Go as a tool for connecting with friends

Hey everyone it's been quite a while since I've posted on here.

I've been traveling to Nashville to help my friend launch his new Album called "The Vow" 

and the funny thing is there was a young man there who came to meet us there from Germany named Hartmundt, and I asked him if he played any board games and he said he played a game called Go.

I was so excited.

You never know where the skills you learn will take you in the world or who they will allow you to connect with.

as a result I've been more interested in Go again lately so you may see me on KGS for the next few months more frequently.

I hope to see you all soon.

- Daniel

by the way what do you think of this Fuseki?

I'm white lol.

I actually won by 4.5 points at the end of this game. yeahhhhhh sometimes I don't play orthodox lol.

An Interview with OwheeMud

Today I got to talked to the awesome OwheeMud, we talked about the difference between Chinese and Western thought, as well as how he uses anecdotes gathered from his scientific explorations of games with many many new plays to help new players. He had a challenging beginning when he started playing

Me : What was so awful about learning the game of go for you?

I often relate that playing go was very frustrating.
It seemed that I was playing against magicians who made moves I did not anticipate.
Ultimately, I determined that I was having trouble because I was making decisions based on bad data
instead of relying on faulty memory of prior experience, I sought out more useful "objective' information about the status of the game.


Specifically, recollection of prior experience is very subjective ... personal

but counting liberties to find and track shifts power,
and to force myself to take actual notice of weak points at the ends of groups of stones was "objective data"

much more useful than my analytical mind
so, when I introduce the game to a  new player, I have three topics

1. strategy based on the ideas of positions of advantage
2. The nature of the three terrains of all go boards, open, broken and confined ground
3. Technique for analytical review of our prior games to see what was not seen, understand what was not understood, and to change the prior frustrating experience into a useful experience

Ultimately, it seems to be about reading the board more successfully than our opponents.



Me: Can you tell me a little about the difference between Classical Chinese Scholarship and Western modes of investigation?

There has been a fundamental difference between Western and Eastern, or Chinese social class structures.

In China, the merchant was held in low esteem. The foundation of society has been the land owner peasants who produced goods.

All that was controlled by the Imperial Government. In the West, the rise of the middle class wealth gave those groups influence with political classes.

I can recall the correct spelling, but the bougeuse had the money which the kings, etc. needed to borrow.

Second, In China scholarship was pursued for one reason, prepare to take competitive examinations to be accepted for imperial Civil Service.

The examinations were essay questions testing a scholars' grasp of the Confucian Classics.

Being able to make use of those memorized passages was the path to success.

In the West, the Scientific Method was discovered by the Greeks and led to the development of property and ideas.

The Scientific Method is about close observation of fact, careful measurements of the topics, consideration of explanation for the observations, and then testing those theories or explanations by experimentation.

I play the game by the Scientific Method...

Eventually, I have accumulated a lot of useful experience
And now my subconscious has the means to play creatively
Basically, my studying the board and games objectively, I have now acquired an informed understanding of the basics of the game.

That's what I show to new players

The means to solving the puzzle which hides the game.

Me: Can you give an example of one of these findings?

The easiest example is "The Ladder."

White will eventually die here.

A new player can see a ladder in a game and understand the result when it happens.
One player runs out of room and liberties.

Another way to see that is to anticipate what will happen by measuring the power of opposing groups.

With or without a ladder breaker, the result is for-seeable without ever having seen a ladder before.

Me: How many of these analytical data points have you found in your research? Do you keep a list of them? or is it something that exists only in your mind?

No, it is entirely anecdotal, but I play many, many teaching games... experience seems to bear my ideas out.

Being you in go!

One part of go that I have always found fun is the infinite possibilities.

In my most recent game I chose this as my opening ( I'm black )

It may go against all conventional wisdom and theory and best practices,

but playing this way contributes to the fun of the game for me and keeps me from getting stuck in a particular way of thinking and being.

If you were totally unrestricted in your playing style, what would you choose?

Do you take time to play moves just because you want to see where they go or what else is possible with them?

I wonder what adventurous moves you could play today :)

Here's how the game ended by the way 

White won by 49.5

I wonder what I could choose today to have even more fun?

