Bram Vandenbon

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Bram Vandenbon

KGS handles: Spook, LordVader? Old KGS handles: BramGo, WuQingYuan, ShinJoseki, Nimita, ... DGS handles: not playing there anymore

Always ready for a game.

Software

In the past I have been working on several sotware projects. To name some.

  • Go-Software for sony Ericsson Monile phones T300
  • A life and dead application for Nokia 6300
  • A KGS-IRC bridge that allows to vote moves for a gobot (finished, but not really used)
  • A fuseki patternsearch and browsing website
  • A life and death program
  • Webcam based kifu creation. (Creates an sgf file while playing real life.)

And at the moment, not my most prestigeous, but certainly my most serious one: an online Joseki Dictionary! [ext] http://www.brugo.be. It started as a website for the Bruges Go Club. But I got carried away a bit and decided to dedicate it to joseki after all.

My Graphs

[ext] LordVader, is just one of my accounts.
my current Go rating at for KGS (LordVader account)

[ext] Spook, is just one of my accounts.
my current Go rating at for KGS (Spook account)

[ext] GuitarHero, one of my new accounts.
my current Go rating at for KGS (GuitarHero account)


How I met Go

I started mind games when I was very young. I live in Belgium so one of the first games I learned to play was Chess ofcourse. When I was about 7 years old I learned how to play Go. I have 2 brothers. My older brother played Go with me now and then (about 3 times in a year) with a very old gamebox. It was a Ravensburger gameset with a foiled carton board and white and blue plastic slices. I also had that very famous book of Iwamoto for beginners (translated to dutch). Back then I could hardly read boring stuff like that. So I never took a look at it. In fact when I asked what the book was for, they told me it contained nice pictures of animals you could reproduce using the stones. So we hardly even knew the rules of the game, we didn't know concepts such as "eyes, territory counting" but nevertheless we played on 19x19. So the game was rather boring for me at that time. I didn't play the game for ages after that. I did play a lot of chess and I was quit good at it too. I played a lot of chess at school, and against several chess programs.

When I was 18 years old, I restarted playing the game. My brother had restarted playing the game about a year before me. And I was determined to catch up with him.

I learned to know a lot of other go players on KGS. There's a Belgian room there "BelgianFridayNightClub?".

We decided to start a new go club at bruges... The first person I played over there was a 21kyu (registered in the BGF). He played a very strange game with me. I was used to play corners and sides first. But he had no interest in those at all. But he did win by 20 points by closing of the center. At that time I played about 7 games a week. The other club members about 2 games/month

So I catched up really fast. It took me about half a year to equal my brother's strength (12k).

I have also learned a lot using TurboGo and Many Faces of Go. Many faces helped me to get to 11kyu really fast. Also GoBase was very helpfull. I was a joseki freak: "if it's good enough for the pro players, then it must be good enough for me". I tried to memorize some opening moves of which I hardly understood the meaning, but in the longer run it did pay off! The japanese way: "copy the master, the rest will come by itself". And it really did.

January 2004 I became 5k. School pressure became harder and I did not really feel confident in my rank. For the first time I bought a couple of books. I started with Get Strong At Invading by Richard Bozulich, Positional Judgement by ChoChikun, The Middle game Of Go by SakataEio and The small fuseki dictionary of the Nihon Ki'in. For the first time I learned the theory of counting points, invading and reducing. At first I did not feel much stronger. But these turned me into a 5k player with 2k moments.

I decided to give myself a chance in the first Iwamoto tournament (3th category 2k-7k players). And I was amazed as I won almost every game I played and won the tournament with 1 loss (out of 8 games). After that I received a very nice cup and as a price I got to play a simultaneous game with Liyue 9d from China.

The tournament took 8 weeks in total. And every game I tried to push myself to my limits of perfection. But after the tournament my results went down again, I didnt really improve that much anymore. Maybe I was still too much thinking about the tournament I played (too much focuessed on what was behind). During this period, I was playing less frequent and I was not sure how strong I was. I won games from 2k players and lost from 5k players. I was scared to lose the strength I had worked so hard for. So, I tried a lot of different things. I was reading articles, replaying pro games, doing a lot of tsumego (because I lost 1 game in my tournament beceause I made a reading mistake).

