Alejo's Tenuki

Today starts the 5th Rioplatense Tournament, a tournament among Spanish-speaking countries which takes place on KGS. The tournament is paired with McMahon to 6 rounds, which lasts till early October. It's open and handicapped, but I guess that I would need somewhat like 20 stones to beat Fernando Aguilar (one of the strongest latin player, if not the strongest one).

This will be my first Go tournament and, tonight, in the first game, I'll be facing a 7k with 0.5 komi... I guess I won't be an easy game at all... but starting my first tournament with a defeat wouldn't be nice either.

I've given up my sabbatical period on Go and started playing more seriously on KGS. This means that each day I play a couple of serious games against players from my level or correctly handicapped ones. I have yet to lose one of these games (only played 5 on this 2 days of training), but I can tell you that my nervous system is going to collapse during the game, so I won't get my maximum perfomance.

We've already talked about sacrificing stones for "leaving the aji". On the next posts I'm going to talk about double hane too. And I hope you've watched the videos of the Workshops which took place at the European Go Congress this year, because you are going to put into practice all this three techniques in a single sequence in corner of a game.

Remember to stop each time you see the Question Image loading at the bottom of the page. You shouldn't see the following diagrams if you want to read the solution on your own.

This is not a prepared board for a post, but a real game played on KGS on August 14th between two 8k players.

Is there anywhere you'd like to play? In fact, you don't really NEED to play somewhere currently. You could play somewhere like S15 or S16. But imagine you are playing a Ko, and you need a Ko threat, is there any possible Ko threat there?

There are a couple of cutting points around there, but the game followed after a cut at P16 and its appropiate response by my opponent. This sequence is sente because of the presence of the M17 stone, which black needs to kill (or, at least, atari) as a response. In this way, I used the aji of the M17 to cut black in more groups, but my 22 and 24 end up as sacrificed stones too...

You may argue that sacrificing the stones there wasn't a good idea. I'm not really certain about it. Lately I realised that my game didn't improve because I didn't try new things or new ideas I had while playing and limited myself to play as I had been doing. Since I've started trying "new ideas", my game has improved a little bit.

Well, time to think a little bit again. Where would you play your next move as white? You may want to defend the possible cut at R15 but that isn't the right solution. I can tell you that black's four stones around Q17 die. Try using a few minutes with this move.

Though the sequence from P17 till the next move was played in 17
seconds considering black's time too (it was a fast game) and that I hadn't read the whole sequence during
the game, I decided to play the double hane here.

Now that you know I made a double hane, go back to the previous diagram and see what happens. If you still don't read the solution, it's because you haven't watched the single-digit kyu Workshop, or that your reading ability doesn't reach that far. In fact, as I told you, I didn't read this either during the game. So you'd better try it for a couple of minutes.

This intuition I'm building for this sort of moves is what is causing my level to grow little by little with my reading ability being the same. In the next diagrams you have the whole continuation of the sequence. Try reading them and considering all possible variations.

Here we can see the double hane, with black cutting, white deffending and black atari-ing at S18.

What is the next move? White has two stones on the other side, with 3 liberties. Black is about to create one eye. If you've watched the SDK workshop, you must be able to read this. If you haven't you probably won't be able to read it.

And here it is: the eye-stealing tesuji.

W30 at T17

Well, there you have it. After White 30, black is forced to answer at S18. After White 32, black is forced to kill the two stones. After White 34, black is forced to kill white 34... Then white will play Q18, which forces black to fill his own eye by playing at S17.

So this is the final result:

As you can see, black dies, because white plays first, but they have the same amount of liberties (2 vs 2). It is not necessary, but can you make it so that white has one extra liberty?

Yes, the only thing you need to do is to atari at N18. This way black needs to escape by playing L17 and you can chase him once again by playing O18. Black must answer connecting at M17. Now white has 3 liberties, and black only 2.

You have the game loaded on ZGo on the "continue reading" section. I've only loaded the first 50 moves, because, later in the game, are moves which I'd like to mention on other posts.

If you still haven't watched the SDK workshop, here you have it.

There hasn't been much activity on the last weeks on the Go Blogsphere, but it seems like people have returned from their vacations and started posting, on GoDiscussions too. I've collected a few interesting posts which have appeared on the internet during the whole month, that is the reason for not calling this post "recommended articles of the week".

At GoDiscussions there are a couple of topics which are quite interesting (the first two links) and some other interesting news

• How to play a stronger player with 9 stones handicap


• Video Lectures
  


• How to enjoy your game - at 361points.com which links us to the Korean Times online journal.


