Sunday Go

U.S. Go Congress 2012

2012-02-09T22:35:00.000-08:00

So I saw in this AGA E-Journal this afternoon that signup for the U.S. Go Congress is already underway, and I'm excited! I have no idea if I'll be able to make it this year, as I haven't been able to go the last two times unfortunately, but the three times I went (2006-2008) were some of the most memorable and enjoyable weeks of my life! Go Congress is a Go-themed heaven on earth. I can

Professional Go Players and their nervous ticks

2012-02-06T13:13:00.000-08:00

I've been on a Baduk TV kick, and I've noticed something really interesting: each professional player has their own unique nervous tick. Some professionals rattle their Go stones, while others rock back and forth. It's really an interesting phenomenon to watch. Go has a specific etiquette to it. You are supposed to sit quietly and control yourself, only reaching into your bowl when you're

Lee Sedol vs. Gu Li - Sedol Dies Big: Can he make it?

2012-02-03T23:44:00.000-08:00

I'm kind of in awe at the daring of Lee Sedol sometimes. He's one of my favorite professional Go players for a reason. He fights hard in difficult situations and comes out on top because he uses unorthodox strategies, something I enjoy. However, in today's game, I was taken aback by how he clearly felt he could win despite taking a huge loss towards the end of the middle game. I've seen

Getting back into the groove

2012-01-16T15:47:00.000-08:00

So like, in preparation for possibly returning to Korea, I wanted to try to get myself back in shape as far as my Go skills. It's been a harrowing process. For the better part of a year, I just focused on writing and getting my books ready for print. I hadn't spent much time doing tsumego, reviewing professional games, or really anything for that matter. The last time I played Go was a few

Spreading Go throughout the West

2012-01-12T21:18:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine from college and I sat down about a week ago and discussed this very topic, and it fascinates me to no end. Go has always been a niche market. The game appeals to computer programmers and people who tend to enjoy math. Go also attracts a few artsy types, connoisseurs of Japanese culture, and a few other people like myself who study Asian languages and culture. There's

A DVD series on Go

2012-01-07T16:02:00.000-08:00

I've been working on creating a video series to teach beginners how to play Go. I started a project on kickstarter here: http://kck.st/rSqTeg. The idea of the project is to help make Go more popular in the West. So far, Go players are mostly computer programmers, mathematicians, college kids, and the elderly who switched over from chess in the park to a Go board. There are people outside of

So You Want to Play Go? Level 4

2011-12-30T21:54:00.000-08:00

I am working on level four of the series, and I'm doing it in conjunction with Alexandre Dinerchtein 3p who has been more than kind enough to review it. I've been really excited to do it as I felt that there is so little out there for dan level players. It kind of feels like you're pretty much left to study Go on your own after 1 dan. Sure, they tell you to do more tsumego and to review more

Blitz on KGS

2011-08-29T18:04:00.000-07:00

So I'm focusing a lot on writing and I have less and less time to do tsumego problems and review professional games which makes up the bulk of my studying for Go. So, to try and stay in shape so I don't slip down any stones, I play a lot of blitz games on KGS. 10 seconds per move. I'm trying to experiment with it as a study tool, to see if it really can keep you in shape, or if you develop bad

I know....

2011-08-29T08:43:00.000-07:00

I'm not supposed to shamelessly self promote, but as an indie author, you have to shamelessly self promote :P I just finished my book on my year in Korea! If you're interested in going to Korea to teach ESL, or perhaps if you just wanna learn a bit more about their culture, this book is a quick, fun read! I tried to condense my entire year down into a book, all of the places I visited, all of

For Beginners

2011-08-26T09:40:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are not familiar with the game, here is a quick introduction! Go is a war game. It is an epic battle to see who can surround more territory. Gameplay is simple. One person is black, one person is white, and you take turns putting a stone on the board in any spot so long as it follows three rules. These are my go bowls of awesomeness. What makes the game interesting, but

Long Hiatus!

2011-08-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

So my hiatus was far longer than expected, but the Sunday Go Blog is up and running again! Between moving twice, job hunting, and general insanity, it's been hard to get back in the groove of writing, but now I'm back and there'll be more Go than you can shake a stick at! I'm working on the next three books in the series and hopefully will come out with the 4th level dan book, in conjunction

Tournament was a blast!

