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Holigor

 

Holigor's log
   
  • November 2, 2003

The main life ideas

  • break through and conections
  • One real eye and all the rest as the second one
  • Shapes: two kinds of bent four, straight four, eight on the

second line, comb.

  • Seki shapes: there should be something in common between them
  • Under stones, including snapbacks
  • clamps from the outside to get sente
  • Numerous ko
  • October 29, 2003.

I continue to think about yose. The main difficulty is in the ability to calculate the values of the moves of course. The rest is peanuts, yet maybe important peanuts. There are some new things that I begin to understand only now. My notations are more readable for me than the notations of the CGT, but I have to develop them further.

Yesterday I won a game that started with weird variation of large avelanche. I've checked some idea. It became a very fighting game and I was doing well but at some moment I understood that I don't know how to play in the center. The center almost always comes to my opponents. I broke through in the end due to his bad play and won about 20 points. Hadn't I break through it would be about 10 points I think.

Then I watched the LG cup games. The finish of the game between Weon and Chang Hao was exciting. It was ko after ko in a very complex semeai. And the life and death problem decided the result. Here is the reduced version.

[Diagram]
Black first

The problem is to find the status of the corner. WC was played as a ko threat. Can black ignore?

DougRidgway: See my blog for an attempt.



  • 8th October 2003

I made a page where I am supposed to expose my bad plays.

  • 4th October 2003

Just recently I complained about the large scores. Yesterday I though I was winning and conceded the last ko. The result was a loss by 0.5 points. Today, a horrible situation happened. After the passes I was behind by half point, yet he had to capture a stone yet. The game was not over. I asked my opponent to capture and won by half point. Evidently my opponent was more decent man than me. But I have to count the score!

  • 3rd October 2003

I looked at the game Dima Bogatskii played with the Korean in the IWAGC semifinals. Unfortunately it was very one sided. The Korean player beat him quite easily. His stones just flowed naturally while our 6d struggled all the time eventually crumbling as it happens in all games of this kind.

IGS changed its probability function and now there is no measure of one's progress there. To go from 1k to 1d one has to win about 30 games in a row. If you are winning as much as loosing you in about 30 games you will be somewhere in the middle. This is my case. So, about 20 wins in a row and I become a shodan. This is very much unlikely, of course. Is it time to start a new 2d account? I don't know. First I have to be sure that I can win 2 out of 3 against 1k. Loosing a lot is a frustrating experience.

      • Tristan: I noticed a change with the probability command, too. Winning and losing does not seem to affect the value returned by "pr". Neither does the choice of player, i.e., using "pr" with somebody who has just turned 2k* produces exactly the same result as with somebody who has just dropped to 2k* from having been 1k*. I strongly suspect that this is a temporary glitch rather than a change of policy on the part of IGS. Anyway, I'm glad I'm not the only person who has noticed something odd afoot.

When I watched the Meijin title match game yesterday I fould that the players made some strange moves in the quite close yose. I'd like to analize the game and to convince myself that the moves they made were the largest.

  • 23rd September 2003

Yesterday I played a strange game. The development in the upper right corner led to the death of my group of 20 stones. In exchange I obtained an Iron Wall. The total of my opponent's territory in the corner was 20*2 plus about ten other points. The game hadn't progressed much, so it was a test for the value of the Iron Wall. Is it really 45 points? You don't know before you try it . If it was, then I was not much behind. Perhaps my opponent was very placid after this big kill, yet though he lived everywhere I won by 11.5 point on the board (before komi). Impressive.

I've created a page on Iron Wall and moved the discussion about its value from the hamete page.


Here is the description.

[Diagram]
Black loses the ko

Black loses the semeai. There is no ko threat at the boginning. What can be done? The only solution is to build some ko threats and then annoy the opponent with the ko in the corner.


[Diagram]
White gives in

B1 had in mind to create at least one ko threat. White ignored it and went for a kill. After W6 black has an iron wall. Eventually black won the game.


[Diagram]
Final position.


