Friday, August 19, 2005

Doing a little better

I was able to focus on my game this evening. ChiyoChan is at a party. ChiyoMama is letting me decompress at Go. One of my biggest projects was completed and will only require cosmetic tweaks this weekend before its presentation on Monday. I've taken off half of the burdens that I started my week with.

All this allowed me to play better.

First game applying
"denial of base" strategy


Second game, applying
the same strategy.


After two losses, I won against the LibertyBot (24k) with a 5-stone handicap. I then won against rbraham (27k) in a ranked game with a 3-stone handicap and against dpc (23k) in a free game with a 7-stone handicap. rbraham seemed to understand that concentration affects one's ability but dpc seemed to be unhappy with me. He probably thinks that I'm some sandbagger and I suspect that I'm now on his censored list. I owe rbraham an even match soon.

Maybe my rank will change tomorrow and I'll be entitled to fewer handicaps.

But I do think that I was well-focused and playing a more solid strategic game as yoyoma (2k) had taught me in one of our reviews. He explained, in effect, that I didn't have to kill groups, only that I had to keep them from interconnecting and forming any base with eyes. That was what I focused on and it seemed to have worked well this evening.

In tactics, I applied mungo's (? but he's an ex-4k) lesson of keeping my connection points either well-protected or, preferrably, solid. I avoided weak points which could be cut.

4 Comments:

At 12:43 AM, August 20, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Indeed you were playing well tonight! Thanks for the game, and my apologies for playing so sloppily, perhaps we'll meet again soon. I'm also reading 'Learn To Play Go' Vol II (& III as well), and another book I picked up atthe GO Congress called 'A Scientific Introduction to GO', which I'm not finding as useful, though it has some fun historical facts. By the way, I didn't see how to initiate any kind of a buddy list on KGS, but perhaps I'm not paying attention as was evidenced in our game! :-) Take care, and I look forward to reading about your progress... and making sure I can create a solid base with eyes!

~Shawn

 
At 1:02 AM, August 20, 2005, Blogger ChiyoDad said...

Now worries. Thanks for the game. We'll play an even one next time.

Ms.Kim's books are, IMHO, among the best for beginners. I have yet to write-up my Kyu Review for Vol.1 of that series. I still have 10% of Vol.2 to finish but I keep sampling other books from the library.

As umezawayu (instructor on KGS) had noted, experience needs to be coupled with knowledge. Three of my successful counterattacks were learned through the course of having lost stones and matches when these were played against me by former opponents.

 
At 4:59 PM, August 20, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi ChiyoDad!

Your latest games do look interesting. :) I'd very much enjoy seeing how they played out. Can the SGF's be uploaded?

Shadowcat(IGS)
ScatCat(KGS)

 
At 5:46 PM, August 20, 2005, Blogger ChiyoDad said...

Thanks Shadowcat.

There are hyperlinks to the SGFs in the post (one for each game). You can save the files to your drive and open them with glGo or any other SGF reader.

 

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