2010-12-04T23:17:00.000-08:00

So today at 12:00 noon the epic-ness that is the Ann Arbor Go Tournament for the United Way commenced. Thousands of players from around the globe met at the Killodrome to have at it in a winner take all go competition. Actually, about 14 people from around the Southeast Michigan area (and Ohio!) came to a small corner of the Michigan Union to play for the United Way. I went 3-1. I lost my

More tournament training

2010-12-02T21:41:00.000-08:00

Today I hit the books although I did have some spurts of laziness. I kind of ... well not kind of, I totally broke my diet two days ago when I went out to Dinner at Denny's. I had like fries, a milkshake, a buffalo chicken burger with an entire appetizer platter, the antithesis of the Dukan Diet. That means for the next two days I'm going to be on what's called the "attack phase", which means

Doing tsumego

2010-11-30T18:54:00.000-08:00

So this weekend there is a tournament and I've been getting myself ready by doing tons and tons 'o tsumego. In fact I probably do more tsumego than look at professional games or really anything else because I always feel "charged up" after doing a ton. A year ago I actually sat down and did some 3,500 problems or so (mostly easy ones) just because usually after I do a ton my playing strength

Again, still not dead

2010-11-19T16:31:00.000-08:00

So I was supposed to report back on the glory that was the Heartland Go Tournament in Peoria Illinois, regaling you with my tales of mingling with the common go players and showing off all of my new found Korean knowledge. Well, that story will never be told :) I did awful at the tournament, and because of stupid things. I would've felt better had it been because my opponents outplayed me. I

I'm still alive

2010-10-21T06:18:00.000-07:00

In case you guys were wondering :) I've been hard at work, translating for Wbaduk.com as well as helping my mom get her books ready for publication. First off, some exciting news. Alexandre Dinerchtein 3p has done a review of Level 3 of the So You Want to Play Go? series which you can see on the Life in 19 x 19 thread here: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=585. He has

Quick update

2010-09-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

So I've been sick this past week and whatever I brought with me is pretty bad. My mom got sick for 3 days and I've seen anyone blow there nose so much in my entire life. I got a couple of my friends sick after our "Welcome home Jon!" party so I decided to stay in until it blew over. So right now I'm job hunting, maybe looking into relocating, so the go stuff will be still in the pipeline but

Good to be back

2010-09-12T04:14:00.000-07:00

So I'm back in the good ol' U.S. of A but I have no car so I'm currently stuck in Southfield :) I got to see my friends and they all took me out for the greasiest, sloppiest, cheesiest American food we could find, and it felt good to be welcomed back. I'm basically going to take it easy for the month of September, in fact the first few days I got back I just played World of Warcraft and sat on

Looking Back

2010-08-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

One week from today at 8 a.m. I will get on a plane and head back to the good ol' U.S. of A. One year passes by pretty fast doesn't it? All in all, I enjoyed my time here and today I had a lot of time to think about it (being sick will do that to you) and even though I didn't necessarily accomplish all of my original goals I have new goals and a lot of new knowledge. Just goes to show you that

Day 222 - Eat Mexican Food in Korea (made by Koreans)

2010-08-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

Hello all you loyal 365 Brand New Days Readers. Your entry for today has been outsourced to our offices in Suji, South Korea. I, Jonathan Hop, will be taking over for Kristen's new thing of the day, and let me tell you, a lot of my plans fell through :) This project is harder than it looks. At first I wanted to do a Nore-Bang, which is a karaoke place, but then no one wanted to go and I

Making the most of it

2010-08-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

I walked back into the hallowed halls of the Yu Changhyuk Baduk Dojang today after nearly a 2-3 month hiatus. I felt that my Go would best be served by studying alone instead of with a teacher and also I was just plain burning out. But, since I'm coming home on september 1st and I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back out to this fab country I decided I should suck it up, walk in there, and

More on joseki

2010-08-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

I gotta say I'm a little bummed I couldn't make it to this year's Go congress because of work but I vow that next year I will go. Plus, it'll be in Los Angeles and I've only been in that city on layover while I was heading to the wild and wonderful country of Korea. Anyhoo onto today's lesson. Currently I'm working on the last installment of the "So You Want to Play Go?" series for dan level

Today's Lesson

2010-07-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

First off I got a lot of cool announcements and then we'll get into the Go stuff. The Sunday Go Lessons site has a new look which you can check out at www.sundaygolessons.com. I think it looks crisper than before and the layout is better, plus there is a neat tsumego of the day I got setup with the help of my bud Brian. Second, I finished the cover for the tsumego book series I've been working

Go Stuff

2010-07-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to drop a quick note to people reading the blog, there WILL be Go Stuff, a lot of it in fact, in the coming weeks once I settle down from ultra schedule change. The big Korean vacation is coming up and lord knows I need it.

