Alejo's Tenuki

During the last few months, I’ve been teaching go to a couple of newbies. Actually, one of them is improving quite fast, so I might not be able to call him newbie in a few months… However, observing his development and its similarities with mine I realised there is some sort of pattern when it comes to go self-esteem and the actual level of go.

When we learn the rules of go, our esteem is risen by the fact of learning a challenging and interesting game. A few minutes later, we’ve already realised that our reading ability and our innate capacity to predict the opponent’s move is… suboptimal, so to call it.

After a few games, our reading ability starts to improve. Not much, but being able to read 2-3 moves at the beginning seems like a major achievement and we start to feel more comfortable while playing. Reading ability is improved and becomes natural after a few dozen games and the proverb “Lose your first 100 games as soon as possible” suits perfectly to this phase. Sooner or later, we happen to reach a level around 15-17k, a level where our reading has improved over the 5 moves barrier in certain positions and we can read 2-3 moves in almost any situation. Victories start to flow and our opponents’ stones are massacred if their reading ability is just slightly worse.

On the other hand, when a 16k player faces a 13k player, the weakest one realises Go it’s not about killing and capturing. There is something more on the board. 12k moves aren’t directly attacking its opponent, but rather far away. From the point of view of the weakest player it doesn’t really make sense during the first games, till he realises that 12k players chase territory and it behaviour is completely different. While the weakest player may hold up to its rival on a corner fighting, the general result of the game is settled by another factor the 16k player still lacks: strategy.

Improving strategy is one of the toughest parts of learning go. Basics are easily grasped: making a base, extending from walls, shimari facing and the corners, when to pincer… and they are easily played during the games. Extending from a wall, creating big moyos without fighting… both of these strategy concepts give a boost to players’ self-esteem.

During our training, eventually we happen to watch dan games. But it is only when you reach SDK level, that players realise the huge amount of josekis available, the subtle difference between placing a stone one line above or below, further or closer a wall… the flow of tenukis all over the board from dan game crash against the SDK concept of go. SDK player self-esteem collapses as it realises the huge difference that 3 stones make at a SDK.

“These people are nuts!” and “They play something different, with the same rules, but a different game” was my reaction to the first pro game I saw. I guess I still haven’t got over it.

Commemorating the 10 billion downloads from the android market, some apps have seen their priced reduced to 0,10 cents. I’m quite certain it applies for both Euros and US dollars. These sales have been going on for the last 3 days and each app only stays for a reduced price for 24 hours, so I’d recommend you to check the list daily. You’ll find the list directly on the market homepage.

Among these apps I found Apparatus, which is rapidly climbing up on my top ten android games. Apparatus is a brain teasing game, where you are supposed to make a ball get into a nest. Easy, a piece of cake during the few initial stages. As levels go by, difficulty increases at an awesome pace and puzzles require more than 10 minutes each… Actually, I spent over 30 minutes on my last one, and I still haven’t reached level 30. Yesterday, this game was available for 10 cents.

This game reminded me of other games you may want to take a look at, if you like this kind of masochism:

• Cut the Rope: this game is very “cute”, sometimes even childish, but some levels are still difficult. Available for 1 USD or 0.68 euros.
• Refraction: I don’t know how many long hours I’ve been playing this game. Some levels are so hard you could even spend days on it and still enjoy it. I must recognise I failed to solve the last world… after spending several hours on each stage, I failed. It costs 2 USD, but you can try the lite version first, with 20 free levels.

• World of Goo: Very nice adaptation from the original PC game, everything looks exactly the same as the original game. Strongly recomended. Unfortunately, I had already finished the PC version, so this one was a piece of cake but the last levels. It costs 4 euros.
• Quell: Another challenging game which is loaded into my phone. As peaceful and charming as challenging. Very good app indeed and costs 1 euro.

To sum it up, I would recomend “Cut the rope” and “World of Goo” as a must have game for Android users as they represent two nice introductory games into android puzzling. Refraction, quell and, above all, Apparatus would be left only for gamers with a deep interest into brain teasing puzzles and have already solved the ones above.

Lately I’ve decided to start playing go again through the net. Unfortunately, I still haven’t beat my online go anxiety syndrome, so I’m left with watching games on KGS or IGS. During my last night shift I could watch a blitz game played by one 6d and one 3d in KGS. I’m not telling their names since I didn’t ask permission for it.
Time limit for each move was 10 seconds. Taking into account that limit, blitz games tend to be somewhat chaotic and crazy… and still way above my reading ability.

Take a look at this section of the board: White to move.

As you’ll see, this required multiple eye-stealing tesujis on a row and sacrificing a kamikaze stone at S18. So black ends up dead. It’s not very difficult to read right now, after all the tesujis have been played and you have way more than 10 seconds. Would you be able to set this up so that it works with 10 seconds per move? I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t place K19 and R18 with the right timing.

After all, stone placing in Go has a lot to do with timing. And when real timing comes into action I must tell you it was black turn to play. Can black escape? You’ve got ten seconds. Play or give up some stones? What would you choose?  Actually, they still had one extra byo-yomi period, so I’ll give you another extra 10 seconds.

The real black player couldn’t solve it during the game. After a minute, I was convinced that black would die anyway and I was obviously wrong. It wasn’t till I replayed it on a board that I realised my mistake. Black could have survived.