Lee Sedol Vs Alpha Go Poll

In march 2016, this year, a series of 5 games between Lee Sedol and the up and coming super computer AlphaGo will be played.

Many people believe that AlphaGo has cracked Go and that it will beat Lee.

If AlphaGo wins, the dreams of many programmers will be fulfilled in terms of what AI can accomplish, however the spirits of many go players will be crushed under the weight of AI dominating human capacity.

In either case, the game is ushering in much new excitement in the go world and bringing more people's curiosity to the game.

Furthermore, it is bringing in a new age to the Go world, a world where go players will possibly have an even higher challenge than beating Lee Sedol. 

Some worry that with the age of computer go, many will be able to fake their ranking by playing against a computer on one tab and playing against humans on another tab to use the computer's strength to artificially sky-rocket their rank.

My heart is bent on Lee Sedol, who, for the first time in years, is finally getting the chance to be seen as the underdog in an event.

What results do you expect will happen?

Ben Go Zen

As I stared intently at the blank page of my blog, the canvas of my craft, intent on coming up with an original, useful, profound new idea for a post, I realized with a sudden jolt that I am not the only Go blogger in the world.

I began to wonder how and why other bloggers started so I emailed a fellow blogger and asked him about it. Here's how the interrogation interview went.


Me: Hey Ben, Thanks for agreeing to write a guest post for my blog, how did you first get involved in Go?

Ben: My first exposure to go was during my childhood years when I went to a Chinese school every Sunday. Although we had a club there at the time, I was into Chinese Chess and had little interest in learning what go was since no one in my family knew how to play it. After a few years, I came across Hikaru no Go like many Go players. My interest in Go was piqued a bit more. Interestingly, around this time my younger brother tried to pick up the game and learn the rules. Unfortunately, the pamphlet we had did not explain the rules very well, and we gave up trying to figure it out. It wasn't till I graduated school that I finally took the time to figure out what Go wall about.

The Inspiration? Criminal Minds: Season 1: Episode 1: Extreme Aggressor. Having the game framed in a psychological and philosophical perspective gave me the final push I needed to dive head first and finally become involved in go.

Me: That's really neat, what made you decide you want to blog about it?


Ben: In my search for go resources, one of the blogs I came across was ChiyoDad. Reading his experience and journey entertained and motivated me. So, soon after I started playing, I decided I would try to record my own journey since I enjoyed writing and thought it would be great if I could be one of the few blogs who would start as a DDK and enter the world of dan players.



Me: Wow, that really resonated with me, many of your experiences echo my own. I also was drawn to go through Hikaru no Go. Thanks you so much for your time.


If you would like to read Ben's blog you can check it out here at bengozen.com
Or if you'd like to check out ChiyoDad's blog, also mentioned in the post find it here

The Power of Giving

In this article I want to give you THREE tips that will help you get teaching games from higher ranked players.

 

Has a much stronger player ever given you a teaching game? It might take them 5 minutes to teach you what it would have taken you weeks to learn alone.

1. Identify 20 players who you admire.

This step is important in defining what kind of player you want to become. What do you love about these people? Is it their rank? Is it their personality? Is it their style? Is it their spirit? 

2. Watch their games, and, when weaker players ask them for help, offer to help them.

This accomplishes 3 things. 

1. From watching their games, you learn 

2. When the people you admire see you explaining things to people who were asking them for help, they will be more willing to help you since you are taking work/stress off of them. 

3. You are contributing to the go community as a whole by helping weaker players learn.

3. Make helping you, benefit the people who teach you.

There are a couple of ways to do this.

1. Ask them to do something that will establish them as a helper and allow them to explain something they love. You could send them a message like, "Hey, every Tuesday me and 20 others have a guest lecturer come and teach a lesson, We were wondering if you'd explain why you always start Tengen, Last week 'Insert Big Name Go Player Here' taught 'Insert cool lesson here.' We record the lessons and you can take a look at them on 'List personal blog/website here.'

This provides the opportunity for the person you admire to talk about something they love in front of a captive audience, and also to further their prestige at the same time. Also a great way for them to become noticed by higher level players as a helper. 

