hotcoffee

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Hi. I'm known as "hotcoffee" on KGS, currently 15kyu.

I've known the rules of Go for nearly 2 years, but I lapsed play for almost a year back in March '04 (revision for university final exams) and have only just started playing seriously again since christmas.

I'm looking forward to the day I'm a single digit kyu, though my long term goal is to be shodan.

I lurk on SL during office hours 9-5 GMT, occasionally making a fool of myself in the Kyu-Problems pages.

I have a Mathematics degree from Bristol University, and program C/C++ in my spare time, so Game Theory and other abstract wastes of time interest me...


14/06/05

Over the last week I've been introduced to, impressed by, and then addicted to the Dragon Go Server.

The crunch happened when Sensei's Library and goproblems.com were temporarily banned by my work's "online games" filter. This made a dull job intolerable (I can't survive on just one book of tesuji problems), and I scouted around the internet for other ways to relieve my Go and Wiki addictions.

What I found was the absolutely delectable DGS, and I remain thoroughly impressed. You sign up (for free), and can immediately start up a few games from the "Waiting Room".

Now the website and other systems are adequate - nothing there is particularly remarkable. The point where it gets interesting is that you join a community of Go-Players who, by virtue of the structure of the server, don't rush each other into making hastey moves. You are free to take as much time as you like looking at the game position and contemplating your strategy.

What I mean by "as much time as you like" is that the games there have several Japanese Byo-Yomi periods of a day or two each! If you can't decide on a move, don't play it. Think about it. Consider it while you're on the bus on the way home from work. The freedom is liberating.

Perhaps this isn't amazing to the average Go-Player, but my Go upbringing has been almost entirely on KGS, where I rarely have time to play anything other than Blitz games. When you only have 15 seconds per move your intuition is your main weapon.

DGS is flexing my other Go muscles, and I'm loving it.


31/05/05

A long weekend, and an otherwise occupied girlfriend led to plenty of time to play Go online. I played over 20 games on Sunday. The first was a slaughter of an infuriating and rude opponent, who marked all my (live) stones as dead in the scoring phase then repeatedly clicked 'undo' to start my clock going again (with just 10 seconds a move).

He put me in a very bad mood.

Poker players call the way you play when you are frustrated and angry with the game "on tilt". When you are 'on tilt' you play on cards you shouldn't, bluff when you shouldn't, and this gets worse as cool-headed players refute your overplays.

I discovered on Sunday that it is possible to go 'on tilt' in Go too, and that it is a very unsettling experiance. I lost 6 consecutive games.

This happened at the end of the week throughout which I'd been feeling a particular "energy" to my game, and understanding, and a dissatisfaction with my KGS ranking, feeling sure I could do better, and that too many of my losses were from crass errors like falling into oiotoshi, rather than being satisfying and educational defeats. The feeling has been one of impending inspiration.

I took a break from Go, played a little poker for fake money, and unwound over a yoghurt for lunch.

I returned to Go in the afternoon and won more than 12 games.

The next day my KGS rank went up to 14kyu. Woot!

My first 14kyu games were immediately more inspiring. I lost 2 out of 3, but the losses felt good! One game was a loss of just a few points after some vicious fighting, the other was an amazing and fundamental loss of epic proportions, with the biggest fight I have ever played! There were no less than 5 weak groups for both sides at one point, and after the dust settled, i'd sacrificed/lost too much for an attack that failed, dozens of moves in. It was great! My opponent agreed.

I look forward to losing many more fun games.


20/05/05

Does anyone fancy an ongoing game? Or would anyone play in a rengo? I'm a bit new here in SL, so i'm still afraid of making major changes/new pages...

IanDavis Let's start a rengo
hotcoffee: Sounds like a plan. A glance at your page shows you're a few (!) stones stronger than me, but so long as other players join in that won't be a problem. How about this: FriendlyRengo2005.

Check out 2005RevengeOfTheRengo

hotcoffee: D'oh! Well... due to the difficulty of deleting pages, I'll leave it up for a while to see what happens - if no-one bites i'll put it up for deletion... in the meantime i'll join the dark side.

I'll write a little about my personal experiance of Go on this page in the coming weeks i think.


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