• 32nd Gosei title decided - From Go Aggregator
  It's all decided: Cho U defends his Gosei title against challenger Yokota Shigeaki, 9p with a convincing performance. Most observers on PandaNet long thought Yokota would pick up his first win but Cho played the endgame meticulously. The Gosei title was covered live on PandaNet.


• Yu Changhyeok vs. Kim Jiseok, 2007 Korean Baduk League at Contemplations on Go.
  This is one position from a new blog I discovered a few days ago; it has very good studying material from real games and a few tsumego. Well done Grandyan!


• EGC 2007: Villach 14-28 July - at Go Around.
  Another incomer in the Go Blogsphere. Though the blog is in italian, it has some nice pictures of the European Go Congress 2007 and it comes which a surprise at the bottom of the article. Something which reminds me of this nice post at Yehuda.

This situation is extracted from a real game played on KGS between to high dan players. The game was played by matsumoto (7d) vs gerard (6d) and it is available on the "continue reading section" (so as not to load Zgo on the homepage and feeds). Obviously, as I'm not a dan player either, I won't comment on things which I don't get, so I'll just try to focus on some aspects of the game and leave some of them openned for anyone to comment.

What would you do if you were black? Just take a minute to think about it, there are too many possibilities so it's not like you are going to make the same than a 7d player, but I want you to process a little bit the board before continuing.
(Everytime you see the image and line like the following one, you should stop for reading or thinking about a situation.)

As you can see, white "captured" Black L16 stone after playing move 20. We can see how black has been captured in that part of the board, with not many chances of escaping... But let's think of it once again: we are talking about a 7d and a 6d player. When Black played L16, did he play there on purpose? Did he expect to be pincered but assumed that he could escape?

I don't know if black had read this sequence or not, but I can tell you that white territory on the upper side is very large for a high-dan game, so Black won't allow himself to be captured so easily.

Let's see how the game goes on:

Ok... Let's read it out loud... Black pushes on a jump, so white must answer the peep by connecting and getting heavier. B23 starts a fight for black; a fight here would reinforce black. W24 tries to cut black.

Attention to move B29!!! He is making use of the stones 23 and 27 while sacrificing them!! This is what I told you about on the post "Leaving Aji for future purposes"; white could kill these cutting stones just by playing at O19, but there are bigger things going on than these 2 stones.

And then he makes a good shape with move 31, both deffensive and creating eyespace.

Do you think black will be able to escape now? What will happen with the stones around L13?
Try making a little bit of reading before continuing. I guess you won't get the right sequence unless you are a high-dan player (in which case you shouldn't be reading this blog, you'd be bored), I think you can assume more or less what will happen.

Seems like black made himself quite strong in that area... or not? We can see he has a false eye K15, but he could get one or even two eyes by playing at H15. But being enclosed is a very bad situation for this group. Black has to escape.

We can see how White74 is trying to press black for, in case Black doesn't answer, enclosing him. But Black plays move 79 and manages to escape.

Can you read a little bit of continuation??

White has to chase from both sides, so he has to play 1 stone on each side (which means 2 turns) to, later on, enclose black; while black only has to play 1 single stone to escape (one turn). So if black just goes on and on escaping, he won't be caught.

This is the situation that arises a few moves later

We can see how black has tried to escape with the triangled stones, while white was chasing him with his.

Why did I mark that area with crosses? It's what white has gained while chasing black. Now, we can see that white moves were "double purpose moves" and the result of playing such sequences.

In the end, there were some big fights all over the board and White ended up winning by time.

Hi there!!

I finally got the SmartGo 2.7.1 reviewed. The review lasts for 26 minutes and covers as many features and details as I could and comments on a few weak points. In fact, I think that even if you have it, you'll find some good details you may not be aware of. Is it worth it to buy it or not? I can tell you that if I had to choose between Many Faces of Go 11 and SmartGo 2.7, I would definitelly go for the last one (while I can't say anything about MoyoGoStudio as I still haven't reviewed it).

Better see it by yourself, compare and decide:

As you can see, the video was made on a very large resolution, so youtube doesn't let you see the video properly. You can download this video directly from my server: HERE. As you'll see, the video occupies around 50MB at a 1280x1024 resolution.

You may argue that the filesize is very big, but you should realise that most divx films (around 90 minutes) occupy around 700 MB, so I think I can be qutie proud of the compression procedure. I've checked this video both on Linux and Windows, though I've been reported audio problems with beta versions of this review and I've changed the audio codec, let me know if you have any problem with it.

As for SmartGo 3.0, there is already a list of improvements Anders Kierulf is working on: exporting to images, improving options panel and connection tactics...

We'll be waiting for it!!