No matter what level you are at, there is always someone weaker you can help, and no matter how strong you are, there is always someone stronger who can help you. 

When you give to people weaker than you, you establish the ability to give to people stronger than you by providing them with a chance to help many others in a big way. 

If you have any questions of how to apply this, leave me a comment!

The Conversation of Go

Do you know the feeling of competition that ensues between two go players? Each player is clawing to get that little bit of extra territory. You can almost feel upset when the enemy player places a stone down, as you realize the area he is taking for himself, angrily you attack back trying to take that territory, out of envy.

I recently noticed this behavior in myself. This feeling that every game was an argument between two players, the only way to win was secrecy and betrayal. I didn't care how the other person saw the match, I just wanted to beat him. but did it have to be this way?

As I hit the "auto match" button, I decided to think about my game as though it were a conversation. Instead of taking territory away from me, my opponent was asking a question. When he played 3,4 he was saying "Can I have the corner, or the wall?" then I could respond. "I would like some of this corner, you can have the wall." Then he might respond by tenuki, playing at the other end of the map. That would be like saying "Hm, This side of the map looks nice, you could build up your position over there, or we could work on dividing up this side."

And what this did for me, was it made the game much more friendly. I started to feel like the person I was playing against was a friend, instead of an enemy. I also found myself understanding his movements better, and when he made unreasonable moves I would ask myself "what is he asking for? doesn't this seem unreasonable?" then I could offer a compromise "You can't take away all my territory there, see you wont be able to escape, but maybe you could use this move as a good ko threat later." Or I could just say "No, you can't have that."

I challenge you to try this out, or let me know if you already think of the game this way. Please comment and tell me how you think of your opponent and his moves.

Letting go of your Points of view

Yesterday I was playing a game against a 1k with a 6 stone handicap when I had an epiphany! He attacked on of 4,4 stones with 3,6 stone, I pincered him High Korean style and then he he played the 6,3 point on the opposite side.

At that moment I was filled with a haunting fear of this player. Every time I had been attacked like this by a strong player I ended up losing. Deep down inside I felt like I had already lost, 4 moves into the game. This was nothing but an unjustified point of view, a judgment that I had made.

How many times have you decided that you have lost a game? How many times was that true? There are an infinite number of possibilities. Every time you notice you have made a judgement, say to yourself "interesting point of view." because that's all it is, a certain point of view. Someone else might look at your same situation and think you have a distinct advantage, or perhaps someone else might think you are drawing a picture with black and white stones. Realizing that this is just a point of view opens up a whole new world of exciting possibilities.


Once you have eliminated your limitating judgments, you can start asking questions. What can I do here? What can I use to my advantage? How can I make this group live? What would this move accomplish? If I resigned right now, what else could I do with my time. Even if your questions lead you to resigning, you still don't have to feel defeated, knowing that you made the best decision you could think of.

Thanks for reading
~Nukermage

New sister, Watch out go world!

I am proud to admit that as of last thursday I have a new baby sister! Maebry Skye (Last name omitted for sake of privacy) was born 8 lb 2 ounce 22 inches long!

I heard that in Japan and China some go players train their children from infancy, so I decided, hey why not? She is currently 7 days old, but doesn't seem to grasp the concept of liberties yet.

 

I haven't made her a KGS account yet, but as soon as she knows how to move the mouse I promise I'll let some of you play against her. 

 Now, some of you may think I'm being rediculous, but when my sister becomes Go Meijin you may change your mind. 

Autopilot Disease Part 2

Once again I begin to write an article that will captivate, nay capture, your hearts, minds, souls etc...
"What's that you say?"
"We're broadcasting already?"
"Well why didn't you say so?"
"Never mind that we've got a show to run!"

Welcome folks to part two of the ongoing series on playing in Autopilot mode. Now that we've covered what Autopilot in part one looks like let's go over some of the reasons people play that way.

Number 1: Stress
When something goes wrong in your life, whether the car breaking down, or your mother's unreasonable complaints that you're 30 years old and that you need a job, The stress can put you into autopilot mode.

