For Beginners

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 oftentimes challenging, is that you have few rules to restrict where you play, everything else is fair game.  As you can see from the picture, a Go board is a big grid.  We play stones on the intersections, and not on the squares like chess or checkers.  When you put a stone down on an intersection it has liberties:

As you can see, this stone has 4 liberties when no enemy stones occupy the horizontal or vertical spaces surrounding it.  We don't care about diagonals.  The stone on the left has 4 liberties and is in no danger, whereas his friend on the right is almost full encircled and only has 1 liberty.  By the way, the Chinese name of the game is Weiqi which means encircling game.  

When a stone has no more liberties it is captured by your opponent, taken off the board, and is worth 1 point.  One rule of Go is "You can't play a stone where it will automatically run out of liberties and die."  Yeah, I know, painfully obvious but someone has to do it.  The other rule is just a tad more complicated but keeps the game from freezing.

On the left, Black has 1 liberty left which I've marked for you, so White can capture the A stone and then our board will look like the middle picture.  The thing is, now White B has only one liberty.  If Black captures, then his stone will have one liberty, and both people will be locked in an eternal struggle for dominance.  This is why we have the "Ko rule".  The character for ko means eternity, and to keep the game going, once White takes, Black has to play elsewhere before he can take the move back.  So if we look on the right, White takes the circle marked Black stone, and Black must play elsewhere.  If White also plays elsewhere, then Black can take White 1.  

You can play Go now.  Yes I'm serious if you have a board and stones, and you can make that out of cardboard and buttons, you can grab a buddy and play.  You can try out your first game for free on the Kiseido Go Server at http://gokgs.com.  You can make an account and play as many games as you want at no charge, so Go is both fun AND frugal!

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Long Hiatus!

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 with Alexandre Dinerchtein 3p.  I'm really busy, but I will always make time for Go fans.

First off, I finally have a Twitter account.  I still do not really understand what the allure of Twitter is, but I'm sure someday I'll get it.  I was dragged kicking and screaming into the technological age.  I think if you click this button you will be able to join my Twitter feed, or spy on me, or something.

Follow @yithril

Second, as I said earlier, I'll be in hardcore writing mode until the end of the year.  I am working back and forth on at least four books.  I want to finally do the Go problems books, one for each level, to complement the "So You Want to Play Go?" series.  I'm also going to try and finish up the book for expert players, and then a small book on studying in Korea and teaching for a year.  It's a lot, I know, but I'll sleep when I'm dead :P  You can check out everything I've already written which is available on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003X9781O

Third, well, Go!  I've gotten back into watching Hikaru no Go, specifically the North Star Cup movie.  I haven't seen the series in at least a year and I felt inspired to watch it all over again.  I especially like the movie  except the fact that it stops short of where the manga ended.  Of course the manga ending is...Japanese.  The heroes don't really win and there isn't a big happy ending.  What endears me most to the movie is that you get some matchups between the characters that you kind of wish had happened earlier.  Touya vs. Ogata and Shindou vs. his teacher.  And of course, Ochi breaking down in tears is a must-see.  I wish that had finished actually animated the Japan-Korea-China tournament.  I mean, you have all this build up and then you never do it; kind of a let down :)

You can check it out on youtube here:
http://youtu.be/kaMBImT0ZWE

If I can find the game Shindou and Yashiro play online I think I'll analyze it and post it.  Anyways, welcome back to the blog!

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Tournament was a blast!

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 first game to the 7 dan monster as you can see in the picture below:

Scary isn't he?  I think all Eyeglass stores in Korea sell only one style.

I lost the power cord to my camera so I couldn't charge it up to take pictures so I only have a few taken by Bryan, the tournament director.  Notice the fight that's taking place in the upper right corner.  Every time I play this infernal move I always get owned.  I love it because it's a fighting move but it never ends well for me.  I saw it in a professional game and the professional (of course) made use of it.  Here's what I'm talking about.

You only play Black twelve when you have more stones in the area (which i do), and you have a stone at 8 already in place.  If White seals Black in you push and cut and wait for the big bucks to roll in.  Problem is this is never what happens for me.  

