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silvergoose posted:And then comparing to me, who can play a few chords, comparing to someone who has never touched a string instrument. Makes sense. If that's the metaphor we're using then I'm hitting the bottom of an empty paint can with a stick and still failing to make noise.
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Feb 7, 2014 00:09
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| # ? May 12, 2024 23:32 |
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Don't you find it depressing that, starting Go anytime after you're 10 or so, you could rarely hope to achieve 5d+ strength?
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Feb 7, 2014 00:14
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Kheldragar posted:Don't you find it depressing that, starting Go anytime after you're 10 or so, you could rarely hope to achieve 5d+ strength? I did at the time. But one thing I've learned in life is that nothing ruins something fun like trying to make a career of it, or focusing too much on results and long-term goals. Learning Go is a hell of a lot of fun, and for most of us that should be the whole point. What rank you eventually reach is beside the point. I got out of Go not because I realized I'd never be a pro - I had known that all along - but because it didn't feel like I was learning any more. It's not that there wasn't any more knowledge to acquire... there's always more knowledge to acquire. It had just ceased to make an impact on my game... my own intrinsic limitations had become the limiting factor, so it didn't feel like there was much point to further study. Instead, what I found was that I simply liked going over pro games and marvelling at their play, and teaching what I knew to other people and getting vicarious pleasure from seeing those lightbulbs go on for them - like when the idea of a leaning attack suddenly clicked for you last week. So yeah, it's unfortunate that we'll all hit a plateau at some point, but where exactly that plateau lies doesn't matter so much as the amount of enjoyment you had getting there. EDIT: Related point - maybe a good long-term goal in Go is getting to the point where you can really appreciate top-level games, rather than playing at that level yourself. That's a much more realistic goal, and ties in with the music analogy. As an amateur musician, you'll probably never be Jimi Hendrix, but the better you become at playing music, the better you become at hearing it too. xopods fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 00:34
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What scared me about Go is keeping track of your shape so that one of the many variations of some fights doesn't lead you to being one liberty short, and doing this while play on the other side of the board could change the outcome of some horrible whole board capturing race that could maybe happen if you're actually reading it out properly. Then realizing that pros do this no problem while keeping track of the half point value of these countless variations. Its goddamn sick.
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Feb 7, 2014 06:40
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I'm playing my first 19x19 against uranus right now, and half the time I'll analyze 500 different move combinations and permutations to find the best move to make, and the other half I'm like "that's not very fun" and I just kinda play the move that 'feels' right even if it ends up being stupid because it's just a game and why not.
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Feb 7, 2014 19:17
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Pander posted:I'm playing my first 19x19 against uranus right now, and half the time I'll analyze 500 different move combinations and permutations to find the best move to make, and the other half I'm like "that's not very fun" and I just kinda play the move that 'feels' right even if it ends up being stupid because it's just a game and why not. If you're just starting out, just play a fuckton of games. You are not going to be able to analyze moves very deeply for quite a while. Playing a lot of games will teach you the basic concepts. I'm only like 3-4kyu (KGS), and it wasn't until I reached 5kyu or something that I really understood how loving little of this game I really know. Seriously, it's dumb how hard this game is. I should play more go.
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Feb 7, 2014 22:48
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Uncle Jam posted:What scared me about Go is keeping track of your shape so that one of the many variations of some fights doesn't lead you to being one liberty short, and doing this while play on the other side of the board could change the outcome of some horrible whole board capturing race that could maybe happen if you're actually reading it out properly. Then realizing that pros do this no problem while keeping track of the half point value of these countless variations. Its goddamn sick. Yeah, pros nowadays start reading to endgame the same way you might in 9x9 at about the same phase of the game. It is absolutely disgusting.
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Feb 7, 2014 23:27
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So I finally got up the courage to play Go and had an okay ko fight. http://eidogo.com/#url:http://files.gokgs.com/games/2014/2/8/Kheldragar-14.sgf
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Feb 8, 2014 18:07
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Pander posted:I'm playing my first 19x19 against uranus right now, and half the time I'll analyze 500 different move combinations and permutations to find the best move to make, and the other half I'm like "that's not very fun" and I just kinda play the move that 'feels' right even if it ends up being stupid because it's just a game and why not. Don't think too much until you're 15k or so, just play what seems reasonable to you at the time and see how it turns out, and then watch stronger players play to absorb some intuition for the flow of the game by osmosis. It's simply impossible to understand Go at all until you have a bunch of hands-on experience.
