Elusive tsumego
Jeff recently returned to China for a short period of time, and brought several tsumego books as a souvenir. One of them turned out to be excellent practice, with a lot of the problems being Igo Hatsuyo-ron level, but with relatively uncommon shapes.
In general, classic tsumego collections don't give me too big of a challenge anymore, because I'm more or less familiar with the shapes—there's only a limited amount of those, and once you've seen a big portion of them, remembering them also gets fairly easy. This book, however, still regularly confounds me with tesuji that I haven't seen before, or at least the way of application seems novel. Below is the front cover of the book.
April fools tsumego
All problems are black to play. Enjoy!
Problem 1: Mid to high kyu players
Problem 2: High kyu to low dan players
Problem 3: Mid to high dan players
Problem 4: Mid to high dan players
Problem 5: Mid to high dan players
World Student Go Oza game review 2
Here's the second game review of my World Student Go Oza games! This time we're seeing my fourth-round game against the Taiwanese female representative. This game effectively decided the third place in the final rankings.
This time, the comments are purely my own feelings and speculation.
If you have some thoughts or opinions about the game, please leave a comment!
World Student Go Oza game review 1
It's a bit overdue, but here's a review of my game with Youwhan Kim from the World Student Go Oza! Most of the comments are my impression, but a few of the impressions are by the Nihon Ki-in English class attending professional players.
I'll aim to review one or two games more from the tournament before long. Next up in line is the important, decisive match I played on the fourth round with Taiwan!
Did the game evoke any feelings or impressions? Please leave a comment!
11th World Student Go Oza
This week I participated in the 11th World Student Go Oza Championship, held annually in Tokyo, Japan. I'd won the right to represent Europe in an internet qualifier tournament last December, effectively using up a day playing go when I should have been finishing my bachelor's degree presentation.
The whole business about the tournament became a sum of good tradeoffs: by participating in the qualifier, I (again) got a free trip to Japan, and while I caught a flu last Thursday and still wasn't completely healthy by the time I was supposed to fly to Tokyo last Sunday, it paid off by me finally ending up on the third place! According to the organizers, that's the best result for a European representative so far.
With this, my trophy shelf again increases in size.
The results of the tournament can be found on Nikkei's web page, together with all of the game records. I imagine the readers will be interested in at least my games with the Korean and Taiwanese representatives. About these, I'm planning to include commented sgf files on this blog later.
Fujisawa game review: Nihon Ki-in “first place” tournament, 1959
The following kifu and most of the comments included are from the Fujisawa Complete Works, volume 3. For advice on how to study professional games, read this essay.
Fujisawa Hideyuki got promoted to 8 dan just one month before this game.
Fujisawa game review: Honinbo league match from 1959
The following kifu and most of the comments included are from the Fujisawa Complete Works, volume 3.
For advice on how to study professional games, read this essay.
World Amateur Pair Go Championship, 3—4 November, and return visit to Japan
Last Sunday I returned from my first visit to Japan, after my period as insei earlier this year. We'd qualified with my girlfriend to be the Finnish representatives for the World Amateur Pair Go Championship, held in Tokyo, and while we were at it, we stayed in Tokyo for a little bit of extra time afterwards. I'm not sure if it's odd or not, but this time around, visiting Tokyo felt almost like returning home.
The pair go championship was held in Hotel Metropolitan Edmont Tokyo, a higher-class hotel. I'd in fact "gatecrashed" the championship tournament already one year ago (it was held at the same venue), back when I was insei, so how the tournament operated was already quite familiar to me. 32 pairs took part this year. The tournament organizers had asked for all the pairs to bring with them a national costume to be clad in during the friendship match on Saturday 3rd November, which made for quite a show:
Gothenburg Open, 27—28 October
Long time no write! Last weekend, on Friday to be exact, I flew to Gothenburg to participate in the annual Gothenburg Open go tournament. I'd received a deal from the tournament organizers, basically getting my accommodation and flight expenses covered, in exchange for teaching players during the tournament. Benjamin Teuber 6 dan of Germany had gotten a similar offer. This year's edition of the tournament ended up being the biggest one held up to date, with 68 participants.
I arrived in Sweden at Friday noon. One of the main tournament organizers, Robin, courteously picked me up from the Landvetter airport and drove me to the tournament venue along with Benjamin. The Swedes had rented a flat (probably) owned by a local chess club, and so the venue was very well suited for a go tournament as well.
Since it was my first time in the city, and I couldn't be of much help with the tournament organization which was at the time under way, I ended up strolling around the city a bit. There were some nice sights around, but I ended up wondering why they have so many stairs in the city. It wasn't only once, or even just a few times, that I had to walk up a long flight of stairs, only to find myself walking down another one the next instant.
Gothenburg, the city of stairs
Studies and future plans
Time sure flies! It's already one month since my last post. Unfortunately, I don't have anything very productive for this update either, but I thought it best to write about what's going on.
As you may by now guess, my current biggest time constraints come from my university studies that have been going on since the start of September. I'm attempting to get my bachelor's degree done during the current year, which means that in addition to my otherwise big number of courses to complete, I also have a bachelor's thesis to write. Luckily for me, however, the thesis is related to go: its subject is vaguely "expertise: what is it, and how does it develop — approached from skill-based board games' point of view". In roughly one and a half months, I should have about 25 pages of literature research written!
While I am indeed busy with studying, I cannot let myself have a break from go. So, while I've cut down on my online go activities, I still quite regularly attend Finnish go club meetings, review pro games and do tsumego. Also, eg. during the following weekend, I'll play at the second Finnish championship preliminary. You should in fact be able to follow some game relays on KGS!
The next Gooften essay is still on its way, though I'm starting to have an idea for it in my head. Also, lately I've been fiddling around with the idea of writing a go book — I've done quite a bit of go teaching during the last few years, and together with the theory of expertise that I'm studying lately, I get the feeling I should be able to write something more or less instructive. If I were to start writing the book, it would approach the game from very general points of view, explaining fundamental strategy and tactics on several levels. Imagine Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, but with somewhat different topics, and maybe going more into detail. In fact, I might co-write the book together with the other Nordic Go Academy teachers.
That's all I've to share for now. Hopefully I can soon get back to writing more here!
Blog post calendar
Recent Posts
- Elusive tsumego
- April fools tsumego
- World Student Go Oza game review 2
- World Student Go Oza game review 1
- 11th World Student Go Oza
Unknown Feed
Upcoming tournaments
Latest tournaments
Recent Comments
- Devin Flake on Elusive tsumego
- Ten on Elusive tsumego
- Ben on Elusive tsumego
- Ten on April fools tsumego
- Ten on April fools tsumego