Then finally I received answer from Velirun. He is a 2d player on KGS. He was looking for somebody to be his student (see the MentoringScheme?). I had several students myself. It is a nice system where people try to help out weaker players. Allthough it is not easy to help a weaker player it is certainly worth a try. It's a win-win situation. Velirun told me to do a lot of stuff I was actually already doing at that time. He told me to discuss every game I played, to do a lot of life and dead and to study pro games by hard. Ofcourse it was nice to hear a 2nd opinion and I was reassured I was on the right path.

Shortly after I bought some new books. GetStrongAtLifeAndDeath (recommended by Velirun), The Endgame, Get Strong At Joseki Volume 2 and Yoshio Ishida's Joseki Dicationary - Volume 2. I was looking forward to reach 1d by March. But I was terribly wrong. I had more pressure from school than ever before.

October and november passed without having the chance to play regulary. I wasn't improving, but fighting to stay in shape :)... And I assumed it would take till february, to get back in shape. And so it happened

In February I had a training period in a firm to complete my bacheler studies. During that period I suddenly found some time to play go again. I was suprised how much I had run behind, but pretty fast everything came back to the old. I was as strong as before but more experienced.

I have the strange feeling that every time I quit go for a certain period it is actually a step forward. Sometimes you need to take a step back to make 2 steps forward. It seems as if go-knowledge is structured in layers, everytime you restart playing you are putting a new layer on top of the previous knowledge. All what is behind becomes an instinct by doing so. And instinct is more reliable and faster. And off course you can focus on new concepts by doing so, my play becomes more reliable, knowledge becomes wider and all-round, experience grows and I feel more confident.

In June I graduated as a bachelor and I had to make an important decision. Searching work, continue studying? ... I felt that I could do better and continued my studies to become an industrial engineer (master) in the electronics and computer science. Good for my IT-carreer, but terrible for my go-carreer.

Suddenly my time to play dissapeared again, and so did my strength. At the end of November on a Wednesday evening I was surfing the internet and I read the following on the website of the Belgian Go Federation "Preliminaries of the Belgian Go Championship". I made the very impulsive decision to do some life and dead excercices and to participate the day after :).

I was totally out of shape but three days later I was amazed by the results of my efforts in that little time. The tournament took 2 days. And I was 1 victory away from being qualified.

After that I started making time for go again, allthough I didn't have any actually. But I forced myself to play at least a couple of games every week. But I didn't play on kgs anymore, because it took me too much time to find an opponent there. Instead I played on Orobaduk. And very soon I become 3k, ... 2k, 1k, ... The rating system of orobaduk is so much more transparent. On kgs it can take over 15 straight victories to gain a rank. On orobaduk only about 6 victories are needed. The consequence is that solid 5k players on kgs could as well be 2dan in real life.

In mean time I tried to retrain myself on kgs too and my ranks were improving again. I had been doing a lot of life and death practice during that year and I grew into a real life and death monster. I was starting to feel more and more confident in my play and I saw myself playing very beautiful games.

In September I discovered that my girlfriend to who I have always been very fateful had cheated on me and we broke up. Although I loved her, my girlfriend had always been the bottleneck of the time I could spend on Go. So, I knew right away what to do and I reached 1d on KGS just about a month later.

But strangely enough that didn't give me satisfaction. It more felt like "Is this now really it? Is this what I've been trying to reach so hard???". I had put up too high expectations and was kind of dissapointed. Now when I look back on it, I have no idea what had gotten into me to think that I would find "innerpeace" when crossing the dan line.

I was so dissapointed that I just quit playing go. For the Belgian readers: yes, that's why I wasn't at the Belgian Championship Preliminaries in November 2006. I simply didn't play anymore. It didn't interest me anymore

A couple of months later during my exams I restarted playing Go in my breaks. The game felt fresh again, but still familiar as if it had been waiting on my return. As always the damage caused by the long break was big.

At that time I was living in Kortrijk, and I got informed about a game-club just 3 streets away from my room. So, I went over there to have a look and played regular with Doneagle in his club. There was a lot more people over there than in the go club of Bruges (which is dying and reviving all the time, and which I visit a couple of times a year). But only 2 players where actually playing go: Doneagle and I.

What really annoyed me was the new release of KGS. My computer started crashing during the first 5 minutes of every game. As a result of that I had to play on other servers. I started to slack, and played only weaker players on small go servers. But I did make some new friends who supported me and pushed me to play more and more. Eventually KGS got repaired and I restarted playing on KGS where the rating system was heavily changed so that I was suddenly 2d (?!). I decided to create a new account to get a more realistic view on the situation. I played and played and finally I became a real solid reliable dan player.