Not only survived. Let’s take a look at the whole board:

As you can see there is a white group floating right in the middle of the board. Actually, during the real game, chasing the upper black group only started as a response to black’s attack to H12 group.

So, now, make your move as Black on the board above. You have the real game and the solution in the game below:

A few days ago I made a new research for Go apps on the android market. One of the few new apps I found is this one: “Go Scoring Camera”. There’s a free trial version which works for 7 days available at the Android Market. The full app costs 3.40 €, which is around 4.5 $ currently.

Here you have the videoreview

Beware of the height you need to get above the board. It took me several attempts till I realised I had to stand up and rise my hands a little bit to fit the 19×19 board on an average table. Otherwise, the program will cut down the sides of the board… though I still don’t understand the reasoning behind this.

Another point which I’m curious about is the need for internet connection. Since the image needs to be interpreted on a remote server, the image needs to be uploaded… but wouldn’t it be possible to make the process locally with the latest phones? I mean, during the second half of this year some dual-core cell phones have been released so it would be an interesting option to add to the app.

Here you have the market links for both apps:
Go Scoring Camera – Trial version
Go Scoring Camera – Full Version 

On the next videoreview, I’m going to talk about another awesome app which turned out to be very useful at our club.

A few months ago I already mentioned Kamisado as one with uncommon mechanics. This game has received several awards since its release in Essen 2008. Today I’ll try and make a small review and a brief introduction to this game.

The rules are very simple and can be learnt within a minute:
- Players control either the White dragon towers or the Black dragon towers.
- The winner is the first player who gets a dragon tower to the final row on the opponent’s side of the board.
- Movement is any number of spaces (but not over other pieces) directly forwards, or diagonally forwards. Horizontal moves are not allowed.
- The only catch: you must move your piece that matches the colour of the square on which your opponent moved his last dragon tower to
- If the required piece can’t move because it is blocked, the other player gets to move his dragon tower corresponding to the colour of the square the blocked piece is on.

Just in case you need some clarifications and samples, check this link.

Considering the size of the board (8×8), the mandatory “go-to-the-front” moves and the impossibility to jump over other pieces, the amount of moves and, therefore, the depth of the game, are limited. Thus, I’m certain any computer may solve this game within the next years.

On the other hand, due to the limitation of moves, it’s somewhat easy to read out right from the first games. Though the first moves have lots of potential, the middle game comes shortly after and players may find themselves with pieces unable to move to more than 2 different colours. As the game advances, options become scarce and reading becomes easier.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of two moves: I happened to win with just 2 moves. Twice out of tenths, okay, but it happened. Here you have the initial position which led my opponent to beat me with two moves.

In order to improve Kamisado’s depth, each game is based on several round, previously arranged with your opponent. Each victory will give you one or two points and modify the piece which arrived to the opposing row. This modifications grant the piece special powers and limitations, but I’m only used to its limitations since my rival still hasn’t allowed me to use its powers. So, from my point of view, it’s handicapping the winner of the previous round.

Forcing your opponents’ moves isn’t something you find on a daily basis.

While preparing for my last journey I decided I’d bring one of my long forgotten Go books. Though some readers will certainly think I’m talking about the book Tesuji -which I forgot at a train a month ago-, I’m actually talking about my other Go book: “Five Hundred and One Opening Problems“.

Assuming I’d spend some long hours at the airports and over a dozen of hours in planes, taking a go book along with me seemed like a good idea. And it soon proved me right. Straight from the beginning I was surprised by another wonderful introduction to some Go concepts and some very basic strategic guidelines. Remembering of Tesuji, I can recall having read an interesting explanation on how to read as an introduction. Tesuji isn’t intended for dan players, but more for the DDK and SDK. However, its introduction is just perfect when trying to explain how the mental process of reading works for newcomers.

In spite of reading the whole book, I would suggest beginners to read just the introduction of these books. And I’m sure there must be some other good newbie focused material around. Since I can’t actually buy all the books around just for the introduction, these introductions just brought to my mind the existence of a internet file with some tenths of go books I wrote about long time ago, the Go Education Collection.

The introduction of Five Hundred and One Opening Problems has two parts:

Concepts: it defines and gives one or two samples of the following concepts: aji, atari, gote, hane, miai, moyo, sabaki, light, heavy, sente, tesuji, thick and thin. This section appears in every book from the “Mastering the basics” collection.

Strategic considerations during fuseki. The part I like the most… and my pupils hate the most, since I say it a few times while reviewing their games:

• Is there an urgent move?
• One that makes a base for your stones.
• One that takes away the base of your opponent’s stones.
• One that takes the initiative in a certain area
• Is there a big move?
• One that extends from your own position
• One that prevents an extesnsion by your opponent.
• One that threatens an invasion.
• One that prevents an invasion
• Is there a big moyo?
• Do you need to expand or close off your moyo?
• Do you need to erase or invade your opponent’s moyo?

If you want to go for a newbie-focused book, I might go for the “A complete introduction to the game” by Cho Chi Kun, who starts from the very basic go rules to somewhat harder tesujis and strategic concepts by the end of the book. Obviously, reading this book needs to be accompanied by some games, otherwise it’s useless. By the way, thank you Matrod for letting me know about this book.

Would anyone want to comment any book?