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Feb 9, 2014 02:07
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xopods posted:Don't think too much until you're 15k or so, just play what seems reasonable to you at the time and see how it turns out, and then watch stronger players play to absorb some intuition for the flow of the game by osmosis. It's simply impossible to understand Go at all until you have a bunch of hands-on experience.
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Feb 9, 2014 02:09
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Howdy. I'm pfafulous (4k) on KGS, we've played before. I'll offer some thoughts. 4: In handicap games as Black, contact moves are generally a bad idea. Especially in this game, where you start out 9 stones ahead, all you have to do is play defense and you're good. White is a better fighter than you are. That's why there's a 9-stone handicap. Don't start a fight. 10: I like L17 better here. With L16, you leave more potential to be cut, since there's already a White stone at M16. Remember, defense. You don't need to kill anything to win. But if you pull out a big attack and fail, you'll leave your position vulnerable. 16: I prefer M18, a solid connection. As played, W has more endgame potential with N19 in sente, at which point you'll be playing M18 anyway. 32: I'd rather tenuki on the 3rd line somewhere. You have so much of the board, don't worry about trying to cut off one little stone. Why encourage White to make life? Take profit. 48: The left side feels more pressing. White has built a big wall and is looking to use that power with an invasion. The right side is black heavy. Play away from strength, including your own. 60: In a way, this is all due to G15, trying to cut off that one stone. But don't worry about White getting a little bit of territory here. You're strong on the rest of the board. 66: Why not keep going with B11? Black can do some big damage here. At the very least, B11 is sente, and you can leave the position if White responds properly. As played, you gained little and in gote, which is worth half as much as the same points gained in sente. 72: I like a descent to L2 here. Make a fist, then strike. How do you handle W L2 after the move played? 96: Why take now? W can't escape. Pure gote. 105: This is an L&D problem. Can you kill if you block at S7? What's the point of R8, if not to help you double hane here? 118: Gotta let these go. You have a lot of power here. You don't need to capture this stone immediately. 168: Nice. 176: Ugh, empty triangle. Why not block at B4? Remove any chance for W to do anything. Corner, side, center. 225: You seem to feel you're behind in this game. You're very much in the lead. Practice counting. Was it with you I went over the "by 2s" method? It's quick and easy to do at this stage in the game. You are rich. Ko fight... Well, I guess fighting over half a point is good if you want to torture an opponent you're already destroying.  Anyway, nice win. Play ranked, don't worry about result. Easier said than done.
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Feb 9, 2014 03:04
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Kheldragar posted:So I finally got up the courage to play Go and had an okay ko fight. Despite your relative ranks, this doesn't look like a game between people who should be playing at 9 stones. White makes a lot of plainly terrible moves and most of your moves are pretty reasonable, though of course a few are gigantic blunders. I get the sense that if you'd played less fearfully it would have been an even bigger win for you. I think White's problem is probably a lack of experience with high handicap games. He plays a bunch of moves that at his level he should know are awful, I can only imagine because he's hoping you'll respond badly. This isn't how you win handicap games. 9 stones only looks insurmountable. Sure, it's considered to be worth like 135 points, but a game of Go is about 270 moves long, 135 for each player, so you only need to be catching up by one point per move on average. Moreover, if your opponent is actually nine stones weaker than you, it's likely that he'll blunder half that advantage away on his own at some point, without you needing to do anything except capitalize on his errors.
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Feb 9, 2014 14:44
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The next time we play handicap games, I'm actually considering putting a reverse komi instead of actual handicap stones. Do you think that that's particularly better? Say if black had a 56.5 point reverse komi instead. It wouldn't make the game's flow any different (I'd assume if white tried to play normally and didn't try to make up points aggressively), but white still has to win by a large margin.
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Feb 9, 2014 15:08
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Kheldragar posted:The next time we play handicap games, I'm actually considering putting a reverse komi instead of actual handicap stones. Do you think that that's particularly better? Say if black had a 56.5 point reverse komi instead. It wouldn't make the game's flow any different (I'd assume if white tried to play normally and didn't try to make up points aggressively), but white still has to win by a large margin. The problem with a large reverse komi is that it alters the play more than handicap stones do IMO. With handicap, Black has to use his stones to help in fighting, whereas with a big reverse komi he just has to avoid fighting. It's hard to win by 60 points without killing anything.