What happens then? In july 2007 I graduated (Industrial ingeneer in the field of MIT) and I picked up my go again. I beat several dan players, at peaks I even reached a solid 3d rating. Still I was more focussed on my carreer as a Software Engineer. I programmed more than I played go. Then in September 2007 I met a really cute Belgian go playing girl, who motivated me to pick up go and to take it serious again. I try to coach her (technically and emotionally and to be honest, she's pretty strong already).

March 2008 I went on a trip to Japan where I visitted the Nihon Ki'in (and of course many other cultural places, temples, ...). I bought myself some very nice (but expensive) stones in the Nihon Ki'in. And I bought 4 japanese excercice books in the local go shop (of which 3 are of 3dan level, and 1 is of 6dan level).

From my point I still had the feeling I was not at the level I was. My rank went up and down. I won a lot of games, but always seemed like a small miracle. I guess I'm good at making comebacks and starting big fights. Well, I just didn't have time to take it as serious as before. I guess I'm not a go player but a software engineer and I always will be. ... With that in mind I decided to put more effort in designing go related software than playing itself. My current project: [ext] http://www.brugo.be - An online joseki dictionary.

I think it was november, we started a new club in Roeselare (West-Flanders, Belgium). Kristof, Dries, Jo, Bjorn, Ivan and myself played go every friday evening. Actually I never was part of a club which played every week, and with players of reasonable strength. Once I played a game of 4 hours. We started at 9pm and finished it at 1am. We even had visitors from Gent once. And our team had a 6-0 victory. So I am really proud of the level of our club!

Nevertheless it has to be said that Gent has always been important for the several Go clubs West-Flanders had. While our clubs closed and opened the club of Gent has always been far more reliable.

On a wednesday evening I decided to visit the club of Gent. At that time I was playing twice a week in real life, (luxery). I had no idea what had happened that very morning. 2 days later I heard that one of our key members and friend Ivan had passed away in a traffic accident. I guess we should take a lesson from this about how short life can be and to enjoy every minute of it. We'll miss you Ivan, things will never be the same at Roeselare.

The more I play and study go, the more I understand that nobody really has a fixed strength. Sometimes I easily beat 2 dan players, the day after I make stupid mistakes against 1k players. Officially when asked I say I'm "1k or maybe 1d", but I think if I want to be fair to myself I must admit I am certainly stronger than 1 kyu. I am at least 1 dan. But at dan level it are the little things which make the difference, being in shape / silence / concentration / health / energy /... So, I can not assure I am ALWAYS stronger than 1 dan, only 80% of the time.

So I participated in the preliminaries of the Belgian go championship again. My first games went really well. I won a crucial game against Kristof (another member of our club). In the opening there was a slight joseki mistake from my opponent which made the game easier than expected. I lost 3 games all together: (Kwinten 1d, Michael 1k and François 3d). Because of that I ended only at 8th place. I had to be in top 3 to be able to participate. But it was a good performance for my rating in the belgian go federation. From a statistical point of view. I was slightly dissatisfied nevertheless, because 2 of the games I lost were only lost by 6 points difference.

Usually the top 5 players of the preliminaries join the top 5 of last year, to play the finals. However there were 3 players who could not participate. Because of that I suddenly was at 10th place and could participate as last member. A delightful surprise. "I'm playing with the big boys now" :) hehe. So I went to Brussels to play in the finals anyway, and the results were far better than expected. I expected to lose every game, but nevertheless I was looking forward to learning a lot. But to my big surprise I won my first game anyway (from Christopher 1d), the 2nd game I played François (3d) again, whom I lost to in the preliminaries and lost to again by resign. The game started a bit too agressive. The next morning I lost from Alain (3d) by only 4.5 points. And again lost from Kwinten (1d) by a couple of points. So even though I'm satisfied of those results there was a bit of a turning point, I was on a losing streak.

The second weekend I unexpectedly won 3 games in a row (Wang 2d, Thomas 3d, Won 1d). The game against Wang was a big fight which was in my advantage from the start. I think maybe Wang thought that any fight would be in his advantage against a (officially) "2k player". Oh well it's hard to predict and I did feel a bit like a sandbagger running around with a 2k rating winning from a 2d. I started the next game with the right attitude: "make influence, tempt them to take small risks, play with power, not territory". The next game was a succes as well. My best result in official tournaments so far, beating a 3d player. The victory was big, but there were lots of phases in the game where it could have turned around at any point as big groups were on the stake all the time. Maybe my life and death knowledge saved my day. The day after I lost from Pieter (2d) and finally I had to play Jan (4d) but lost. Jan became champion because of this. If Jan had lost the game François would have been Belgian champion, so nevertheless there was some pressure. In fact things looked in my advantage for a while. I pushed 2 groups of Jan in a position where I honestly thought they would die, but Jan's reading ability outclassed me, he found keypoints I didn't know they were there.