The continuation could go like this where Black leaves an opening for White at A but in exchange splits White in half.  My problem was that I played at A instead of 2 which is totally wrong.

Here was the game.  Yeah, I know, Black dies.  I'm also certain that 28 is a mistake too.  It was one of those mistakes you immediately recognize when you play it.  If anything it should be one over to the right.  After I died the game became an orgy of insanity where I just attacked wildly.  I almost did it but then my empire crumbled before my very eyes.

Over the next few days I'll go over a few more of my games.  It gives me a chance to do some game review which I really need to do more of.

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More tournament training

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 eating just protein.  Anyhoo, Go!

First off, I'm going to start recording some free lectures to be put up here and on the main Sundaygolessons.com site.  I'd love some suggestions as to what kind of topics you guys would want to see.  It could be tesujis, professional games, game reviews, etc. so let me know.

Today I went through some of my joseki books to freshen up. I usually forget joseki 10 minutes after I've learned it so I review them a lot to make certain that I understand them.  The one I came across today was fun.

Black 1 through White 6 I'm sure you've seen before.  It's like the first joseki everybody learns.  There is a nice move for Black if White plays elsewhere that he can try (among others) and that's the move at 9.

It probably looks like it should die to you.  Well, Black might get captured but it depends on what White does.  Good thing being captured isn't everything.

The idea here is that if Black directly plays 11 then he can sacrifice for some forcing moves on the outside.  But, Black has a better move than just directly doing this.

Black should probe first at 11 and see what White does.  Like this White is split in half.

I'm learning this variation right now and it's taking me awhile to figure it all out.  Maybe I'll get to use it at the tournament, who knows :P

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Doing tsumego

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 gets a nice boost.  I think I'll go back to hardcore training in December.

Btw, try out this problem for size:

Black to play

Hint: Think shortage of liberties.

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Again, still not dead

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 would've felt okay if it had been because ... well because of anything.  The first game I missed atari in the endgame (I was so focussed on something else) and my second game I miscounted a capturing race, but not one with a lot of liberties, I simply missed one and assumed I had lost the race.  Before I blundered I had a commanding lead of like 20 points.

I won the next two handily and the last one I did lose but the guy was strong and I made a Ko out of nothingness so it was okay.  So a 2-3 record.  I was bummed, I'm not going to lie, but I will press on.  The next tournament is Dec. 4 and I'll be damned if I miss atari for no reason again :p  Speaking of which, if you live near ann arbor or can make the trek to Michigan you should come to the Ann Arbor Go Tournament.  It's for charity, here's a link:

http://www.umich.edu/~goclub/

The United Way is a great charity and there are plenty of prizes so it's worth the drive.  I will be studying hardcore so that I am in shape for it and will not have another upset :p.

Also, I'm starting a diet today.  I'm way too fat, I gained tons of weight in Korea and after being winded waiting on tables today I have to lose some weight.  The diet worked for my friend who has lost over 30 lbs over the past month or so so I'm going to follow suit.  Wish me luck, it's not an easy one :)

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I'm still alive

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 agreed to play the role of expert in upcoming publications, so he'll be working with me for Level 4 of the SYWtPG series, the dan level book, as well as some more ideas I have for future publications (a man has gotta have his secrets).

Secondly, I'll be heading to Peoria for the Heartland Harvest Go tournament on October 30th.  I'm pretty pumped since it's my first Go tournament in....a long time.  The last time I've sat down and played a real game was at my friend Eric's place a few weeks ago, so I hope I'm not too rusty.  I've started with a regimen of doing tsumego problems in between translations, so like I'll translate five problems and then do a few problems from one of my pocket tsumego books.  I know, sounds kind of weird to study problems after translating them but I figure why not?  Gotta cram it in beforehand.

Anyways I'll post some more stuff as time goes on, don't worry, I have some big developments coming and they just require time :p  In any case, you'll see pictures of the tournaments and hopefully I can remember my games to give a good review. comments