A Go Player

One man's fascination with the world's best game

Monday, March 28, 2005

Ing Goe Lesson Torrents

Free for the taking... join the swarm.

Oh, and I'm taking lessons. With sendol, and sharing them with Karen.

And I'm studying Tesuji. It seems to be helping. I'm no longer dying quite so frequently.

But still frequently enough to be embarrassed :)

Thursday, March 10, 2005

KGS statistics

NannyOgg turned me on to a cool page where you can view your statistics on KGS. Turns out I'm about 55% wins since January 1 no matter whether I include free games or not. Pretty cool.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

I made 16K!

It may only be a passing fancy, but I finally made 16kyu ranking on KGS.

As I wrote previously, I am beginning to realize that I have to learn some sequences. Not necessarily "joseki", but what is likely to happen if I play in "this" spot as opposed to "that" spot.

It's called reading, I believe, but the problem with just trying to read out a sequence is that I can only read at my level. Does that make sense? I can read several moves ahead, but only at a 16kyu level. Thus I am entirely unaware of what move a 10kyu or 5ky player would be likely to make. Not that I'm playing them very frequently. :)

The other thing is that I am beginning to sense what it means to actually sketch out territory. This last game, the one that put me over the top, was extremely close - I won by 3.5 moku. And due to my ineptness at sketching out territory, what I had to do was invade, then sacrifice a few stones to cover my retreat.

Of course, that's a valid method of play, one of any number of styles I have seen. I'm not sure what my style is yet, but I'm beginning to gain one.

I also think I need to take lessons. It would be very beneficial to my game to have an expert helping me understand the why and what-for of the moves.

And one last nice thing about this game? Well, I have been playing in a very center-moyo-oriented style lately, so I was very proud of myself for taking three corners. :)

Thursday, March 03, 2005

They published something I wrote in the AMERICAN GO E-JOURNAL MEMBER'S EDITION of March 3, 2005. It was only a teeny little review of a program for reviewing .sgf files on your cell phone, but how very exciting nonetheless. I feel like a part of the go community :)