Number 2: The Desire to rank up
Paradoxically, the harder you try to get that rank to go up the more difficulties you run into on the way.

Number 3: Impatience
This kind of goes back to No 2. but, when you are in a hurry to win, you don't take the time to think.

On further consideration, the possibilities for going into autopilot mode seem quite extensive and I'd like to take this moment to show the common denominator behind all these causes.

When you push harder you lose the subtlety.
Try balancing a piece of paper on your hand. Now add a pen. You can feel the difference in weight easily.
Now try balancing a bowling ball on your hand. Now add a pen. It doesn't really feel much different.
The less you carry, the more easily you can feel.

Applying this to Go, simply don't focus so intently on winning. Enjoy the game and experiment. If Go feels like work instead of play, your brain just shuts up and relies on what it already knows.

Remember when you were practicing piano as a youngster. When you played your piece at home from the comfort of your living room, it sounded perfect, but when you played at the recital, you failed miserably.
It felt so difficult to do what was normally an enjoyable activity.

Loosen up! try less and achieve more!

Autopilot Disease Part 1

You sit down to your computer and fire up good ol' kgs. Instinctively you guide your mouse to the automatch button. This time kgs assigned your color as black. You decide on 4,4 as usual. 'Woops' misclick now your on 4,3 'oh well it's all the same'. White responds with 4,4 in the opposite corner. You respond thoughtlessly a 4,4 accross from your own stone. Black approaches your first corner stone at 6,3. You play your joseki. He responds in an unuasual manner. At this point you feel the need to punish him for his originality, so you play the first move that comes to mind. The next 8 moves you do the same thing. Suddenly it dawns on you that you are in a complicated fight. The rest of the game hangs in the balance of this fight.

If you end up losing you feel upset, angry, confused and hurt. You immediately decide to jump into another automatch to win and nurse your wounded feelings. If you end up losing you feel your opponant was pretty blockheaded and decide your rank isn't nearly good enough for you (after all you won by 30+), so you play another automatch to get your rank to were it 'ought' to be. This creates a vicious addicting cycle.

If you or a loved one suffer from this condition, please do not dispair. Now that you have defined your condition you can overcome it! However, if you are unable to best this deplorable disease, you could read  part 2 right here

Eidogo: A healthy source of vitamin joseki

As I've been memorizing games from various professionals I've been wondering about the nutrition value in each one. How much will this game help me in my day to day playing? The one that helps me the most now is the one that taught me a new joseki that I added to my day to day games. I'm kind of slow though so I didn't actually understand what I was supposed to do until after the next paragraph.

In a recent study game with my good friend allara[5k] he devastated me in the fuseki. He then told me I needed work on opening knowledge. After the game I went to Josekipedia and Eidogo  (two websites for studying joseki). I found out that Eidogo lets you view a whole bunch of pro games for every joseki you type in. 

This is life changing! all I have to do is type in unknown joseki, memorize a pro game or 2 from it and boom! Now I can get the benefits of 2 kinds of study at once. It's even better than a protein shake.

other posts you might enjoy

Memorize 100 masters Games

Some great books for getting deeper knowledge of opening play

38 basic joseki

Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go

Play Go!

Go is not automatic. Fun is not automatic. Learning is not automatic. When you play go you must play go.
Devise strategies, take unexpected turns, and play deeper than you ever have before. Throw yourself into each and every move. Go cannot and will not play itself.

The moment you are content with the first move that comes to mind is the moment you will stop improving. It doesn't matter how many thousands of games you play. You will not improve without stretching yourself to think in ways that are hard for you. Your brain makes connections when you do new things. If you rely on what you are already comfortable with then your brain won't make new pathways and you'll be stuck in a neural rut.

When you learn a new concept and apply it to the way you think about go it is difficult at first. Once you understand it fully it becomes automatic. And once it is automatic you must look for a new concept to apply to your thinking.

We learn things one thought at a time. Every move is a chance to think in a new way and understand a little more. Think outside your comfort zone or it will imprison you. Chaining you to the walls of apathy. Holding you back from the unknown. Yes, learning is scary, but not learning is far scarier.

