Part I - Interlude - Part II

Weekly Go Wednesday, Issue #38

Though some of you may hate me for delaying Part II of my 1st Washington Open Baduk Championship series, the funny thing is that the Weekly Go Wednesday series actually fits in perfectly with the story. So hold your horses for one more day, and let’s dive right into this shall we?

So where were we? Ah yes. I had finished off the first day of the tournament with the second to worst record you can have: 1 win with 2 loss. To compound on that embarrassment, I won one and then proceeded to lose each game afterwards with each being a more epic failure than the last. After all, it would have been way better if I had lost the first two games and then won the last one. Then at least I could feel like I improved over the day instead of the epic plummet that actually happened.

Usually when I undergo a shocking disappointment like I did that day, my first reaction is to try and figure out what went wrong. After all, it wasn’t as if some freak accident happened where I hallucinated and put the stones in the wrong place. No, especially with go, there are no such things. So for the rest of the day, I kept thinking about what went wrong. Many things crossed my mind…

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Part I - Interlude - Part II

Hey everyone! Welcome to Part I of my awesome experience at the 1st Washington Open Baduk Championship this past weekend! Though many of you already know the results of the tournament, I’ll start by asking you all to refrain from commenting on the actual result till Part II since some don’t know yet.

In addition, I’m sure that many of you are eager to see what kind of games I played, so I have gone ahead and uploaded the kifu for your enjoyment. Commentary will come in future Monday Go Meditations (which I will note for each game); but hopefully you will forgive me for not being to add commentary within such a short time.

With that said, let’s get started!

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Overview

After trying to go through my training regimen from last week, I realized I was getting bored of practicing the same problems over and over again. And while my intentions were good (since my goal was to make all the problems instinctive), interest and motivation trumps that so I’ve moved on to more interesting topics to change it up for now. And especially after giving thought to the notion that tesuji is more important than life and death, I really wanted to start studying tesuji once again.

On another note, in case anyone missed it, the Washington Open is happening this weekend. Yours truly will be attending and competing/participating in whatever I can do. So you can definitely look forward to a series of posts on the event. I’m a little nervous because I haven’t really been playing as much as I should have, but I’ll have to brush that aside and just go to have as much fun as I can. If I can play really interesting games, then I will consider this event to be a success. See you all next week!

PS. In case you didn’t know, fellow go player Risingstar just started his own blog, so be sure to check it out and support him as we try and bolster go’s presence online!

Training Regimen

• Life and Death Problems

  *   Book: Jump Level Up 5
  *   Frequency: Daily
  *   Task: 10 minutes working through problems
  

• Tesuji Problems

  *   <span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Book: Graded Go Problems for Dan Players (Vol. 2) - 300 Tesuji Problems</span>
  *   Frequency: Daily
  *   Task: 10 minutes working through problems
  

Games

• KGS - 3 games
• IGS - 2 games
• DGS - 5 ongoing games
• OGS - 2 ongoing games

Books

• Jump Level Up 5
• Graded Go Problems for Dan Players (Vol. 2) - 300 Tesuji Problems

Weekly Go Wednesday, Issue #37

Last Friday, I mentioned an article that was shared with me on how to improve at go by Lynx. According to conventional wisdom, the one piece of advice that everyone seem to agree upon is that studying life and death is critical to getting stronger. And to be honest, it’s something I never really questioned. However, after reading Lynx’s article, I was confronted with an eye-opening question: Is studying tesuji more useful than tsumego?

After a lot of thought, I would have to concur with Lynx’s perspective. In fact, it is one of the key components to breaking the glass ceiling when trying to gain that next stone. However, because the masses constantly spout how important life and death is, it is often forgotten in all the noise.

Now now, before you grab your pitchforks and torches, hear me out won’t you?

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Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the 54th Sakura Matsuri Street Festival in Washington D.C.! For those who don’t know, this is in conjunction with the annual Cherry Blossom Festival that is held in D.C. every year and runs from 10:30AM to 6:30PM. And for a nominal fee of $10, you get entry into a street full of vendors, performances, cultural booths, and most importantly, the go booth!

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Overview

As I’m sure you all have noticed, I have finally gotten around to releasing my Hong Kong trip series this week! It took quite a few hours to work through all the photos and then make sure they were ready for viewing, but if you all enjoyed the posts, then I think it was plenty worthwhile.

