1997 Inter Polytechnic-Junior College National Weiqi Championship (Team)
• 3rd - 1997 Lanke National Weiqi Tournament (Team)
• Runner-up - 1996 Inter Poly-JC National Weiqi Championship (Team)
• Runner-up - 1996 Lanke National Weiqi Tournament (Team)
• Champion - 1995 Qiuping National Weiqi Tournament (Team)
• Amateur 1 Dan (Shodan) - 1994

An entry I made into go4go a while back regarding rulesets and the scoring of seki:

A little bit of history.

This dilemma stems from the day go players decided to do away with classical rules of go, which involved group tax. The victory conditions in ancient chinese go rules stated that whoever could play the most stones on the board would be the victor. This rule was very elegant, but not without its own issues. Players would be content to play as many stones onto the board as they could (filling in their own territory) without killing themselves. This meant that every group would get filled up until each group had two eyes. At which point, the players would start to pass. When both players passed and refused to play any more stones on the board, the stones sitting on the board were counted, and the player with the most stones sitting on the board would win. Very simple, no?

The side effect of this rule, was that every group was taxed 2 points. The 2 points that were considered necessary for the eyes. Eyes of a group were considered to belong to neither player, since these 2 remaining spaces in the group were neutral. One player (the owner of the group) would be unwilling to play in the eyes, as that would result in suicide, and the other player (the opponent) would be unable to play in the eyes, since there were no liberties.

Groups in seki had similar neutral points (be they common liberties or eyes in seki). Whether the seki had eyes or not, these neutral points in seki did not belong to either player. As long as neither player were willing or able to play in a spot, that particular spot belonged to neither player. It was a very elegant rule.

The problem with group tax was that it became viable to have fewer groups. The fewer groups you had, the less penalty you would have to take at the end of the game to make the necessary eyes. If you had 5 groups and your opponent only had 1 group, you had to take an additional 8 point deficit compared to modern rules. This would be a big difference! Note that komi today is not even that much…

Our wise predecessors decided that group tax stifled the game. Everyone was intent on keeping as connected as possible. Large moyos were more viable, and getting cut was painful. Invasions were less likely too. So group tax was done away with! We decided to award the points in the eyes to the player who “controlled” the eye. The eye was now considered the territory of the player who owned the eye.

This brings us to the dilemma of seki. If we arbitrarily assigned the eyes of a group to a the player who owned the group, could we not also assign the eyes in seki to the player who controlled the eye? This is not that apparent. If a group with 2 eyes is alive, it becomes easy to assign those two eyes to the player who controls the eyes. But a group in seki can be alive with 1 eye…we either declare that the group is truly “alive” and give the point in the eye to the player who controls the eye, or we declare that it is not truly “alive”, since it only has 1 eye. If we were to allow 1-eyed groups to be “alive”, we would have to spend a significant amount of effort to define all the various sorts of 1-eyed groups that are “alive”, and all the various sorts of 1-eyed groups that are not “alive”(Most 1-eyed groups are not alive).

When we did away with group tax, the game became more versatile, but also lost some of its elegance. We started needing to define how to score many exceptions that would crop up, seki being one of them. Different rulesets now disagree on how to score seki, but here is the background to this dilemma.

Beyond this, territory and area scoring (in a broad sense) strive to score the same thing, the proportion of the board “controlled” by both players without being penalized for having more groups.