Memorize 100 Masters Games

I was recently challenged by Ikebrawler, who is my sensei/teacher/friend/tomodachi what have you, to memorize professional games as a way to improve my game. As you all know by now I'm never one to pass up a challenge and as usual I have quantified the challenge and am approaching it systoporadically (systematically/sporadically).

Challenge

Memorize 100 masters games at least 150 moves deep

Have them in working knowledge all at one time

So far I have 3 games Memorized. I'm picking my games from GoKifu.com, but you can get them from wherever (yes I am assuming you are joining me in this challenge). I mainly look for ones that end in +0.5 so that they are fairly close. You can also look for games from your favorite pros. 

Memorized games so far

http://gokifu.com/s/140y-gokifu-20121013-Gu_Li%289p%29-Zhong_Wenjing%289p%29.html

http://gokifu.com/s/141n-gokifu-20121013-Zhou_Ruiyang%285p%29-Meng_Tailing%286p%29.html
http://gokifu.com/s/162j-gokifu-20121122-Cho_Chikun%289p%29-Tajiri_Yuto%283p%29.html

Many go players believe that memorizing games is basically useless toward improving your go, however most of professionals advise it and Insei (young people in go schools) do it as part of their training.

In in interview with the late Hans Pietsch (a German go player who moved to japan to be part of the insei program) he says  

"From my experience, for amateurs, where there is still a lot that can be improved, the method to memorize games is very helpful. Of course it depends on how hard you are willing to work in order to improve. Memorizing means that you have to be able to play many games to the 150th move within 5 minutes. The meaning of that is not on a rational, logical level. You are trying to reach a deep point in your brain where you develop a feeling for shape and position. This is going to help you especially during the fuseki. 

Check out the complete article a  http://361points.com/hans/

I'm sure your tired of reading my ranting by now good luck!

Tsumego: Speed up by Slowing Down

I'd like to start this post with a short portion of my favorite book of all time.

Suffering produces Endurance 

Endurance produces Perseverance

Perseverance produces Character 

Character produces Hope

and Hope does not put us to shame.

There are many many things I could say about this passage, but I'm not talking about this passage. Today I'm talking about Tsumego. Tsumego can be opposed to Tsumeshougi which I just learned a few days ago and gives me some more context for what tsumego means. If you don't understand what I just said that is by all means completely fine and you are not missing out on much more than a joke between school friends. 

Several months ago I was going through Cho Chikun's elementary and intermediate Tsumego collections which I finished in just under a month going at an alarming pace of several hundred per day.

The results were in and I gained about a rank and a half on KGS. Although it was fun and I did have some gains, I have now switched my whole methodology of doing Tsumego.

As an aside I would like to say to those of you who have questioned me in private, public, or begrudgingly in the back of your minds that it is impossible for a 10k to go through Cho Chikun's Elementary and Intermediate Collections, I offer my complete agreement and condolences. I'm quite sure that I did not get more than 60% of the Elementary and probably less than 20% of the Intermediate correct. I was young and niave`, however I must say that I did still get something out of it.

My new methodology is something I invented in about 8 minutes one morning sitting out on my porch after an argument with my mother. I had spent 4-5 hours on the computer supposedly doing Tsumego but when all was said and done I had watched 2 anime episodes, browsed the internet, played a game of go and done only 11 Tsumego problems.  Thus leading my mom to, quite wisely if I may say so, take away my computer privileges until after 4 o'clock.

As an aside I would like to say that I do not, in fact, speak with a british, australian or texas accent.

However if it would make your reading experience more interesting I highly recommend that you pretend I do have one of the listed accents as you read through this post. I believe it may make your already enjoyable experience more entertaining and enjoyable.

The new method is simply this

I am going to go through Cho Chikun's Elementary Again at 30 a day by splitting my work into 10 12 minute sessions and doing 3 problems per session. this will allow me 3-4 minutes on each problem to fully think out the problem. If I finish the problems early in the 12 minute period, good for me and I can  take a bit of a break. if I do not finish a problem in the given time I will simply post it on KGS and have 

one of the stronger players there help me figure it out. After about 30 days at this pace I will have finished the set.