I am balancing between 1d and 2d on KGS. This means that after a win I am 2d, then I lose and I am back to 1d. I remember that a year or so ago I wanted to be a shodan in any rating. Now I want to be a shodan in European rating. I am 1k* on IGS. The target is close but difficult. I have to learn to study the dan level material. This means organization of the study of some kind, reading high level books, trying to understand the fuseki at last, developing a good joseki base, learning shape and trying to think on the big scale. At present I read mostly close fights yet I don't read runnig fights almost at all, I read who gets the last oba etc.

  • 21st September 2003

Go broke into morning news. There was a major event in China with a big board and children acting as stones under the command of two great masters Cho Hun-hyeon and Chang Hao. Cho won and thanked his army after the game. The game itself was played on the usual goban but recreated on the big square by the martial art students. I hope that this was a lightning game and the children did not have to stand there for six hours. The presenter on the TV explained that the purpose of the game was to get more territory than your opponent. Interesting that the game was called go and not weiqi as one would expect from the Chinese. But it was an English morning show.

  • 19th September 2003

Usually we look at the games of the professionals trying to determine the correct direction of play and discover new ideas. Yet, the professional level of play could be too strong. Quite often we are not able to see why the great master chose a particular move over another, seemingly, more promising one. At the same time we can't pose this question to the players. Suppose there is a possibility to ask questions of the players even though the level of play in the game would not be that high. Suppose one of us puts up one of his/her own games for the commments of the weaker players. Then the sensei would answer honestly all questions about the game. Explaining for example: "Well, at this moment I thought that my only chance was to complicate things and I played this particular move to confuse my opponent" or "This was a horrible misread but the opponent could not find the correct way to punish and I got an undeserved advantage here".

Anyway, the idea would be to explain the reason behind every move on the board if that move does not seem natural to a weaker player.

Some other thoughts. Losing a game is bad because then you are playing the game in your head all day and wondering why on earth you played those bad moves. If you lost badly, you have a lot of problems to solve and a lot of horrid mistakes to uncover. Add to this the gloomy mood that results from losing. Winning a game is rewarding because of the better mood, yet you are never satisfied because eventually you find that your plans were unsound but your opponent failed to punish you.

There was a big yose in the last of my games. Of the kind that Kageyama shows in his books, where the score can easily shift by 30 points. I won the game by 7.5 points, yet I wonder how well we both played those big moves, and who gave in.

I bought myself a Pocket PC , installed Miniban (thanks, Sebastian) and downloaded a lot of games of Yi Ch'ang-ho. My impressions are very different from what other people say about him. He does not play too simple. His groups are weak sometimes as any other guy's and he goes for a kill when possible like anybody else. He reads well.

Sebastian: -- You're very welcome. I'm glad you like it. Please don't be shy with feedback.
On a different note, did you see my reply re. "Nimets" on GaijinDiaries? -- 2003-09-19

HolIgor: Your story is interesting but very unlikely. The word for Germans is much older than tsars (the first Russian ruler declared an emperor (tsar is corrupted Caesar) was Ivan IV. That happened in XVI century. Moreover, the closest Slavic nations to the Germans were Poles and Czechs. So, the word must have been invented by them and then spread to all other Slavic nations and even to the non-Slavic Hungarians and Romanians.
Sebastian: -- I agree - as I wrote: if it were true, what would have been the name before? Please feel free to remove this conversation once you've read it. I would have sent it by e-mail if I had your address. -- 2003-09-19
  • 9th September 2003

Something strange is going on. Where are the tough closely contested games? My results are like of a double digit kyu player. A 24 points win, a 40 points loss, resignation, a win by resignation, a 31 points win. A lot of mistakes from both sides, groups die. In last two of the games I won I managed to make a seki of my own groups that were perfectly safe at first and then dead and then seki.

RafaelCaetano: Excuse me, HolIgor... is it OK to make comments here? Well, Iīm not so surprised by the large margins themselves. What I wonder is, why didnīt you resign if you were losing by 40 points? :-)

HolIgor: Yes, everybody is welcome to make comments here. And I wonder myself why I did not resign. It was a fight where I was losing a little. Then I let my group to be killed by trying to make a forcing move instead of a simple defence. And that was a perfect point for resignation. Yet I did not resign. Shame on me.

