Up till now, my go studies have been pretty sporadic. I may have read my fair share of books and watched my fair share of videos, but I would have to say that I really never spent the time and energy really absorbing them. Sure, I was exposed to lots of new concepts and ideas; but implementing them in my games was a whole different animal.

After reading a post from fellow go blogger Noseki, I was inspired to take a new approach with my go studies by fully immersing myself in it. For example, in my game for Yunguseng Dojang, I replayed every move on the real board and really took my time to absorb each and every move (which is the reason I ended up losing on time since I completely did not pay attention to my computer which was telling me I was running out of time).

In addition, I’ve also revamped my primary study materials for books. I’m going back to the Level Up Series (starting with Level Up! Review 1 since I don’t have time to start all the way back at Level Up 1) and working my way through it with extreme thoroughness. In other words, no solution whatsoever. I will work through every problem and solve it with absolute certainty before moving on.

If I have any hope of becoming any stronger, I think that it’s finally time that I stopped cutting corners. The time for me to be knocking at the door of the dans is fast approaching, and I have no intention of letting myself be caught unawares when that time comes.

Overview

This week has been focused on one thing: playing more games. As you’ll notice in my games section, I played a whopping 18 live games this week! And though I have been on an epic losing streak (with an occasional win to here and there), I can definitely feel the inexperience of being on the battlefield affect my play. Hopefully in time I will be losing due to actual mistakes instead of just playing moves on the board “just because.”

Another milestone for this week is the official start of the Yunguseng Dojang! The first official lecture was on Monday (May 5th) and it was on local techniques. Though I had heard of the techniques before (i.e., across attachment, break the dog’s face, and indirect defense), it was really great to have Inseong break down the different techniques while also showing where they appear within real games.

I also played my first round as well last night. I ended up losing by time (because I was playing the game on a real board and lost track of time), but I felt that it was a game I wasn’t ashamed of. I tried a number of new things and tried to avoid any egregious errors. Of course, in the review, I got torn apart so it didn’t feel so great; but I think those are the kinds of lessons that tend to burn in your memory. Ah well. Next game I’ll do better!

Training Regimen

• Spend about 50% of your time playing games - Though I haven’t measured this out with accuracy, I am simply trying to make sure that I play as much as I can. Believe it or not, I’ve started playing 10 minute games in order to ease up time pressure on myself. I used to hate this time setting, but I’m starting to gain a new appreciation for it. More on this when I’ve solidified my position on it.
• Spend 10 minutes/day perusing a new book of go - I happen to have a lot of books that I own but haven’t read, so I created this new task in order to allow me to actually go through all the books that I own. I know it’s not quite the same as studying, but it’s fun for me and plus it’ll allow me to put more book reviews up in the future.
• Spend 20 minutes/day focusing on one topic of go - I’ve noticed that my attention span for a particular subject is super volatile these days. One day I’m interested in positional judgment, and the next day I’m curious about joseki. So instead of binding myself down to the same book (which gets boring for me), I devised this task in order to allow for topic changes while still giving myself adequate time to really study and absorb one topic per day. Lectures also can be used in place of books as well.

Games*

• KGS - 6 games
• Tygem - 20+ games
• IGS - 5+ game
• DGS - 5 ongoing games
• OGS - 3 ongoing games
  *I’m probably going to need a new structure for doing this. I’m starting to play a lot more now and it’s getting hard to track the exact number of games I’ve been playing. Do you think it’s useful that I keep specific metrics? Or is there something better I can do. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Books

• Dictionary of Basic Joseki, Volume 1
• The Theory and Practice of Tsumego
• Positional Judgment

Videos

• YSD - AYD S9 1st lecture Knight move across attachment / Break the dog’s face / Indirect defense
• YSD - Season 1 Fri 1st July 20:00 Opening Theory, ABC Examples (In Progress)
• YSD - Season 6 1st lecture Theme lecture ‘1-2-3 reading’ (In Progress)

I mentioned recently that I wanted to turn my attention Tygem because of how different the players are there. I tried explaining it to a friend a night or two ago but couldn’t find the right game to really illustrate it.

Well, after talking with frozensoul today, I thought I’d fire up one of my old dan level accounts on Tygem and take a stab at playing on it again.

Oy vey… the epitome of aggressiveness occurred tonight. Invade… fight…. invade… attach… die…. invade… fight… ahhhh……

I think I’ve lost like 5+ games in a row now. While I feel like I’m on a bit of an emotional tilt from getting pulverized game after game, I think it’s good medicine to offset my victory at the Washington Baduk Open Championship.