Step 2

Repeat step 1 doing twice as many of the Tsumego in the alloted time.

This basically means spending 10 12 minute sessions going again through the same set of problems but doing 6 problems every session. this time it will take 15 days to complete.

Step 3-7

keep repeating and doubling your speed until you reach the point at which you can solve atleast 100 problems in each 10 minute session.

if this takes more than 7 steps go ahead and continue until you make it there. But it probably wont.

After this point I sugguest going back through the whole set in 1 day twice a month to keep it in your mind. And also starting this same process again with the Intermediate set  or any other large set of tsumego you come across that you like.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well that's basically the method. One problem allot of people who have done this have said is 

"It's hard to get the perseverance to keep on keeping on with these problems" My advice to you 

is to go through a bit of suffering. It will help you build your endurance and perseverance.

Rival Grindy[5k-4k]: upcoming match

A match between me and my considerable stronger rival Grindy is coming up on may 31st (this year (2012(AD not BC))). Which means I have about a month left of training. Grindy is, like me, also working on tsumego. He is trying a new method of tsumego to try to boost his reading level even further. instead of just doing the problems, he looks at the problem, turns away, tries to re-create the problem in his visual mind, and solve the problem without looking at the book.  While his method may or may not be superior to mine, his pace seems much slower as I've done about 1600 problems in 10 days and he's done about 600. Feel free to watch the match. Tickets are 0$ (USD) and the time is so casual it is unspecified as of now.

my Journey today

Cool so I've been working hard at tsumego. I've Averaged 180 a day since 10 days a go (really 200 a day but 0 on sundays). Now I'm sure I can hear my multitude of blog followers wondering how its affecting me. Well I thought I wouldn't have answers for a while but something came up.

Nick23 tested my reading level yesterday. It kind of felt like a Gameshow. There were about 30 people
watching. Anyway Nick would ask a tsumego and I would have a minute to come up with an answer and then state my confidence in percentage. The problems were 6k-1d level and I think I got about half of them wrong. Anyway after the test Nick said my reading level was about 7k  so I guess that means I've made about 3 levels of progress in 10 days. I don't know if this is a fluke or misconception yet but I'm going to keep doing tsumego and have my progress tested in another week or so

500 tsumego, ring a bell?

The reason I haven't posted for a few days about my tsumego progress is that I've been busy doing tsumego!

stats:

saterday  - already posted about this but 150 tsumego

sunday - 0 tsumego, it was the sabath and I told God I wouldn't work on Go on sundays

monday - 500 tsumego AMAZING tsumego day, I found a new techniuqe

tuesday so far - 150 maybe I'll do some more today.

New techniuqe = the stop watch! I found http://www.online-stopwatch.com/interval-timer/

this online stopwatch, set intervals to 25 seconds and set sound to ting tinge

then whenever I hear the beep I switch to next problem whether I'm finished or not

and if I finish early I skip ahead and maybe give myself 2 beeps 'cus the first one doesn't count or whatever.

using this method I can do about 120-150 an hour. and even though sometimes I didn't get to finish a tsumego I found that was still getting the answers finished about 80% of the time.

150 out of the way.

after an exhausting 9 hours I've finally finished my 150 Tsumego for the day.

here's the story.

 

At 11:35 I began on Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of Life and Death elementary problem 150. I went for about an hour and ended somewhere around 180. I took a break read my bible, ate breakfast, drank a smoothie, and got back to work.

finally around 3:00 when I was on problem 220 and was incredibly tired of Tsumego I found a thread on the internet that suggested listening to music while you do problems. It was amazing. I downloaded Spotify and started listening to phantom of the Opera. my pace tripled and here I am at 8:15 finished with problem 300.

Thank you Lifein19x19 community! Well that's about it. I'll tell you where I am at tomorrow evening.

Tsumego with a fury

I've decided I won't play on kgs until I have done 150 tsumego for the day
and that I'll keep that up atleast untill I've finished cho chikun's elementary go collection.
so far so good I've done 28 problems today and its only noon.
wish me luck. The long road is ahead. I'll post again when I've finished this goal.
my current rank on kgs is 10k  but I've changed it to - for the duration of this experiment.