So yeah

2010-06-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

So I was going at a good clip this month when I had yet another roadblock. I went to this place called a Jim jil bang which is a korean sauna. Let me tell you these places are wonderful. The one I went to was a huge underground complex with a gym, massage chairs, restaurant, snack bar, massage parlor, movie theater, swimming pool, and 6 rooms to just sit in and sweat. My favorite was the room

So it's official

2010-06-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

August 31st will be my last day at YBM ECC, and just the past few days it really set in that I've been in this country for 10 months and am going to leave pretty soon. I'll be saying goodbye to all the kids in my homeroom class and also goodbye to my great co-workers. When I told everyone I'd be going it was a bit of an ego boost to see them all be like "Umm, no", especially my Korean partner

Quick Note

2010-06-22T06:49:00.000-07:00

Kiseido/Yutopian is carrying my book series! Wheeee!!! https://www.yutopian.com/yutop/cat?category=PAE So yeah I'm not going to get a parade in my honor or something but I'm being carried by a company that sells go books. It's pretty exciting!

World Cup

2010-06-17T07:16:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of my friend Kristen's project I'm going to share my own new experience for today. My friend Kristen is currently doing one brand new thing a day, every day, for one year. So far she's almost at the half way mark and she is well on her way to 365 new experiences (read more about it at www.365brandnewdays.com). I'm not going for even close to that many, but today was pretty

Humble Pie

2010-06-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

So this past week I was on cloud nine. I was winning my games at the Go salons, I even beat my teacher, Mr. O, by 4 points in a two stone handicap game, and I was studying Go like nobodies business. I was hooked to Baduk TV, and evening following along with the commentators as they showed sequences I was thinking about while watching the game. I was plowing through games of Dosaku and somewhat

Election Season

2010-05-29T01:42:00.000-07:00

June 2nd is Election day here in Korea and I gotta say it's a happenin' time. When Americans want to promote their local politicians before election day rolls around, people usually put plastic signs on their lawn, maybe a bumper sticker or two, and for the more daring, T-shirts. Sure we have heated debates on television for the presidential election, but for stuff like director of education and

So You Want to Play Go?

2010-05-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

Available at www.sundaygolessons.com Well, I'm finally finished. As some of you may know I published 3 books on Go last year. Well, I did some editing and revising and now I can say they are really ready. The "So You Want to Play Go?" series was designed to take someone who knows nothing about Go and guide them to becoming a single digit kyu player. The first book is a primer on the rules

K-pop

2010-05-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

I probably sent many of you running to the hills with this title. K-pop, like it's dreaded cousin J-pop, is all about the sugar coated, bubble gum, recycled lyrics that is the hallmark of pop music. It's like they took the sugary sweet lyrics of American pop music, refined it, added artificial sweetener and served it on a bed of cotton candy. Originally I started listening to it so I could

Perfected Recipe #1 - Zuccini bread

2010-05-08T07:09:00.000-07:00

My absolute favorite dessert since I was a kid, my first perfected dish. It's a culinary masterpiece which is now a permanent member of my repertoire: Zuccini bread. Sure it has a bit of a Korean finish since I had to use the Korean version of Zuccini. Which looks like this. It's called "En Hobak". Hobak means pumpkin but I think the term is used for any type of squash. It's got a much higher

The Return

2010-05-02T06:53:00.000-07:00

So today, on May 1st, I took the subway to Migeum. For the past month I've been taking a break from Go, and for the past two weeks, I havent touched anything that had to do with Go. No books, no Go TV, no problems, no logging onto online Go servers, nothing. I was nervous when I got on the elevator to go to the eighth floor. After all, I was going to be rusty and the kids are merciless. I

Insert Witty Title Header Here

2010-04-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

Now, when I signed up for this job they told me that my room was part of the package, that I would not be paying for a place to stay mainly because in order to get a place to stay here you have to fork over a truckload of cash. When I read the "Teach English in Korea" recruitment website, they said that the apartment would be up to Western standards. Well, that was a bit...optimistic on their

2010-04-08T06:06:00.000-07:00

So lately I've veered off the Go stuff, and for those of you who are here for that, I just haven't been as hardcore with my study over the past week....AND IT FEELS GREAT. Only having to focus on working at school is liberating, but rest assured come Saturday, May 1 I will be right back at the Yu Changhyuk Baduk Dojang ready to do battle with the 9 year olds. That's right kiddies, I'll be back.