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Feb 9, 2014 16:47
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I go to Tygem to play a game and I win by resignation. The other guy had 4444 win and 6895 losses. What the gently caress. xopods posted:The problem with a large reverse komi is that it alters the play more than handicap stones do IMO. With handicap, Black has to use his stones to help in fighting, whereas with a big reverse komi he just has to avoid fighting. It's hard to win by 60 points without killing anything. I guess there's no real way to get a handicap without it altering the gameplay too much, as stupid and obvious as that sounds. Of course, if I played without one I'd get wrecked. Old Fart posted:Howdy. I'm pfafulous (4k) on KGS, we've played before. I'll offer some thoughts. I think this comes from the one part of Kageyama that I did read - about how he had a student who could regularly beat him somewhat at a 6 stone handicap. Yet when they went to 9 stones, he lost because all he thought he had to do was play it safe and just defend. Maybe I interpreted it wrong. quote:32: I'd rather tenuki on the 3rd line somewhere. You have so much of the board, don't worry about trying to cut off one little stone. Why encourage White to make life? Take profit. I wasn't worried about white cutting off a stone; I was worried about my corner. Which really doesn't work that well since he has a stone already at F17. But anyways, I got a nice box shape around it so I was happy. quote:48: The left side feels more pressing. White has built a big wall and is looking to use that power with an invasion. The right side is black heavy. Play away from strength, including your own. This IS my playing defensively. I'm just making invading harder and trying to hold onto this whole side. quote:72: I like a descent to L2 here. Make a fist, then strike. How do you handle W L2 after the move played? This looks objectively better when I see that I have two sort of walls on the sides of that stone. quote:96: Why take now? W can't escape. Pure gote. It just looks to me like white can do some damage there or escape if I mess it up, and I'm not used to leaving things like this unless it's on the second line. Maybe there's no hope of white escaping with that stone with perfect play by both colours, but I'm not one to be able to do that, I don't think. quote:105: This is an L&D problem. Can you kill if you block at S7? What's the point of R8, if not to help you double hane here? I'm so used to avoiding the double hane that I don't look at the local situation to see that R8 makes a tiger's mouth.  quote:118: Gotta let these go. You have a lot of power here. You don't need to capture this stone immediately. I thought it could cause some trouble and I really wanted that area now that I thought the side might be alive for white. quote:168: Nice. quote:Ko fight... Well, I guess fighting over half a point is good if you want to torture an opponent you're already destroying. Ko fights like this are fun. quote:Anyway, nice win. Play ranked, don't worry about result. Easier said than done. I don't know why I just can't bring myself to do it often. I'll play a lot in ITGO, but with automatch I just avoid it like the plague.
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Feb 9, 2014 17:24
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Kheldragar posted:I go to Tygem to play a game and I win by resignation. The other guy had 4444 win and 6895 losses. Probably someone who plays from work and something came up so he had to leave. Anyways, I tried playing on tygem at some point and I didn't like it much. I set my rank to 10 kyu and games were completely one sided, either I won easily or got destroyed. I personally found that quite demotivating as my wins didn't mean much to me and I couldn't really learn from my losses. I much prefer playing ranked games with +-1 rank difference and each game seems really fun and intense as there's very little skill difference. I think i'll try tygem once I'm in dan ranks, people say there isn't as much sandbagging then.
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Feb 9, 2014 19:09
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kheldragar sandbagger status confirmed 
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Feb 9, 2014 20:01
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Symbolic Butt posted:kheldragar sandbagger status confirmed I'm just a L&D master.  You still had W+12.5 at the end, though. (W+18.5 for an even game.)
AdorableStar fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Feb 9, 2014 |
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Feb 9, 2014 20:05
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I'm sitting here trying to figure out how you managed to kill white in lower left corner...
