Sunday, December 5, 2010

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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Friday, December 3, 2010

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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