Perhaps it’s the fact that I haven’t played much, or maybe it’s just that I’m really weak against Korean players. In fact, as I think back to the games I lost, I think the bottom line is that they were able to outfight me and play much sharper moves each time (which ended up killing me constantly). I tried to swing by with all my might, but it was like I was poking them with a sewing needle and then came down on me with a two handed axe.

Ah well. They say to lose your first 100 games when you start playing right? Looks like I’ll be starting that exercise up again as I dive back into the war zone. deep breath See you on the other side.

Overview

As many of you know, I spent the past weekend at the 1st Washington Baduk Open Championship and have been therefore swamped with trying to make sure I took the time to write the posts before too much time had passed. It was an eye-opening experience that has given me an opportunity to really change my perspectives on how I’ve been approaching go. Especially after talking with Myung (9p) with some of his thoughts, I definitely am looking to make some changes to my training regimen.

The only other thing that’s worth mentioning is that I am officially making a move away from KGS to either WBaduk or Tygem (depending on whichever I can get running on my Mac). It’s not that I won’t be logged in anymore or will refuse to play on it, but I’ll be reserving KGS for playing with friends and anyone who asks me for a game. Otherwise, my focus on playing “ranked games” will be moving to the Korean servers. More on that to come when I have a well formulated thought as to why I’m doing this. Till next week!

Training Regimen

• Temporarily On Hold

Games

• Tygem - 4 games
• WBaduk - 2 games
• DGS - 6 ongoing games
• OGS - 2 ongoing games

Books

• N/A

Part I - Interlude - Part II

When I woke up the next day, I felt like a brand new person. I know that I could have been like a lot of other players who would have recalled the performance from the first day and felt sorry for themselves, but the the experience I had watching Park Sohyun (3p) play the night before had struck me and really opened my eyes.

I was running a little late that morning, and ended up getting there around 9:35am. According to the schedule, I was already late and so I half-expected to find everyone already playing their games and my clock already running. However, it seemed like I wasn’t the only one running late because the pairings hadn’t even been put up when I arrived.

After catching up with some people though, the roster was finally put up. As I scanned the list, I found my opponent: a 5 kyu. He would be taking Black and I was giving him no handicap.

My opponent was 5 kyu and I wasn’t giving him a handicap. Had it been yesterday, I probably would have been frustrated that I was “demoted;” but I was past those stupid egotistical thoughts today.

As I sat down in front of my opponent, I was very clear on what I was going to do: I was going to try and play like Sohyun did the night before. It was going to be strong and interesting go. That’s the go I would play. Below is the kifu. (The commentary version will be Monday Go Meditation: Game 63)

It was an exciting game, but one that I felt far more in control of than any of the games previously. When my opponent resigned, I let out a sigh of relief. “Yes.” I thought, “At least I’m now 2-2. And to top it off, I’m feeling a hell of a lot better than yesterday.”

After Round 4, Myung Wan Kim (9p) and I grabbed our bento boxes (unfortunately I didn’t take a photo this time, but I got the galbi one) and I took him back to the hotel so he could rest / work on other things (since there was a few hours gap before he had to be back).

When I dropped him off, he asked me to pick him up around 3:10pm. So when I arrived back at the tournament, I looked at the time.

“1:00pm is when Round 5 starts,” I thought, “And assuming my game takes even just the main time alone, I would be over time and late picking up Myung.”

With my record at 2-2, I seriously debated not playing in the 5th round and taking a buy. After all, 2-2 isn’t a bad record to end the tournament with right?

A good part of this was my insecurity at the prospects of possibly ending the tournament with a record of 2-3 and losing the final round, but I realized quickly that it was stupid. I decided to simply play in the 5th Round, and if push came to shove, I would resign the game if it took too long because I wanted to make sure I would pick up Myung on time.

Before I knew it, the fifth round pairings were up. My opponent was a 4 kyu that I knew from the area. There would be no handicap and I was taking white. Below are the results of the my final game for the tournament. (The commentary version will be Monday Go Meditation: Game 64)

When the game was coming close to the end, time was also drawing near as well. It was around 2:30pm when I had begun my final hunt to kill the group on the top; but my opponent still had plenty of time left on his clock, so I couldn’t fault him for trying to take the time to make sure he was really dead. However, with time drawing close, I began mentally preparing myself to resign and simply be satisfied with the game that I had played.

As you might imagine, I breathed a sigh of relief and thanked my lucky stars when he resigned. “Hoorah!” I thought, “ I still can go pickup Myung with time to spare!” And with that, I went to report my results and went off to pick him up.

