When they asked for training I recommended getting a feeling on life-and-death against the computer (igowin, for example) and then moving on to a server like KGS. Sincerely, it was what I did a few years ago… and it wasn’t that bad

A couple of weeks later two club members were playing 9×9 with an awful botish style. Diagonal moves were all over the board, going unprotected and uncut. It took me a couple of games to realise that they had adopted this style as a logical defense against the computer.

Me: -Ok, so this works against igowin. What about humans?
Newb:-We can’t play against humans.
-Why? I told you to log in KGS and play there with 30k.
-We can’t, there aren’t such players there. We were forced to move to IGS and play on the lowest level.
-Wasn’t the lowest level on IGS 22k?
-Yes, it is. That’s why we’ve lost every single game there. So all that’s left if playing against igowin on our iphones.
-…(facepalm)

I couldn’t believe my ears, no newbies in KGS? Back when I learned, there were lots of players below the 25k level. The automatch feature should have made it easier for these people to play among them.  It should be simple to start an unranked account on KGS and play against 30k.

After discussing it for a while, they challenged me to start a new account on KGS and find 30k to play with. I tried. Twice. 30 minutes each time. I failed. Though there are some bots available for beginners, it’s quite difficult for a complete beginner to find an appropiate game. It seems like KGS population has matured, but it lacks newcomers. A few years ago I saw a graphic with KGS levels demography, I wonder how it would look like now.

So, if you’re reading this, Mat…, you’re right.

By the way, IGS, with 22k as the lowest level, it’s just a slaughter.

No related posts.

In this case we’ll discuss the importance of big yose moves such as the one played a couple of weeks ago on KGS, between joehung (7dan, playing as white) and Mr12345678 (6dan, black).

At first glance, we can see there are several yose moves to be played on boths sides in sente. But there is a gote move for white which, as painful as it seems, is the unique path to avoid a 20 point loss. Try and make your guess before continuing to the next paragraph.

Though white chances of playing the big point vanished when he played around the upper-right corner and I’m unable to find a path to defend this formation in sente, black’s next move is so harmful it just shouldn’t be allowed in yose. Moreover, this 20 points loss in yose are extremely -if not impossible- hard to recover.

Black’s move was at A11. It doesn’t matter how you answer to this simple hane on the lowest line, white will lose about 20 points. Just in case you want to try it, I’ve provided a few variations on the tsumego below. Please, comment on it if you find any mistake.

[Embedded SGF File]

Below this line you’ll see a comparison of white’s territory after 6 moves and the result by the end of the game. Huge, isn’t it?

Now, how big should the difference be in order to resign? If we take into account that big yose moves exist, resigning on the early stages of the game shouldn’t be considered. On the other hand, wishful thinking is regarded as a kyuish mistake…

The situation below is extracted from a game I had on KGS a couple of weeks ago, too. Mindless filling the gaps and liberty shortening might be very dangerous during the endgame. In this case we can see a corner group being severelly threatenned due to the lack of external liberties. And thus, ending up with just 1 point in territory. The final balance from this situation was black losing 7 points.

As you can see, we had already filled all the external liberties, which may be worth 1 point each. Playing a 7 points move in this phase of the game may mean the difference between defeat and victory if the game is very close, since all the other big and small points should have already been played.

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1. Pro’s shining moves

Everything went fine -successful Google checkout, KGS client only weights 470 kb- so I was logging into KGS within two minutes. Unfortunately, my Online-Go-Anxiety (aka OGA) focused my mind on watching games, so I’m still lacking the playing experience with this client.

I’ve got a HTC Magic, one of the first devices, with a low resolution, but the board, avatars and bowls still showed up nicely, so I guess results on better devices should be somewhat nicer. After having watched 3 games on a row, it was time to actually analyse the app instead of just KGS games.

The lowest part of the screen includes the navigation buttons which, if pressed long enough, bring up some extra options, and the chat window.

While this app is the only -and, therefore, the best- KGS client, it disappointed me somehow. In fact, what worried me the most, was that games with lots of tenukis were hard to follow. While marking the stone on a normal PC with a circle is enough, it seems to fall short as a notification in such a small screen. Maybe some sort of double stone-blinking would be helpful.

One of the games I saw included a nice amount of peeping tesujis so I thought of sharing it. Unfortunately, there isn’t any “Save game to disk” option. The tactile function is weird while watching a game, as you can point on the board and make a square appear, but its utility remains unknown for me. The trackpad moves this square around the board instead of navigating through the game.