I moved to an appartment with my girlfriend. During the first days internet connection was really bad so I couldn't play. So I bought a 30 meters UTP cable. Because of that I was finally playing with perfect connection and was suddenly winning about 70% of my games. I managed to play about 20 games/week. All my 1d accounts climbed to 2d. And I kept excel files to keep track of the number of games I played against equal or stronger player (results are less important than the actual number of games).

I made myself a member of the club of Gent as well, and tried to visit both clubs. Although I probably learn more from playing an evening at home ... So, I was invited at the birthday-party of the tournament of Gent. And also played some interclub games for Gent. Although the level in Roeselare is higher than the level of Gent, the number of players in Gent is higher and it's more about go, less about chatting.

I participated in the Preliminaries of the Belgian championship again, hoping to break through the finals in an honest way this time. I am pretty sure that I should have been qualified but again, I placed only 6th. The first day went perfect and I won all my games as expected. The 2nd day I had to start out against Lucas (4d) and expected to be slaughtered. Nevertheless, we played a very exciting game and I found myself winning by 3.5 point. An unexpected result. But I must have been really exhausted, I lost my next 2 games. As I result I was only placed 6th. Unlike last year, nobody cancelled their appointment, so I did not manage to qualify. I did follow the finals on the internet which were very exciting.

June 2011, It looks like there's a new wave of strong players is coming (Stijn from Bruges has almost reached kgs dan level and the same can be said from Wout (Gent)) Stijn beat me a couple of times (I think 3 times now). Which is no reason to be depressed since we played perhaps 100th games. But it does show that his level is increasing. At the same time Wout has been very near at winning and has played some really strong games also against other players at the club. Still if I'm honest I think I have to addmit that my own level has decreased. This is perhaps because I've been very busy with writing an iPad application for the brugo website. Now finally the application is available in the apple store and I hope to pick up go again. Although keeping a serious level, while having a hard job, and performing 24h support at the customers and maintaining a website, and taking care of my girlfriend is VERY hard to combine. No wonder the last 4 years have passed so fast.

The tournament of Antwerp and Gent were both really exciting this year. I had a nice result in both tournaments and I am slowly approaching 1 dan BGF level again. At the same time I realize that it's not good with my go level. I'm not improving ... I hope to change this soon nevertheless.

November 2011, myself and Stijn were participating in the prelim. of the Belgian championship. The results were amazingly good. The first day I had to play against Kris Boyen, who seems to be slightly out of shape lately. There's been a time that he was about 2 or 3 kyu, but looks like he has lost the spirit a bit. The next game was against Daniel French (4k) which was harder but still a clear victory. The third game was against Kevin Prist who defeated me last year very closely. But this time I managed to win it. But I lost the last game of day 1 against some 2 dan player who just restarted playing. A heavy day. Luckily we could stay with the sister of my girlfriend. This saved us a lot of traveling time. So the day after we continued at full strength. First against Yue Wang, who I had won against last time. But this time he played a much harder game. There were a lot of exchanges back and forth. In the end I had killed 3 big groups of him, he one huge one of mine. But then I made a silly mistake which made one group of him back alive. In the end I was 4.5 points short. So I was a little irritated with the result. With only 3 wins and 2 games to go, I now had to win all games that would come. First I had to play against Kevin Annachachibi who has improved a lot since last time I played him. He has also reached 1 kyu level now. But I must say even though I had tons of bad luck, dead groups of him managing to get back alive, I still won by a huge margin in the end. But he's still very young and already 1 kyu, so I think he has a lot more potential. My last game was against Alain Wettach, which is a former Belgian champion and with 3 dan level clearly one of the best players in the running. But somehow he lost already 2 games, so also for him it was very important to win that last game. But somehow I managed to win this almost impossible battle. Perhaps Alain was a bit tired, I don't know. Nevertheless, thanks to this result I came in 3rd. On top of that I think a promotion to 1 dan will probably happen as well.


Greetings


This is a copy of the living page "Bram Vandenbon" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2012 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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