When we got back, there was still some time to spare before the remaining festivities began (i.e., lecture and simul games). This was perfect however, because I was able to spend some time talking with Sohyun (since she had been running in and out and busy with other obligations). We went over my game in Round 5, and I even got her to sign a book that she had given me the night before.

As we wrapped up one of our conversations, a fellow Korean player had come by; so she had the idea to give both of us a simul game while we were waiting for everything to start (which was incredibly kind of her). I decided to play an even game with her since I wanted to feel the full power of her skills.

Unfortunately we were only able to play about 20 or so moves before she was summoned to play the official simul games scheduled for the event. However, what I will say about the game was that even in that series of short exchanges, it was quite an experience to watch her start dismantling what I thought was a good position.

With all the games finished, they had the following activities going on simultaneously:

(1) Myung Wan Kim (9p) reviewing one of Andy Liu’s (1p) game from the tournament.

(2) Park Sohyun (3p) playing simultaneous games with eight different dan level players.

(3) Michael Chen (8d) playing simultaneous games with 5 players that were around SDK players (i.e., 1k to 9k).

(4) Allan Abramson (previous AGA President) giving simultaneous games to DDK players (i.e., 30k to 10k).

After a couple of hours, the time finally came for the awards ceremony.

The tournament was broken up into seven sections:

1. Open Section (7d+)
2. Dan A (4-6d)
3. Dan B (1-3d)
4. Kyu A (1-5k)
5. Kyu B (6-10k)
6. Kyu C (11-15k)
7. Kyu D (16k+)

When they announced the first place prize for the Kyu D division, “… 1st Place, trophy and $100” echoed over the microphone. As I heard the cash prize amount, I’d be lying if I said that part of me didn’t feel just a twinge of jealously as I heard the cash prize amount. After all, it wasn’t chump change by any stretch of the means!

As I sat there listening to them announce the winners, I recalled the time that I had won first place in the Pumpkin Classic. I smiled as I remembered that momentous feeling. And a small part of me wished that I had done better in the tournament; but then I reminded myself that I had nothing to be ashamed of for this tournament. After all, on top managing to bring my record up to 3-2, the experiences and the lessons that I had learned through this tournament were priceless and I would not have traded it in for a better record or any trophy or prize money.

“Kyu A Division (1-5k),” echoed over the microphone.

My attention returned to the present as I thought. “Oo… I wonder who won my division.”

– let’s pause and let’s rewind the clock for a sec –

Earlier when I had been walking around, I had heard the tournament directors talking about how the kyu divisions did not have any people who won 4 games except for one person. (I later found out it was Bob Crites who had been performing well in tournaments recently.)

A part of me became hopeful at that thought that maybe I was still in the running for something, but then I brushed the notion aside as I recalled that I had not exactly played my best consistently in the tournament.

– return to present moment –

“3rd Place - Weixin Wang, 4k - $50 and a trophy”

applause and multiple cameras taking photos going off

“Huh,” I thought, “That’s the guy I lost to in the 3rd round. If he got third place, then I’m most definitely out of the running now.”

“2nd Place - John Zhao, 3k - $100 and a trophy”

“Wait,” I thought, “That’s the guy I beat in the 1st round. Maybe I still have a shot?”

As I’m sitting there bewildered and trying to make sense of how the tiebreakers might actually work, the microphone echoes again:

“1st Place - Benjamin Hong…”

I honestly wish someone had taken a picture of my face, because I can tell you that I was completely and utterly surprised. But yeah, I wasn’t hallucinating or imaging things. I really did get 1st place.

The thing about tournaments is that you never know what’s going to happen. I went the first day with a 1-2 record and completely thought I was out of the running. In fact, I even thought about dropping out the last round because of stupid insecurities. Imagine if I had done that? Imagine if I had just given up? The story would not have been nearly as exciting would it?

Though I am very grateful that I got 1st place, I really believe that this tournament will forever go down as one of the pinnacle moments in my journey as a go player. The experiences and things that I learned about myself through the trials and tribulations are ones that I will forever remember fondly and I look forward to continue building on them.

Many thanks also goes out to Keith, Gary, Andy, Todd, Alan, the Korean Baduk Association and many others for making this tournament a huge success. And of course, special thanks goes out to SmartGo for its awesome iPad app that serves as my trusty sidekick for recording my games.

Finally, a huge thanks goes out to Myung Wan Kim (9p) and Park Sohyun (3p) for making this tournament an unforgettable experience and providing guidance when I really needed it!

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

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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