Hey everyone. Sorry that I’ve been MIA for a while. As you might have guessed, I’ve been caught up with work along with the many obligations that come with the holiday season. Lots of late nights, running errands, cooking, cleaning, etc.
While I haven’t been able to blog as much as I would like, I couldn’t bear the thought of ending 2014 without some sort of retrospective.
Hey everyone. Sorry for not updating the weekly status report for the last two weeks. I’ve been doing a bit of introspection and came to the realization that everything had started to become a bit too mundane for my liking. I know that this runs slightly counter to my whole notion of “consistency,” but I feel like there comes a point when it becomes robotic (which is the last thing I want for this blog).
As many of you are aware, the legendary Go Seigen passed away on November 30th. I’ve been wracking my brain for a way to properly honor him, but it is still eluding me. To help the process out, I decided that it would be a good start working through my collection of his games again. As I played through his game (above), I started to feel the embers begin to catch flame again.
I’ve had the good fortune of playing with two 5+ dans recently. Though my game crumbled very quickly in the middle game, I received interesting feedback from both players: I have a good sense of the opening.
To say I was surprised was a bit of an understatement. One of the things I always prided myself in was the willingness to fight and dive into complicated situations. So naturally, I always assumed that the strongest part of my game would be the middle game. Apparently I am wrong. Haha.
As I’ve been starting to unravel the tightly wound knot that has been at the core of my fear to play games the way I used to, one of the things I noticed is that there is one joseki in particular that has played a major role in my discomfort at playing full games.
Yup. The one-space low pincer to the high-one space approach to the 3-4. Words cannot express how much I hated seeing that move played against me due to one simple fact: I have no idea how to properly play against it.