Though my hopes may have been to high, I’d say that, to sum it up and taking into account its 15$ price, I’m a little disappointed with the final result. Obviously, since these 15$ include two months of the KGS plus service, it may be useful for users who would like to give KGS+ a try, but I don’t think it is fair for users who wouldn’t use it. On the other hand, I must admit that I haven’t tried to play with it, since I got some deficiencies in my internet signal while I was on the train and I suffered my monthly OGA crisis.

Edit: You’ll find further discussion on the comments, including it’s developer and KGS owner, Bill Schubert.

No related posts.

Unfortunatellyl, I cannot connect to KGS from my job, so I had to look somewhere else if I wanted to learn Go -playing was discarded after checking the firewall-. Then I remember a site I used to visit when I was double-digit kyu.: The Go Teaching Ladder.

In fact, I found a couple of details I’d missed before, but I’ll only mention the Gold-and-silver awards given to certain reviews. Certainly, gold reviews are an extraordinaily good source of Go knowledge, even if the game is high above my understanding of the game.

In this case, I’d like to share  one specific review with you but due to copyright infringements, I’m only allowed to share the link so that you can download it from their site: LINK

6723

Hourousha

7 dan

StefanW

1k

SebastianH

1k

6.0

B+R

2008-05-24

Enjoy

Related posts:

1. Game Reviews

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…

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1. KGS and its rank

What happens?? North America versus Europe.
Rules: ING rules, with time controls of 30 minutes main time + 10 moves/5 minutes Canadian-style overtime.

By now you should have already filled that day on your calendar with a “do not disturb, I’m at KGS” note. Or, at least, this is what the poll at Godiscussions points out, since a third of the participants haven’t voted for North America nor Europe, but for a KGS collapse.

Just in case you want to know the players for each team, check the American Go Association announcement.

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1. 2nd Sabadell Tournament
2. Capturing on a large scale (2nd part)
3. Game Reviews

Smartgo has already announced a version for the Ipad, available in the appstore for $19.99. According to Anders’ blog: “the two apps are still pretty close, but over time I expect them to diverge:

• The screen size of the iPad allows whole new features that will either be missing or limited on the iPhone.
• Even for shared functions, the UI will over time change away from the iPhone version and become optimized for the iPad.
• The extra power will allow more game records. Initially, SmartGo Kifu includes 20,000 pro games, but I hope to increase that significantly as soon as I know how the iPad performs.”

Unfortunately, having a different version for the iPad means that iPhone users will have to pay an extra license if they want to enjoy this version of Smartgo in their new tablet.
This is one screenshot from the emulator screenshots, where we can already see there are a few new options available:

As for server clients, Yetle at godiscussions.com has already taken a picture of the KGS client working through VNC in his iPad. William M. Shubert (KGS’ developer) has already stated that there will be a special edition available for Android tablets, avoiding to specify if there’s going to be an iPad version for this server. If we take into account the lack of a KGS client for iPhone, we can already assume iPad users won’t have a specific version on a short term.

No related posts.

As you can see from the image below, right at the beginning of the middle game, they both had a floating group, marked with triangle for black and circle for white; moreover, the latter has two unconnected cutting stones. From this image you can already theorise the nature of this game will be involved with fighting, right?

A few moves later, the next situation showed up:

As a you can see, white is trying to close black and kill him, and thus, the played this hane in J14. Unfortunately for white, he has many weaknesses and cutting points around so this wasn’t the best option. On the other hand, if white hadn’t played this capping move and he had played J13, for example, black would still have tried to struggle for life escaping through the J14 gap. If you already imagine what happened, you may want to skip these lines, but once you’ve reached this point and realised white has to sacrifice one side, which one would you retain?  You can choose between the upper one, which gives you quite a a moyo on the upper side of the board since we are talking about pressing on the fifth line. But then black would have a strong group on the centre of the board from K7 to K 14 and would have certain advantage in future fights. If you decide to sacrifice the upper side, you are giving out a lot of points by saving the K13 stones, but you may be able to keep some pressure on the K7 group.

Sometimes, while watching a game on KGS, you find a game filled with the traditional tsumegos you’ve repeated once and again in Goproblems.com. Here is one of these samples, where you’ll find some problems for double-digit kyus, some that I didn’t manage to solve in real time and some I wouldn’t have solved with a decent amount of time. This game was played on KGS, between Naomichan and Howzulee, white and black respectively, being both 6 dans according to the KGS rating system. You’ll have the whole game loaded in Eidogo by the end of the post, but I’d like to put some pictures of the game.

As you can see from the image below, right at the beginning of the middle game, they both had a floating group, marked with triangle for black and circle for white; moreover, the latter has two unconnected cutting stones. From this image you can already theorise the nature of this game will be involved with fighting, right?

