Alejo's Tenuki

We all have heard something like: “try doing double purpose moves”. And, sometimes, we wonder how to do it. Dual purpose moves are made in such a way that they achieve 2 purposes (obviously), the most obvious one is to make territory or strengthen yourself while attacking a weak group from the opponent.

Yesterday I saw an interesting game on KGS between a 10k and a 11k, there was an interesting fighting early in the game which went to the centre and involved one big group of each player.
All of a sudden, when the black player realises that his E9 group is alive, he decides to play from the other side. This is the result, starting at move 71:

As you can see, black managed to build a nice wall on the N column just by attacking and trying to close white. The marked wall is incredibly valuable in terms of points, though it doesn’t turn everything into territory (invasion around R5 is still possible) it makes a huge influence on the marked spots.

And, minutes later black player did almost the same on the upper left corner:

As you can see, white started on R14, black pincered, white went for the corner and the following movements are more-or-less traditional response for 3-3 invasion. So, as a result, black got another wall facing his moyo (huge now) which works perfectly with his R12 stone.

If you haven’t yet checked, try invading black’s moyo. There isn’t any obvious available invading point, as they both defended for invasions on E17 (first white) and R5 (then Black), which surprised me quite considerably, because I expected white to invade on R5 before letting black defend.

There are mistakes from both players (some of them are big ones), so don’t study it, but I wanted to show you this nice sample of “dual purpose” moves.

This is the first part of an introduction to the professional go world.

Those days you’ll hear about Kisei 2007, for those who don’t know about it and in order to make it clearer, I’ll explain some of the biggest championships that are going on in the professional world.
Those of you who have seen “Hikaru no Go” might have some knowledge about professional Go titles.

Part of this is extracted from the Sensei’s Library:

International Tournaments:1. Ing Cup:
this is the one with the biggest prize, and it takes place once every 4 years. It is based on a knockout tournament, with 24 players and played to the best of three matches on the semifinals and best of five at the final.
2. Toyota & Denso Cup: Takes place once every 2 years. 32-player knockout tournament, leading up to a best of three final match.
3. LG Cup: 32-player knockout tournament, a best of five final match.
4. Samsung Cup: Takes place every year, 32-player knockout tournament, leading up to best of three semifinals and finals.
5. Chunlan Cup: 32-player knockout tournament, a best of three match.
6. Fujitsu Cup: First World Go tournament, 32-player knockout. Even the final is disputed on a single game.

Japanese domestic tournaments:
Most traditional Japanese tournaments work in a different way than the previous. The champion of the last edition plays against a challenger, selected from a league made between preliminary tournaments.

1. Kisei: one of the most important titles (with the biggest prize), along with the two following ones. The final of this title is currently being played.
2. Meijin.
3. Honinbo: the oldest Go tournament and, though it isn’t the one with the biggest prize, it retains most of the prestige of the past, so some players regard it as the most important one.
4. NEC Cup: single knockout tournament of fast games with sixteen participants. The sixteen players invited include the seven big Japanese title holders (Kisei, Meijin, Honinbo, Judan, Tengen, Oza, and Gosei), the NHK Cup and JAL Fast Game champions, NEC Cup New Pro champion, and top finishers in the previous year’s NEC Cup.
5. Judan:
This is where you can get the famous 10-dan category, though it is only a title and you are considered a 9 dan player. This one is based on a double knockout tournament instead of the robin league. At the end, the winner of the winners and the winner of the losers play against each other to see who will challenge the title holder.
6. Tengen.
7. Oza.
8. Gosei.

If you are interested on viewing Kisei games on real time, there are several options available:
-Cyberoro server
-Nihon Ki in client

If you are interested on the past games and comments about them, they can be found here: Kisei 2007 at 361points

So, here it is: SunXi Go screensaver

The file will be available here: Alejo’s Reviews. It occupies 41MB, made at a 1024×800 resolution, so you can watch lots of details.

Enjoy it and let me know your opinion

I just finished uploading the panda glGo review. As most of you know, it is an interface for playing on IGS, studying your games or playing against GnuGo.

The version you see here is capped, so it doesn’t content the last part (player manager section). So you have to go to the download link to get the high quality and full review.

There are some controls I forgot to explain on the review:
Crtl + mouse movement: rotates board
Alt + “+” : zoom in
Alt + “-”: zoom out
Shift + mouse movement: move board

So here is the high quality video: Download (61MB)

I hope you enjoy it, and let me know your comments on this!!!