It’s been five days since I last played a game of go, but it has felt like an eternity. Haha. I found myself logging onto KGS multiple times a day to look at game records of my friends or watch other games just to prevent myself from getting entangled in a game. It doesn’t quite measure up to playing, but it helped to satisfy the urge to just play. I’m looking forward to my game with Nate tomorrow, but I’ll probably be avoiding ranked games for a little.

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As a game progresses over time, it is very easy to lose track of the connections between your groups. After all, if you’re intently staring at the board for a long time, it’s not so far fetched to start seeing groups being connected when in fact they aren’t. In fact, if you take a quick look at the kifu snapshot above, it would seem that the top black group is doing alright. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

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Weekly Go Wednesday, Issue #4

Tactic #1: The Wedge

Here is a scenario that occurs quite frequently in games.

White just played the one point jump. Black to play.

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Weekly Go Wednesday, Issue #3

Of all the go topics in the entire universe, this is by far the single most popular one. After all, getting one stone strong is the eternal pursuit of every go player. There are a plethora of articles out there on how to do so, but my goal is to provide the fastest route for you to progress as a go player (to SDK at the bare minimum).

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For those who have never tried it before, playing an even game against a player that is reportedly two stones stronger than you can be a scary feeling. On one hand, you think “This can’t be too bad.” Yet, on the other hand, the board looks quite naked as you stare at the empty board while knowing that you should have two handicap stones sitting on the board. As someone who’s been through a couple experiences recently, it is quite the daunting feeling…

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Weekly Go Wednesday, Issue #2

For many players, one of the major obstacles to playing go is time. After all, an average game can take anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes depending on the level of thinking that goes into each game. So in order to accommodate the faster players and those without much time, the format known as blitz go was born.

For new players who’ve never played blitz go, the general idea is that you have less than a minute to make each move. If you fail to make your move within the allotted time, you lose by default on time.

While there are different perspectives on blitz go, you should seriously consider the following points as to whether or you should be playing blitz go:

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Today’s shidougo lesson comes from a person that I’ve come to befriend and look up to: frozensoul. If you’d like to help support his efforts in helping out players trying to get stronger, please visit his site for more information!

I guess you could call this my first “shidougo” victory… but I wouldn’t classify this as that due to the fact that frozensoul was actually trying to create a tie. So in reality, congratulations are in order for frozensoul for being only one point away from creating a tie!

Overall, I was really happy with my performance in this game. It honestly has nothing to do with the victory and more on the fact that I played almost every move with confidence. And for those who would remind me that frozensoul wasn’t actually trying to play anything crazy, the confidence I’m speaking of is more of a “I read it out to the best of my ability and I’ll give each move everything I got.”

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I have to admit that the responses that I received yesterday from my post have certainly made me reconsider my position from yesterday’s post, but ultimately I think it is more of a paradigm shift than necessarily regretting my decision to resign.

For those of you who have never seen this video, please take 20 seconds and watch this unbelievable and tragic event happen to a professional 9-dan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt1FvPxmmfE

Can you imagine? Playing a professional game on live television as a professional 9-dan and then putting yourself in self-atari? Although you have to admit, the man handled himself quite well and his reaction was quite priceless.

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Today, I am writing about a more solemn topic that I know most people would shy away from posting on. However, I believe that this post touches on something that almost every go player will encounter along their journey: the desire to win. It is a difficult topic for me to write at the moment since the disappointing kifu is fresh off the board, but by doing so I hope to capture a vulnerability that we all feel at one point or another.

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Weekly Go Wednesday, Issue #1

Welcome to the start of my Weekly Go Wednesday (WGW) series! This purpose of this series is to add some excitement to the middle of the week, so that before you know it, it’ll be the weekend again! If you have any requests or would like to be a guest writer on this series, be sure to let me know!

Unlike the games I’ve posted so far, today’s opponent has a bit of history that deserves to be recorded down for the ages to come. For those who want to check out the game commentary beforehand, go ahead and scroll down to the bottom before settling down with a hot beverage for a tale of a chance encounter that has been a big impact in my life ever since.

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