With that said, I have been starting to approach my life with a lot more vigor. One of the things I’ve gotten back to doing consistently is going to my local boxing gym. Even though this takes up a lot of time throughout the week, I think that we often underestimate the connection between physical and mental conditioning. Both must be optimal in order for them to work together harmoniously. In addition, I’ve started watching more Yunguseng Dojang lectures and changed up my training a bit.

Over the past week, I got a chance reconnect with Lynx on KGS and we had a fun teaching game. I lost of course, but after a bit of discussion, she showed me an article she wrote on “How to Improve at Go.” While I could write a whole post about the various things I like about the article (which will probably happen in the near future when I have a moment to breathe), the main thing that stuck out to me was her emphasis on tesuji problems rather than life and death problems. As a result, you’ll notice my training regimen has changed a bit from before.

I’m still trying to create a training schedule that works well for me, so you’ll have to bear with me as I continue to experiment and try different things. It’s particularly volatile at the moment, but a large part is due to the fact that I really want to be in a stable position when the Yunguseng Dojang starts in May. So I’m really testing the waters in various areas to see what works best for me. Just have to keep trying.

Training Regimen

• Life and Death Problems

  *   Software: MagicBaduk
  *   Frequency: Daily
  *   Task: (1) 10 minutes or (2) Finish an entire problem set (250-300 problems depending on difficulty). Whichever comes second.
  

• Tesuji Problems

  *   <span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Software: MagicBaduk</span>
  *   Frequency: Daily
  *   Task: (1) 10 minutes exploring the problem set and practicing problems I've learned before.
  

Games

• KGS - 5 games
• IGS - 0 games
• DGS - 5 ongoing games
• OGS - 2 ongoing games

Books

• N/A

Part 1 — The Scenery || Part 2 — The Food || Part 3 — Weiqi

Introduction

After much waiting and anticipation, I’m happy to release the final post on my Hong Kong trip. Since we always save the best for last, it should come as no surprise to you that you had to wait till the very end to hear about my go adventures! Before we go on however, I just wanted to clarify a couple of things. (1) The title of this post was originally “Go,” but due to the fact that I was in Hong Kong, I felt it was only appropriate to title it “Weiqi.” (2) However, in order to ease the readability of my post, I will be using “go” in the text instead of “weiqi” for simple consistency with English go literature. With that said, onwards with my go adventure in Hong Kong!

Part 3 - Weiqi

As I’m sure some of you remember, I posted on reddit and here before the trip to see if anyone was in the area. Most of the feedback I got from people was that I should visit the Hong Kong Go Association (HKGA). I was a little saddened by the fact that I was unable to find anyone who lived locally online, but I knew that I couldn’t bear the idea of going all the way to Asia and not do a single go-related activity. So I promised myself that if I were to do anything for myself this trip, it would be to visit the HKGA.

When we first arrived in Hong Kong, one of the things we did was to go to one of the shopping districts. And believe it or not, as I’m walking down the street, I see this across the street.

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Part 1 — The Scenery || Part 2 — The Food || Part 3 — Weiqi

Introduction

When it comes to traveling, my number one priority is always to find the most authentic food to that area. The more special it is to the area (aka I can’t get it anywhere else in the world) the better. And for those who aren’t following me on Twitter already, you’ll notice that my Twitter consists primarily of go and food. So as you might expect, I’m quite enthusiastic about food and thus this post is a tad lengthier than normal.

With that said, I hope you prepare yourself as you set off with me to relive my food adventures through Hong Kong, and be sure to read to the end because I recount my experience with a buffet that costs $100USD per person. No that is not a typo. See you at the the bottom!

Part 2 - The Food

For starters, I’ll have to say that while we had some recommendations on places to go, my family and I were mostly on our own when it came to figuring out what we wanted to eat.

When we had finally escaped surviving on airplane food for the last 13+ hours, you can imagine our desire to find some actual food. Nothing microwaved or mushy. Just legit Hong Kong food. And even though it took us a bit before we got settled in at our hotel, we were fortune enough that there were some places open nearby. To top it off, we were incredibly lucky to pick the one place where they had excellent wonton egg noodle soup. Definitely the best I had the entire trip!

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