A few moves later, the next situation showed up:

As a you can see, white is trying to close black and kill him, and thus, the played this hane in J14. Unfortunately for white, he has many weaknesses and cutting points around so this wasn’t the best option. On the other hand, if white hadn’t played this capping move and he had played J13, for example, black would still have tried to struggle for life escaping through the J14 gap. If you already imagine what happened, you may want to skip these lines, but once you’ve reached this point and realised white has to sacrifice one side, which one would you retain?  You can choose between the upper one, which gives you quite a a moyo on the upper side of the board since we are talking about pressing on the fifth line. But then black would have a strong group on the centre of the board from K7 to K 14 and would have certain advantage in future fights. If you decide to sacrifice the upper side, you are giving out a lot of points by saving the K13 stones, but you may be able to keep some pressure on the K7 group.

On this image you’ll see what a 6 dan player thinks of this situation: give up the upper side and gain strength to attack the central black group, the shape of white around the J13 stone is quite strong but could be improved using some sort of net-like move,  H12 or H11 for a lighter connection. But I can’t say I would taken the same path. You can zoom in the image to take a deeper look.

So now black floating group from the upper side has been settled down, but he has a floating group right in the middle, with another couple of white stones cutting at K5. White, on his turn, has two groups of cuttings stones, one around K13 and the previously mentioned around K5. But there is something I’m missing in my description of the board: the aji of R7.

We’ve already talked about the relevance of aji and how to exploit it, but there is nothing better than watching an aji being used by dan players.

An aji which was removed and played a few moves later on, giving as a result the situation replayed on the right side of these lines. As you can see, white has pushed through R11 and black has defended the S11 stones by pushing white from below, expecting white to hit against an unbreakable wall: R8.
Due to the time settings, black wasn’t able to read what was going to happen within the next moves when he played S9. Can you spot the tesuji that white used? In fact, it’s very easy once you’ve spotted it, but I wonder what would happen if you encounter this situation on your blitz games, with just a few seconds per move and your opponent’s last moves have just been “pushing the borders” – style.

Well, all in all, taking into account the last events, I’d like to take a glance at the whole board, just to figure out how the game is developing. This is what we find:

Well, black settled in the upper and lower sides. White has the right side. White’s move 116 is a declaration of war against the central black group. Black happens to lengthen his agony by struggling through the G8 area, shortly before being cut by white, who is then cut by black elsewhere. Whatever, after a series of mutual I’ll-kill-you-before-you-kill-me moves which I can hardly follow, the board appears to be a complete mess:

Black is being encircled and he lacks of eyespace. The only remaining option, as seen in “Attack is the best form of defense“, is to kill the central white group around J 10. White tries to escape through the upper side of the board with move 150. But there is a tesuji which will make white stones die in vain, can you read it? It’s another sample of the inconvenience of playing empty triangles. So, it seems like the easy way to escape didn’t work out, lets look for the hard one.

This sequence, I must admit, is totally beyond my reading ability right now, I could have spend a dozen minutes looking at it and still wouldn’t get it. But it’s possible: white escaped through the lower side. On the thumbnail by the side, you have the answer to this tsumego, the hardest one of the day.

The cross marked stone was sacrificed as move 156, the starting move of the sequence and was captured with move 161.

Finally, while playing the yose, players tend to follow each others move when it’s sente. But there was a point where white didn’t play the expected move or, at least, the one I expected.

Which is the correct answer for black 257?

Ok, then, here I leave you with the full game, loaded into Eidogo. Enjoy it, and, please, comment on the post!!

Related posts:

1. Tsumegos and my reading (in)ability
2. KGS 5d vs 4d: Tesuji trainning
3. Real life tsumego

As you can see, black is surrounding the white group around K6, a big dragon indeed, whose death would mean the end of the match.

Market by A,B and C is the sequence I thought of to make the white group live. I couldn’t be more wrong. Ideas and moves like the next one make me realise the huge level difference between myself and a 5 dan player.The sequence I marked, though it grants life, ends up in gote for myself and is just passive defense. On the real game, the movement was exactly the opposite: sente and attack. In an attempt to kill the black group placed around R14, white played T15.

Due to this attack, black was, as well, forced to find a path to life, where was his path? Killing the white group around Q18. This time, I wasn’t even able to think of a passive defense that black had already placed his offensive defense.

I’ll leave you the game below so that you can enjoy it too

[Embedded SGF File]

Related posts:

1. Life and death KGS tsumegos

Last Sunday was held the final game to decide who would go to the World Mind Sports Games representing the USA in Beijing in October. The game confronted Joey Hung 8d vs Jie Li 9d and it was very interesting and very didactic as a sample of how to count ko threats and how to handle them.

