Alejo's Tenuki

A few weeks ago a friend of mine sent me a 360º panorama from the IT Crowd basement as he was aware of my enthusiasm towards this sitcom. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out images and objects… till I focused my eyes on the upper shelf behind Moss.

As you can see from the image above, they’ve placed 5 boardgames, in the following order: Memoir ’44 (is it the main game or an add-on?), Shadows over camelot, Mystery of the Abbey, Ticket to Ride and War onTerror. After checking the characteristics of every game I didn’t know, actually just 2 of them, it seems like the games were randomly bought and placed there. Obviously, these games would fit in a single collection but, taking into account the huge differences between them, it should be quite big. Mystery of the Abbey and Ticket to ride made me suspect about games driven by Hand Management but my theory failed against War on Terror, so that’s where I got my conclusion from.

I’m quite certain some of you wonder about the reason for posting. Easy: most Go players are somewhat nerds, who may enjoy watching this comedy and playing the same games I do. For the ones who didn’t know these games, I would recommend starting with Ticket to Ride, an easy family game with certain luck factor and lots of fun if played with 4-5 players.

Since I moved from home, changed job and modified my lifestyle, I’ve started playing go more often. In fact, I’ve been checking my stats on KGS and needed to fall back to the first half of 2008 to find a month with this playing rate.

Actually, it’s only been 12 games on KGS plus a few more on real life with my flat-mate, which places me around the 20 games per month. You may say:”that’s not too much, in fact, it’s too few”… but you’d do better to remember that I haven’t played a single game on KGS for the last 15 months and that 2007 wasn’t a very productive year either.

Well, let’s see if I can surpass the 6k barrier where I’m stuck at…

For some reason I’m missing, I only happen to see what I want to see or, more specifically, what I think I should see. During a game, if I think I don’t have any possible escape or way to survive, I’ll miss it and give up reading. And viceversa, were I to think there is a solution, I’d read till I find it.

As you may have already guessed, this brings me some hard times while playing go. It feels like if I had a reading-switcher in my mind, which would unconsciously block me from reading certain sequences, thus leading me to unexpected fights or, in this case, death and defeat.

The situation above is extracted from a game I played this week… and I’m black. Though I could have resigned by now, I still thought I had a remote chance of winning thanks to killing the C15 stones and the survival of the E6 group. However, during the middle game, I didn’t expect the huge dragon on the bottom right to be severely threatened and, therefore, I didn’t bother about its future till it was did bad. As you can see above, black is about to be cut and die.

No. Wait a second, this is a 20-25 kyu tsumego. Black lives. It took 10 seconds on my post-game review, I’m quite certain you can find it too, don’t you?

Unfortunately, I missed the right sequence during the game. All my reading was focused on sacrificing the L13 stones and connecting. In the end, I managed to kill my L13 stones and the huge dragon on the bottom right (I’m not uploading the sequence… or I’ll have nightmares for an entire month). The only excuse for this error is the first sentence of this post: I only happen to see what I want to see or, more specifically, what I think I should see. I remember being convinced that white would get what he wanted and I would lose the game. Though my mood constantly modifies my style from an all-offensive game to a big moyo strategy, it’s the first time I realise how much my game is influenced by the positivity (or lack) embedded in my  thoughts.

This week I’ve decided to start playing go, again. After some teaching during the weekend, I needed to play some serious games over the net. As a result I ended up badly beaten by a 11k in KGS, due to some huge careless reading – assuming that not reading at all could be considered careless reading.

It all started with the position above: white failed to kill black during the real game. In fact, after having spent some long minutes thinking of it and trying to read sequences, I gave up and replayed the situation at the PC. Unfortunately, I couldn’t manage to get a successful result for white but I still wonder about the real chances I had of killing black. Can you kill black?

Well, here I leave the sequence to the first tsumego, as you can see it’s so painfully obvious and simple, it hurts.

And the full sgf loaded on Eidogo, so that you can explore as much branches as you wish:

Three years ago Frank de Groot decided to release Moyo Go Studio for free during a brief period of time. That unexpected decision, altogether with Frank announcing its retirement from the Go scene, was already commented on this blog back then, closely followed by the opposite post. As years passed by, we could see Frank working on its piece of software, with improvements going slightly unnoticed due to censorship in certain sites.

So, going back to the purpose of this post, it seems like Frank has decided to release Moyo Go Studio for free, once again. You can download this powerful tool from his site though it would be better to have other download sources, since the server is somewhat busy right now and speeds aren’t that high. The whole program itself weights about 300 MB and it includes an initial database of 57086 professional games but other downloads are available summing up hundreds of thousands of new games from amateur games extracted from KGS, CyberKiwon, IGS, NNGS and Tygem.

The more the download percentage increases, the more I wonder about the real purpose behind releasing Moyo Go Studio for free. Did Frank actually have a selling spree back in 2007? Releasing this software for free would certainly allow him to get into the news, which would make MGS more popular. However, a current  free release of a program may not be the best way to fulfil his hopes, since it would be a whole lot more difficult to erase the free version of MGS from the net than it was last time.

In the end, Frank may just be tired of selling his product and just wishes everyone could use his program.

Three weeks ago I moved to Pamplona (Navarra), worldwide famous for its bull races in San Fermin, and it seems that the city remains unaware of the existence of Go. Till this weekend.

Due to some unexpected facts, I was asked to teach Go during Saturday. So, with just around 10 days, a friend of mine (who was asked in first place to teach go) and I happened to get a few boards and some hundreds of stones for each colour.

Expected amount of visitors? Unknown. Expected duration of the session? Unknown. Expected media available (computer…)? Unknown. Expected number of tables and chairs available? Unknown. F**k…

Now I think you’ll already start figuring out my feelings as the day approached. Finally we were given over 25 small boards printed out on paper, so that we could teach the basics on 9×9 and 7×7 boards, though the smallest board were only used to teach atari-go. Stones, borrowed from a club in Barcelona, were placed on plastic glasses.

Saturday, 5:00 pm, the show gets started. Luckily, we’ve managed to arrange several tables on a row, placed the boards and chairs before anyone happens to ask us for a game. Actually, they were waiting for us to finish the preparation since I could only take a single deep breath before someone came to take a peek.
This man, in his middle 30s, with a nicely-shaved beard, a polite shirt and a -unnoticed by me- huge camera by his feet. Ten minutes later, we’re playing a normal game on a 9×9 board and, from my point of view, it seems like he’s enjoying the game, but he refuses to play  more since there are other people waiting. A few seconds later his camera depicts the whole situation: most chairs are occupied with people ready to attend to the explanation.

Players range from 6 years to slightly over 50, but there is a pack of 3 guys who happen to be board game players or good strategists, they pick the game within a few minutes and spend 3 hours playing. Yes, they learnt to play Go somewhere close to 5:30 pm and left after 8 pm. Since they’ve already made a few matches on a 9×9 board, I lend them the 13×13 board. As I wasn’t able to check their game, the consequences were predictable: it’s a chaotically-offensive game. But since they are 3 of them, I’m left with one of them and start a 9×9 game with 5 handicap stones.
To sum it up: he’s able to count up to 5 moves and manages to create a seki situation without being aware of its existence. Scary.

So, after three hours of intensive teaching, over 25 people have learnt to play go in Pamplona. They’ve asked for shops, history, taken photos and everyone has been given a board. I’ll be looking forward to hearing from some of these.

Edit: As far as today, 27th July, I haven’t heard from anyone playing go in Pamplona. They are either too scared or I was too optimistic.