My New Goban

Yesterday  my new Goban arrived. I love it!

I might have spent an unreasonable amount of money on a game and I might fulfill the cliché of the weak player with a cool board , but I still love it :)

Aesthetics is one of the reason I was driven to Go in the first place and I will spend a couple of hundred hours in front of this board - so I consider it a very good investment.

Failing to Live

Today I started to do problems that are about living rather than killing. The chapter I'm at is about miai for two eyes. Somehow I find living way harder than to kill and I got nearly all problems wrong. I sat about 15 minutes about the one I want to show you today. When I gave up and went to the solution (I hate doing that!), I got very irritated - the solution was a point I thought about maybe 10 times - and always the black group, which was the one supposed to live, died after white 2.

The explanation in the book wasn't very helpful either. It just showed black 1 and pointed out that A and B were miai for two eyes. Again, I checked on the board. Again, black died on me.  So I went to preparing the diagrams about the evil evil book that presents you with a wrong tsumego, wasting your time in doing so. 

And then ... I got it. 

Have fun trying to solve it yourself before expanding the post ;)

Black to live!

Diagram 1

This rocks! Bat's video lectures

The last days were very busy and I did not have a lot of time to solve problems, read books or play online. Especially because I was kind of tired in the evenings and just did not have the motivation to add another two hours of concentration to my already overly full schedule. But: While lazily browsing forums, blogs, google etc. I discovered this link:

Bat's Video lectures on YouTube

Worklife vs. Go

Worklife wins.

As I had barely enough time to do more than 3 or 4 tsumego since monday, there is nothing new to talk about.

So doublhane is in recess until sunday December 4th.

A Lesson in Patience

Another monday, another local Go meeting. My opponent tonight impressed me pretty much. I played him the first time ever . He is about 1 to 2 kyu and so we played at a 9 stone handicap. We were eating something before we started to play and he talked about how patience is the most important virtue in high handicap games. The ability to wait for the one mistake and then take your profit; to withstand the urge to make up for the points you are "behind" within the first 20 moves.

The impressive thing was that he wasn't just all talk. It was exactly what he did to me in the game. He had a very calm way of playing. At no point I had the impression that my enemy is rushing against my walls trying to overwhelm me by sheer force. He just played calmly, built up pressure over time and then crushed me slowly.  

So I  had the opportunity to meet yet another player who can beat me at 9 stones. In comparison to last week's go meeting I was satisfied with my game today, though. I played reasonable solid, kept my opponent stones separated and his groups weak. Then came the moment in which I chose to attack instead of defend - after all I believed there were plenty of opportunities to connect my threatened group -  and lost my huge (huge!) center group that kept two other huge white groups separated and weak. 

Sadly, I'm really bad at remembering high handicap games so I can not provide you with detail or analysis. But: I ordered two books to write down kifus two weeks ago. As they have to cross the Atlantic Ocean to get here (Germany), it might still take a while, but soon I will start to record my games. 

One more thing: Doing life and death problems for two weeks now starts to pay off. I solved a rather complicated (for my level) life and death situation and managed to survive an attack that was meant to kill my corner group. I tried to recreate it, but the surrounding was important too and I can not get it right. Again, soon I will stat keeping kifus and things won't be lost to me that easily anymore.

Game Review Part I: Laying the Groundwork for Defeat

It is time for the first review of one of my games. It was played on Dragon Go. I was 14 kyu, my opponent 11 kyu. The game was set on a 4 stones handicap and a komi of 1.5. It lasted 278 moves. I lost with 9.5 moku.

Here is the final board:

I'm not very satisfied with the way I played that game. I am not only clearly the weaker player - I also made some really unnecessary mistakes and dull moves of the kind I like to think I do not do anymore. In other words: The game offers a lot to learn for me ;)

Today I will cover the first 61 moves. You will witness me being invaded, cut apart and falling behind bit by bit. I consider it a success that I was able to just be behind 9.5 moku at the end.

I will also ask for a game review on 'Life in 19x19'. In case anyone wants to follow or comment, here is the link.

EDIT 28.11.2011: The discussion on 19x19 showed me that I've made a lot of mistakes in my review. I added some comments to point out my mistakes.

The full sgf is available here.

A Bend in the Corner - or: Death by Tenuki

Today I re-discovered a concept I have read about a couple of months ago: The 'bent four in the corner'-shape. I could never actually put it to use, so it was kind of dead knowledge to me.

I came across it while solving problems (again). It took me quite a while to get through the problem. I will try to not bore you by discussing every detour I took. But: One of the detours towards the solution led me to the bent four. And that is the one I want to talk about.

Here is the tsumego. I will also present the solution. So do not expand carelessly, if you want to solve it at your own.

Diagram 1

Black to start a ko.