3 days aren’t nearly enough time to study new stuff that will actually be settled in your memory and completely understood until the day of the tournament. So I’ve come to the following conclusion. I will play a best-out-of-10. So if i manage to win at least 6 out of 10 games, I will participate at the tournament. If on the other hand my win-loss-ratio happens to be worse than that, I will focus on my studies instead. Additionally I’ll try to review as many as possible out of the played games. If you have any hints or comments, they’re appreciated ^^

Current status: 2 W – 0 L

Anyway here’s the first game!

The second game almost ended in a disaster. I was lucky to pull out a win on this one.

Many Kifu of recent tournaments can be found on EidoGos “games-section”. However if you want to run a pattern-search through a certain collection, you will have to download a program with the respective function (like Drago or Stonebase). So here are, for you dear reader , compiled a bunch of useful gamecollection at your service. If you know any other collections, please don’t hesitate and post them in the comments!

• Stonebase Game Collection: more than 160 MB of games!  However most of the players Name are written in Chinese.
• Cho Chikun Collection: Cho Chikun is a japanese 9p, formerly entitled “the devil”. His games are said to be very educational.
• Hikaru no Go Collection: Most of the Kifu from the games played in Hikaru no Go.

P.S.: I really do hate how wordpress handles javascripts -_-

UPDATE: Alright, just got home. The evening was really memorable and a lot of fun. Li Yues teaching style is easily comprehendible, especially as she states and illustrates very clearly why certain moves are good or bad. I’ve tried to include most of the information she gave in the SGF and I think I recorded pretty much all major variations.

Unfortunately I had to leave pretty early and didn’t get to see the results of all of the simultaneous games. However there was one situation that caught my eye. In one of the games the following situation appeared on the board. How does White deal with the situation after the marked black stone has been played?

It’s a bit difficult to get ones hands on pro game reviews, so most likely I won’t to post too many of them. However if you’re also interested in low-dan (1 – 4 dan) reviews, let me know and I’ll upload some of these to overcome the lean time.

• Igo Myoden by Inoue Inseki (囲碁妙伝. 巻1-4 井上因碩)
• Kokugi Kanko by Honinbo Jowa (国技観光. 巻1-4 本因坊丈和)
• Ekisei Tsubiho by Yo Kisei (expanded by Saito Masatsugu) (奕正通微補. 雍 熙世, 斎藤正次 増補)
• Gokyo Seimyo by Hayashi Genbi (碁經精妙 Gokyō Seimyō, Best of the Go Classics)

Hope you like it!

Yeah, well… what can I say? I was kind of busy. University and stuff is taking up a lot of time. They tend to urge you to do projects and homeworks and stuff, basically things that’ll either shorten your lifespan considerably or at very least take away most of your Go-time.

Anyway, Cho Seok-Bin’s workshop is over and thanks to my cramped schedule I couldn’t attend even one of the lectures he gave *sob*. However the guys from the Zürich Go Club were nice enough to transcribe all lessons and make them accessible in PDF. Remember, if you intend to participate at the Swiss Go Championship in 2 weeks, I suggest you better study all of this thoroughly (Josef will shatter you otherwise ). I’ll try to get my hands on the original SGF’s or create own ones to upload to the “Reviews & Lectures”-section. Until then, enjoy the PDF’s.

Guess what, there’s even more! Heretix published a video of commented pro-game with English subtitles on GoDiscussions.com. Here’s what he writes about it.

After many hours of hard work, i’ve finally finished my first video project for the Go community. I’ve added English subtitles to a video of a Chinese professional (Hua Yi Gang 8-dan) commenting on the 6th LG semi-final match between Lee Chang Ho and Cho Hun Hyun, played in 2002.

[...]

Comments and feedback for the video much appreciated.

Its my hope that this will kickstart a fansubbing community for Go videos, similar to the ones we have for anime now. There’s a treasure trove of Go videos all over the Internet, just waiting to be translated and brought to an even bigger audience!

If you’re willing to help, please contact me by sending me a PM here, or looking for me on KGS.

Edit: Making one video like this takes me days of work, and its unlikely that I can do it again unless I get some help.