  • 8th September 2003

I was so badly thrashed in the last game that I have to ask myself what happens to me when I play a stronger opponent. I was very far behind at the moment when one of my groups died in a situation that was actually a beginners problem. I've seen the correct defence of course, but wanted to make a sente atari first threatening to get an eye in a different place. Well, that was just a phanthom. Then in the end when my opponent was careless I noticed a cute ko. But almost no ko-threats and I had to make an echange that did not suffice by far. A humiliating loss by 40 points.

  • 5th September 2003

Yesterday I played a game again. It was a very difficult game. I won by 23.5 point yet I felt a lot of pressure. Don't you like when your opponent invades into your territory? I mean, territory, not moyo, which means that you have to kill for sure yet you have to be careful because he is full of tricks. That is the pressure.

In the middle of the game I've started a very promissing ko. Yet, as it often happens to me, I've seen the possibility to score big with the ko but I did not check the ko-threats before actually ingaging in the fight. I was happy to find a good ko threat and then lucky because opponents ko-threat was very small.

  • 2 September 2003

Recently, I posted a set of quesions to 5k player to help him understand where his weaknesses were. I think that they were quite interesting questions for everybody. I don't know though if I have to copy them to SL.

I believe that there are such things as quntitative and qualitative progress. We do improve in the reading ability, yose, tesuji, shape continuously. But understanding of the strategic principles comes in huge quantum leaps.

kritz- what are the questions?

HolIgor: The quesions were about the playing style, whether the player kills or dies more often, what are the most intense moments in the game when the pressure is highest, things like that.

  • 25 August 2003

I did not play go during vacations. I played chess with my brother and my cousin. To my astonisment I won most of the games. Chess is a strange dynamic game. Usually I don't get good attacks from the openning. Just like with go, the win or loss is decided in the midgame. And not tactically. Just by seeing the main points of the position. It is strange when your opponent estimates it wrong and chooses self-damaging continuation.

This happens in go as well. If both players make moves with positive value the score is close. The score becomes large in the case when one of the players starts to damage his own army.

I played two games on KGS. Both with 2d players. One lost by 4.5 points (I wish I did not play the edge of the board ko, but just pooled back) and another won by 28.5 points. I did not kill anything in that game. I just built 28.5 points more territory. The opponent got all four corners. I know the result. I tested it several times. It is about 30 points loss.

  • 7 July 2003

SL needs more people to implement my ideas. Besides the snapback workshop we need geta workshop and sqeeze workshop and connect-and-die workshop, honte library etc. We do not need high level people for that. 1k players like me would do OK. The dan players could oversee this work in order to avoid mistakes and teach more difficult things like fuseki, side formations, frameworks, game flow etc.

Some work on the miai value lists for the frequent positions should continue as well.

  • 2 July 2003

I have a vague feeling that all yose moves have to be considered as gote. The principle of cooling works only in the case when a player has to pay tax. If the opponent replies there is no tax.

In this case the sente follow up has to be added to the value of the move right when it is performed.

But I have to admit that the double sente situations don't go this way. In these situations the first player wins without a tax. The only way to counter this is to play another double sente (mutual damage).

Another consideration that has to be taken into account is the conservation of the ko-threads. There are obviously zero value ko-threat, but there are ko-threats with positive value the conditions under which they have to be kept are not clear.

Another obscure thought. The game theory builds a matrix of strategies and the win is simple: just choose the strategy that gives the best score against the toughest opposition. There are also games with nature in which it is wrong to choose this safest strategy, because the opponent would not choose the toughest line and the safe approach loses to the line that involves some risk.

The perfect opponent and the nature are two abstraction, of course. There could be an opponent that has some finite ability to find the correct strategy.

  • 27 June 2003

In the last Honinbo game (5th in the title match) Cho U played greedy go. Just got enough territory and survived with his weak groups. The ko for the life of a big white dragon did not give black enough compensation. As the result white won by comfortable 5.5 points.

This is an issue in my games. It seems too risky to decide that my group is alive already. Sometimes I decide wrong and have to pay for it. The risk is very high.

