Alejo's Tenuki

The reviewer was a 3k on KGS and he couldn't find anything but bad moves coming from me. One of the most repeated sentences was: "think at least a few seconds before playing each move", which appears something like a dozen times.

Indeed, I've realised how many unnecessary moves I make following my opponent's moves. Many of my moves are played automatically after my enemy places a stone on the board and I end up using about half of the time given. This results on sente wasted batching somethings which are already safe and a decrease of my reading ability.

Therefore, I'm going to focus on Tsumego. Why?

First of all, Tsumego trains your life-and-death reading ability. I'm going to solve them totally before placing the first stone; and by "solving" I really mean "solving" them till I'm convinced there is chance that my rival escapes or that I'm totally safe. Obviously, this takes a certain amount of time, that is why I'm going to start doing it at a little scale: working on 10 tsumegos each day. I'd give up solving 50 tsumegos daily after the few days, so this is an appropiate amount for me, without being to much, it's better than none at all.

Studying tsumego I expect to be able to calm down my nerves when facing such situations, see if I can play a little bit more relaxed and think twice (at least) on what I would play as an automated move.

According to the result of the last poll: "Which program you'd like to be reviewed?", I've made the videoreview of Kombilo. As some of you already know, Kombilo is a pattern search engine, i.e. you enter a specific position on a board, and the program looks for this specific position in its game database.

There are still a few things hanging in my mind, so I think I'll make another videoreview about this program, but about a specific section: how to make custom menus.

(Youtube.com is currently down, once their service is restored, the video will appear here)

Here you have the video for direct download, with a much better resolution and quality: Kombilo's.

This review has been made with a sample collection of 998 games, so as to offer some proper results without overloading the computer.

One thing I'll say once again: the quality of this program is directly proportional with the quality of your game collection. If you have very little amount of professional games, you'll get very little results. If you have a huge collection based on low-level amateur players, the results won't be of good quality. Now, it's up to you to decide which games you include and which ones you don't.

I hope you enjoy it, and let me know your opinion!!

I've opened a new section on the forum, it's called "Game Reviews" and you can upload there your own games if you want them to be reviewed or just to share them with the comunity.

There is a poll going on at the sidebar of this site, as you can see the "top voted" right now is Moyo Go Studio; since my computer is unable to run it I'll review the next most voted result. I'll make the Moyo Go Studio review as soon as I get a newer computer, but, for now, I'll erase the option from the poll.

Last weekend took place the Sixth Spanish Tournament on KGS. This game is extracted from the first round and is confronts a Gotomah 12k with Buitenland 13k without handicap.

Personally, I think it is an interesting game for everyone, it has some techniques we already have practised on this blog, a kosumi-tsuke could have been played and more groups coud have been killed. The whole game is available at the "continue reading".

On the following situation, after black has played the crossed stone, where would you play? Look from something else than M15 or N15, and forget about trying to kill the lower black group, it is possible, but it is not what I want you to see.

I hope you already found what to do with the black floating group, if you are not sure about it, check the whole game at the "continue reading"