Starting over

2010-04-04T06:28:00.000-07:00

This month I'm just plain taking a break, I'm burned out. I was going to take Korean lessons on the weekend but I'm kind of enjoying spending my weekends not at the dojo and not running anywhere, trying to do something. Don't read that as "Oh, Jon's giving up" or anything like that; far from it. I realized I'm human and I needed a break, I can't run like a machine. I've burned out many times

Culture Crossings

2010-04-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

So, in lighter news we had our first staff potluck last Tuesday and it was a big hit. As some of you may know I love to cook and I'm pretty good at it. The skill came out as sort of a necessity since my mother hates preparing food. She used to have little respect for it and when my grandmother tried to teach her how to make certain dishes she would just hide the pans and run away. For a good

YBM ECC

2010-03-27T03:05:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd take a second and talk about the place I work at (YBM ECC) because it's really quite amazing. I know in the graduation post I was taken in by the spectacle of the occasion, but the school I work at is really a nice place and they are totally succeeding at teaching children how to speak English despite not having reinforcement from the outside world. I used to wonder why it was

Today's Lesson Part Deux

2010-03-20T05:48:00.000-07:00

So right now I'm working on revamping my original 3 books on Go and starting work on the dan level version, so I've been kind of busy and not so much with the posting as of late, but I promise I'll put up more stuff as time goes on. If anyone has happened to have read any of them, I know some people were able to get a copy when they first came out, I'd love comments or questions. My schedule at

Baduk World in Korea

2010-03-17T04:09:00.000-07:00

So I am ultra excited this week. Like more excited than I've been in a long time. Why am I so happy? Well, I can proudly say I will be a teacher at a Go school aimed at teaching foreigners. The website can be found here: www.bwk.or.kr That's right, my job will be to teach people the game I love playing on the weekends and weeknights (of course I'll mostly be teaching kyu level players but

Pushing Forward

2010-03-11T06:21:00.000-08:00

Ok, so last week I had a bit of a meltdown. The normal teacher wasn't there when I walked in the dojo, it was the guy that spoke a little English, well, enough English, he's not bad at all. I like the normal teacher, Yi Jae Il, better because we get along pretty well, but this week he's preparing for some big tournament. The guy that speaks English is okay, but he is of the mindset that I suck

The Blonde Effect

2010-03-07T02:23:00.000-08:00

Before we get into this fascinating subject, I just wanted to give yet another Elton update (don't you just love those?) I was concerned when Elton graduated with the rest of the kindergartners because we wouldn't be able to teach him anymore, but lo and behold, he's back! He goes to ECC for their afternoon classes! I don't personally teach him, the new teacher who just flew in, Emily, will be

Awesome Pro game

2010-03-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

My study mainly consists of studying pro games and doing a LOT of tsumego problems. Pro games can be a headache most of the time, as I usually only have a rudimentary understanding of what strategies they're employing, but every so often I watch one where the entire game almost clicks in my mind. Well, almost 100%. My opening is still the weakest part of my game so in that respect I can get

Graduation

2010-02-25T07:03:00.000-08:00

First off kudos to Jeff on the new logo for the site. He worked his magic and it came out REALLY nice, so a thumbs up to him. Until next week thursday I don't have any kindergarten classes and my birthday is a national holiday in Korea (how's that for luck?), meaning I don't have to be at work until 2:40 in the afternoon. The reason for that is the old kindergarten classes have graduated and

Today's Lesson

2010-02-19T05:09:00.000-08:00

So I met my teacher Mr. O today (Yes, his last name is a letter of the alphabet) at a nearby go club and we played a teaching game as usual. I've found my play has gotten a lot less aggressive since I have to play little children all the time. Little children tend to overplay a lot and do not stop until all of your stones are dead, so in response I developed a style that is fairly solid and

Philosophizing

2010-02-17T02:22:00.000-08:00

First watch this: "> So, the dubbing is a little iffy but it gets the point across. Recently I entered into an agreement with a friend of mine, where we would play 10 games of Go each week until the big Go tournament back home in the U.S. which is at the end of summer. Should one of us not manage to do this we will have to pay $50 for each infringement. And by pay, I mean our conversation

Getting started

2010-02-15T19:48:00.001-08:00

Well getting this blog started was surprisingly easy, I was prepared for an entire day of aggravation but instead I got up and running within minutes!Thanks for checking my blog out. My name is Jonathan Hop and I am currently studying Go (also known as Baduk and Weiqi) in Suji, South Korea at the Yu Changhyuk Baduk Dojang, a place where young children work to become professional players. That's