  • 26 June 2003

As before I can't win. Several last wins went along the same path. First, my position becomes desparate. I have to play semeai and see how the opponent could win it. The opponent makes a mistake and it is me who kills. As the result a win with a comfortable score. I play too slow. Opponents play faster, scatter the stones on the board freely and I have difficult time then to find openings. I can make some kind of breakthrough against the players of my level. But the strong player would not make mistakes anymore.


  • 23 June 2003

The great experiment with the kogeima shimari invasion ended as I aught to end. Let's hope that several defeats will make me wiser.

So, I started with an empty board, immediate kakari and invasion, for the purity of experiment. There were no stones on the sides at the moment, so the opponent had to choose the variation I wanted to explore. The problem was that if I followed joseki here I would get a horrible position.

[Diagram]
joseki

On the empty board this has to be a disaster for white. White got only 7 points of territory in exchange for the iron wall. White had been unreasonable.


[Diagram]
19x19 diagram

The folowing result was actually comparatively good for white (white lost by 1.5 points in the game). Though the group in the corner is dead, black's second line crawling gives white good compendation.

But in the second game, the opponent did not go for the corner kill, just prevented being pressed to the second line, and white had to return back to protect the corner. That was a burden and game the result comparable to the diagram above. 20 point loss for white.

So, the conclusion is that returning to protect the corner is a burden. The cut is not good without some help, but if that help is available, the opponent would not chose to block the slide. The book was right, this is bad.



  • 19 June 2003

It is remarkable that a large share of the go games are close. And that is true about the games at any levels. The games between 9p are close and the games between 1k are often half pointers. That's because the moves and decisions we make are reasonable. If each of the players makes moves in the range close to the value of the optiomal move in the position, say, say in the range of five points then it is a problem of random walks and we know that with the large number of steps the random walk would not go far from zero. Yet, if the probability of one player making a suboptimal move if higher the result shifts strongly in the favour of the opponent.

The things are changed drastically when one of the opponents makes an incorrect judgement and produces a move of negative value.


Counting is a problem. In a recent game when my opponent pondered the next largest move I counted the game and obtained the sad result. I was losing by about 4 points. This I consider close, so we finished it and I was surprised with 3.5 win. To test my ability I recounted in mind and got 1.5 win this time. Shame.


Lost a game by 2.5 points. And this is one of the reasons.

[Diagram]
An overplay

White 1 is another double digit kyu misread which IGS 1k* players commit all over the place. Crawling to 'a' was a good 1 point miai value move. I jumped to W1 making a move with negative value. Minus 1 point (miai) sente. It would work if white had a stone at b. But alas...

Problem for double digit kyu players. How can black punish white?

Holigor's Log problem 1 answer



  • 18 June 2003.

There are several things that are difficult to understand for the student of go. Some of them go against intuition. For example, it is better to have a fight in your own sphere of influence. A weak player tries to defend what he thinks is his territory and as the result the territory is erased and the more the game progresses the more it shrinks. Yet, the correct approach in most case is just to keep your groups alive and leave the matter of collecting the territory for the yose stage. Instead, one has to think more in the terms of getting some advantage from attacking invaders, to build a support for your own invasion, for example.

Another thing that hinders the progress of many players is the belief that the centre is small, that there is no territory in the center. Yes, true, there is no territory there, but one has to fight for the center anyway. Otherwise the opponent will be able to form high and wide rectangles of territory and that is not small. Beginners are taught that the centre is not important and the understanding to what extent this claim is true takes a lot of time and lost games.


  • 13 Jun 2003. The SL's mistake page is awesome. What a bounty of different mistakes one can make in the game. It is important though to get rid of the mistakes that are several levels below your strength. I believe that if you are able to solve all 5 kyu problems in your game you are at least a shodan.

[Diagram]
Something from yesterday's game

Fighting the last half-point ko I made a ko-threat. I am sure that any player of IGS 1k* level can solve this in 95% of cases, but my opponent decided that I was bluffing. Perhaps, he felt that he was losing by a small margin. He connected the ko and resigned several moves later.

This can be a problem of double digit kyu players. What White is going to do if Black plays tenuki?



Games against the opponents of the same level don't give the proper feedback. Your moves are not necessarily good even if you did well with them.

HolIgor's Log 2003 June 13 Discussion.



This is a copy of the living page "Holigor's log" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.