golearner

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NOTE: I've reorganized this chronologically, so latest post is at the bottom. (Didn't seem necessary before, but once I started replying to earlier posts, it just seemed to make more sense.)

Thursday, June 28, 2007 - 5:22 AM (tried to sleep earlier, but played go after insomnia hit) FINALLY HIT 9 kyu on IGS - Now I'll sign everything as golearner(SDK)!

What do I attribute this accomplishment to? Lack of sleep. No, I mean, studying Sakata's Modern Joseki and Fuseki and comparing it to Kogo's (doesn't make that much sense to me since I've only been playing 5-4 openings, but I'm not aware of any books on those in any sufficient detail)...

Oh, and the help I've received here of course.

I've also started playing on DGS - I like not worrying about time there - but I noticed that I lost a few games on time at IGS after I started playing at DGS.

Friday, February 22, 2008 - 8:09 PM

Been a while since I wrote anything here - I've been hovering around 9 kyu online (both IGS & DGS) for quite a while - made it to 7 kyu AGA recently. According to the table comparing rating systems here all those are equivalent, so it seems pretty accurate.

I'm still playing a lot of 5-4s, although not quite as religiously. (For a while, I was opening every corner I could with a 5-4 - now I'm using them a bit more judiciously.) I think I've grown quite a bit in my understandings of the 5-4 joseki, at least for my level. I'm going to try some other ideas now - recently came across the pillbox here, and that looks pretty interesting. I tried it in a game earlier, and, let me check my records... yes, I won the game, though I'm not sure I can attribute it to the pillbox itself - it seems to have been some reading mistakes on the part of my opponent. Perhaps the pillbox facing the 5-4 at the beginning convinced my opponent that I was deluded, and that encouraged the reading mistakes! I'll have to test this theory...

 -Friday, March 14, 2008 - 4:53 PM

Been having a hard time finding good go books lately - every time I find an interesting title, it seems to be difficult to get a copy at a reasonable price. For example, take the book, Essential Joseki by Rui Naiwei. Amazon listings start at $38.23 - seems out of my price range for this book. A book site that I held in high regard until now (fetchbook.info) failed to find the book at all. (Which seems strange, as I had thought it included Amazon listings in it's search...) In a bizarre twist, Walmart popped up in a google search for the title, but the page that showed up said the website didn't sell the book and that stores might - well, I guess I have to call some Walmarts, but this seems like a really arcane way to get books... When will the ebook revolution come???

(P.S. I'd prefer if the local libraries started stocking go books, as I normally read one and then it just sits on the shelf...)

shop at real "go bookstores" instead of amazon. Yutopian has it for $15

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 - 7:46 P.M.

Did order the book from Yutopian, thanks anonymous... Strange thing was I thought I'd looked for it there but not found it prior to the post, but went back and it was there.

Anyway, my current question is how does the variation tree work at Gobase? I tried searching for a position, got the diagrams and sgf to compare, and this info is at the beginning of the sgf:

  160: Tenuki
  10: Mismatch
  15: Max depth
  185: Games
  83: Branches

If I understand this correctly, 160 out of 185 games had tenuki outside the search box for the next move. (Interesting, since I was searching for joseki, and Kogo's doesn't even consider tenuki...) Not sure what the 10: mismatch means. Also 15: Max depth... Games and branches seems clear. Another thing I'm curious about though, is whether the tenuki is for Black or White - and is this why the search box asks for sente? I did notice in previous searches that sente didn't seem to matter for results, i.e. I'd get the same list for either Black or White, but maybe it calculates tenuki based on which is checked? (I'm checking that right now...)

No, the stats are the same... not sure the function of the sente checkbox either...

Anyway, from scanning the variations, there are a lot of interesting variations in which White waits for Black to make a third move in the corner - my plan is to look at the game history of a couple of those.. I wonder if there's any shortcut key in Kombilo to jump from one branch end to the next looking for the position I want...

Well, in playing through the games, I'm not finding tenuki nearly as often as I would have expected from the variation tree results ... I now believe that the tenuki, mismatch, and max depth are how sequences END... so in other words, those three added together should be total games (unless there are some games that aren't being counted for some reason). I'm still not quite sure what the difference is between tenuki and mismatch, but the max depth seems to be when the sequence hits the 15/30 moves that the search started with...

After googling the key words: tenuki, mismatch, max depth -- I did not find what I was looking for (an explanation of the terms as used in Gobase), but I did find this rather interesting piece of information... is this the same tenuki I've been hearing so much about?

"Hengeyokai are shapeshifting animals found in Japanese myth. There are three kinds Neko or Cats which act as the nobles of their kind, Kitsune or Foxes which are the Samuri(lesser nobles) and the Tenuki or Racoon-Dog(badger) who are the commoners. They are master shapeshifters and Illusionists."

(seems to be from a roleplaying discussion?) -- [ext] https://mailman.rice.edu/pipermail/fengshui/1999-October.txt

Herman Hiddema: That should be [ext] tanuki. AFAIK, tenuki is from 'te' (hand, which in the context a go refers to a play) and 'nuki' (from the verb nuku, to move) and as such means "moving your play (elsewhere)".

golearner: I'm sure you're correct on the literal level - but I still feel my definition has more of the juice of life in it - I will never be able to play tenuki the same way again.

Still no one with advice on the GoBase results?


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