The duration of the video is about 25 minutes and it’s really worth watching. It can be downloaded on Google-Videos (MP4-file) or viewed online on youtube (part 1, 2, 3)… or you can just watch them here ^^

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

I see dead stones

Ko’s are a great thing. They can reverse the whole game if you mess up one and stronger players love to use them in handicap games. I had the great pleasure of encountering one of these Ko’s in my last game. The situation was such as in the picture above. White has just taken the Ko at H3 and Black responded by playing at S8, a huge threat… or not?

In the actual game White filled the Ko and Black killed the T9-group. Now the situations becomes rather delicate for White as he seems short of liberties. Notice, that if the marked White group dies, his group in the center dies too (amounting to a loss of more than 100 points). So does White have a way to live?

In the game White decided to continue by playing Hane to which Black of course responded by Atari and White connected. The situation is rather tricky now. Is White dead? Seki? What is the status of the White group?

What is the status of the white group? (it's Blacks turn)

Basic sequence after B

From here on out we have a whole lot of different variatons, I didn’t make the commentaries on them too detailed as you can figure out the value of the outcame for yourself.

basic continuation

The most common sequence after the the previous one. Black sacrifices 3 stones in order to gain outside-influence. A rather traditional way of playing it. Some might not be satisfied with giving up the corner, so there are some varitions.

taking the corner

Another joseki sequence. This time, black is getting the corner while white gets outside influence. From here, there are two possible joseki-sequences.

taking the corner (continuation)

Very old-fashioned (popular during 1950 when the Joseki had just been invented). Black has to spend two more moves to kill the corner which seems kind of awkward. This is considered too much nowadays.

So a new approach was developed: “A”, the aim was to kill the corner in one single step.

taking the corner (modern approach)

This is the continuation to the newly developed joseki. White 4 was introduced as a countermeasure. It doesn’t stop Black from getting the corner, but he will be forced to add additional stones to his territory to kill the three white stones.

If Black plays 19 at A, White can create a Ko which would become rather troublesome. 21 is a necessary move, if it’s omitted, Black dies.

overprotective?

If White plays 1, Black will capture the corner.  Again there are some variations.

initating a fight

Like this Black gets a big corner, but the center groups are still unsettled. It will be troublesome for both players. There is however another possible continuation.

complicated

This one is also considered joseki, but White’s shape kind of creeps me out, so I probably wouldn’t play it, it just seems black can get away too easily.

So that was it for “B”, next time I’ll summarize C (the most common response).

So the Swiss championship is approaching rapidly. Only 2 more months until the great showdown, time for a little training. I will be posting short summaries of what I have studied, maybe they’ll help you too And since my opening kind of sucks, why not start with that ^^? (And I do realize that Onadare is more of a Joseki than a Fuseki… I’ll get to the real Fuseki-stuff later on )

Making things complicated: Onadare!

Anyway, I’ve been encountering a hell lot of players on KGS that would use the nadare after a high approach, so having a look at Onadare seems like a useful idea. It’s one of those Joseki that take up to 20 or more moves and was first introduced by Go Seigen in 1957 (in a game against Takagawa Kaku). The basic development looks about like this, now there are 4 possible continuations, A-D. I won’t post all the variations in one blog, it would become a mess. So for today, I’ll start with option A.

Basic sequence after A

This is the most common sequence after A (move 1). White cuts at 2 and Black secures the corner with 3.  Black then gives some shape to his center group with 5 and 7 while white solidifies his groups with 4 and 5. In this variation Black has some attacking-potential at the left side.

Hitting the vital point

Instead of extending to 5 (see last diagram), Black can also hit the vital spot at 1. White is forced to secure his group while isolating the black stone in the center.  Black makes good profit at the top, while White will have to struggle with gaining an equal amount of points in the center.

pushing further (6 below 4, sorry it got cut off ^^)

Blacks last option here is to push with 1. This move basically switches the outcome of hitting the vital spot immediately. In this variation Black gets a more solid group in the center that is not as easy to attack. While White can create a living group at the top with a good amount of influence at the top. Notice that Blacks shape isn’t that great yet. Black might want to reinforce it before playing elsewhere (making this sequence Gote for him).

dealing with the split

White could follow an entirely different approach and split the two black groups at the top. To whites approach there is no standard answer. Ishida’s Joseki Dictionary proposes this variation with White extending at A and Black playing at B at the end.

However it is not found in many pro-games and is therefore arguably not really joseki. Different from the other variations this one lets White gain a much broader wall. It has however some more attacking spots.

The next varition I’ll blog about will be “B”. And always remember to study with your friends