But what strikes me the most was a sequence I found during the game and I’m still thinking it’s worth trying. I was said during the game that my move wasn’t good, but without explanation.

As you can see on the next image, there is a big fight going on the upper right corner of the board where there are several white and black groups involved and winning this fight would almost decide the result of the game.

Now that you’ve seen the board I’ll tell you that the original sequence ends up with a huge ko for live or death. You can see the whole game on one board and my variation on another one.

[Embedded SGF File]

[Embedded SGF File]

Related posts:

1. 6 dans bloody game

Last September, KGS decided to modify its internal rating. Now, it is supposed to be more difficult to reach high levels while the lower levels are narrower; so lots of players concentrate at the 15k-1k zone. Everyone was affected by this change and players’ rating grew about 5 stones by this procedure. Everyone was affected in the same way, so all your opponents also increased by 5 stones their level.

It is well-known that internet ratings are slightly higher than the real ones: as you can see KGS’ ratings are always a few stones higher than AGA’s or European’s on the lowest levels which should be restored somewhere later to have a good equivalence on the higher ratings.

Where is that?

It’s on the 9k. As you can see, a 9k KGS player varies up to 4 stones on each real scale.

 AGA   CHINA  EUROPE   JAPAN   KOREA  |  IGS  DGS  KGS ---   -----  ------   -----   -----  |  ---  ---  ---   26K    30K     28K     25K    32Gup  |  BC 25K    29K     27K     24K    31Gup  |  BC 24K    28K     26K     23K    30Gup  |  BC 23K    27K     25K     22K    29Gup  |  BC   25K 22K    26K     24K     21K    28Gup  |  BC   24K 21K    25K     23K     20K    27Gup  |  22K  23K   15K 20K    24K     22K     19K    26Gup  |  22K  22K   15K 19K    23K     21K     18K    25Gup  |  21K  21K   14K 18K    22K     20K     17K    24Gup  |  21K  20K   13K 17K    21K     19K     16K    23Gup  |  20K  19K   13K 16K    20K     18K     15K    22Gup  |  20K  18K   12K 15K    19K     17K     14K    21Gup  |  19K  17K   12K 14K    18K     16K     13K    20Gup  |  18K  16K   11K 13K    17K     15K     12K    19Gup  |  17K  15K   11K 12K    16K     14K     11K    18Gup  |  16K  14K   10K 12K    15K     14K     11K    18Gup  |  15K  14K   10K 11K    14K     13K     10K    17Gup  |  14K  13K    9K 10K    13K     12K      9K    16Gup  |  13K  12K    9K  9K    12K     11K      8K    15Gup  |  12K  11K    9K  8K    11K     10K      7K    14Gup  |  10K  10K    9K  7K    10K      9K      6K    13Gup  |  9K    9K    8K  6K     9K      8K      5K    12Gup  |  8K    8K    7K  5K     8K      7K      4K    11Gup  |  7K    7K    6K  4K     7K      6K      3K    10Gup  |  6K    6K    5K  3K     6K      5K      2K     9Gup  |  5K    5K    4K  2K     5K      4K      1K     8Gup  |  4K    4K    3K  1K     4K      3K     *1D     7Gup  |  3K    3K    2K *1D     3K      2K      2D     6Gup  |  2K    2K    1K  2D     2K      1K      3D     5Gup  |  1K    1K   *1D  3D     1K     *1D      4D     4Gup  | *1D   *1D    2D  4D    *1D      2D    4-5D     3Gup  |  2D    2D    3D  5D     2D      3D    5-6D     2Gup  |  3D    3D    4D  6D     3D      4D    6-7D     1Gup  |  4D    4D    5D  7D             5D                   |              6D  8D             6D                   |              7D  9D             7D                   |              8D 10D                                  |              9D

This table is extracted from Sensei’s Library: World Wide Comparison.

So, if KGS has to recovers this 4 stones at the 9k level… why didn’t they leave the old system? Sincerely, I don’t know the answer. I don’t mean that KGS2 rating is better than KGS3, but it may have been more "real".

Talking about "better"… I think that none of the KGS rating systems are good. For example: how can you improve your level at KGS? By NOT playing.

In fact, my original account at KGS "alejo" showed this image today:

Which is something obviously wrong. I haven’t played with this name for a couple of months and there are only 3 games listed for the last 6 months… As you can see, inactivity is the best way to increase your rating.

The real fact is that I’m at 9k. Yes, 9k at KGS, which means that I don’t know where I’m at all.

Related posts:

1. “What’s your rank” poll results
2. Founding a club with complete beginners
3. Alejo returns to KGS

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.

[Embedded SGF File]

Related posts:

1. Counting territory
2. Double hane near a corner is dangerous
3. Double Hane