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Feb 9, 2014 20:20
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Svartvit posted:I'm sitting here trying to figure out how you managed to kill white in lower left corner... Ultimately, I feel as if I gave up too much trying to do it. At the very endgame, I filled some dame because why not instead of protecting an important cutting point. Going back over the review, protecting this wins me the game by 0.5 points. Of course, I gave up the entire right side of the board ignoring his plays there for the most part intent on killing him here. I'm not sure how the game would've gone if he had noticed what I was doing in the first place. It'd probably end up being some sort of capture race for my stones on the inside or something. e: I'm sure white B7 solves all of his problems with connecting. AdorableStar fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Feb 9, 2014 |
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Feb 9, 2014 20:22
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Svartvit posted:I'm sitting here trying to figure out how you managed to kill white in lower left corner... The magic of shoddy playing  It's funny that during the game I had no idea what was going on there, looking at it now it seems much more clear. Like only now I noticed that e1 was in atari in the second screenshot.
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Feb 9, 2014 20:31
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Woo, I leveled up on OGS, 27k. I think I need to play more live games instead of 7 slow games at once haha.
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Feb 10, 2014 00:30
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I lost by 0.5 points because gently caress you yose. 
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Feb 10, 2014 11:39
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Lesson this week xopods?
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Feb 10, 2014 21:51
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uranus posted:Lesson this week xopods? Tomorrow good? Either that or Thursday if Thursday is better for people.
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Feb 11, 2014 01:34
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any day is good for me! Pander play a move >:[
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Feb 11, 2014 02:34
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uranus posted:any day is good for me! Pander play a move >:[ sorry! I'm State of Decaying.
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Feb 11, 2014 03:19
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What's the proper response here or has my position have me already screwed? I did it right with the monkey jump on the left side, but not with this.
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Feb 11, 2014 13:42
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Kheldragar posted:What's the proper response here or has my position have me already screwed? I did it right with the monkey jump on the left side, but not with this. You can't prevent white from getting in there - p1 leads to p3 and black can't prevent white from capturing some stones - e.g. p1, p3, o3, p4, p5, o4, n3, o1. So the best you can do is damage control with p3, but this is not happy for black. Some times the descending move works, other times it doesn't. Read it out before white gets a chance to play o2. ThePineapple fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 17:01
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uranus posted:any day is good for me! Pander play a move >:[ Yeah, okay, so we'll do it tonight then. 7:30 EST as usual in the Beginners' Room. I haven't thought about a topic so probably I'll just grab another of my old tournament games to go over. Maybe one with more steady play and less fighting.
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Feb 11, 2014 17:20
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Kheldragar posted:What's the proper response here or has my position have me already screwed? I did it right with the monkey jump on the left side, but not with this. I think the best defense might be to sacrifice 3 stones after descending at p1. The line I read out is P1 P3 O3 P4 O4 P5 N2. I haven't put it out on a board and played through various sequences to count the end results, but I'm pretty sure it's better than black playing either P3 or O3 first.
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Feb 11, 2014 17:30
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Xyven posted:I think the best defense might be to sacrifice 3 stones after descending at p1. The line I read out is P1 P3 O3 P4 O4 P5 N2. I haven't put it out on a board and played through various sequences to count the end results, but I'm pretty sure it's better than black playing either P3 or O3 first. Intuitively I would play O3 then counter atari at N2 followed by standing at O4 after the one stone is captured.
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Feb 11, 2014 18:33
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The following was posted in the GBS thread. Kheldragar posted:KGS is great! The only real complaint I have is that there's no sound when you place a stone. h_double posted:The no stone clicks thing is a Java-related bug: https://www.gokgs.com/help/Java.html Xom posted:There are two ways to get the sound back: Xom fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Mar 30, 2014 |
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Feb 12, 2014 03:23
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Lost by 3.5 because I wasn't paying attention and lost 8 stones midgame. White couldn't cut them off, but when he pushed I blocked without thinking rather than connected and promptly lost the game. 
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Feb 13, 2014 13:26
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Kheldragar posted:Lost by 3.5 because I wasn't paying attention and lost 8 stones midgame. White couldn't cut them off, but when he pushed I blocked without thinking rather than connected and promptly lost the game. It's just a skill that you'll slowly develop as you learn, keeping track of all the things you've already read out once so you don't have to keep reading them out again every time something happens in that area, or making blunders like this. You'll probably never perfect it, though. Getting to endgame and forgetting some reinforcing/connecting move that you knew all along was necessary and losing a group or a few stones is a common way to lose games right up to the high amateur dan levels. It's one of the big reasons not to play too quickly, especially when you feel like you're well ahead and find yourself settling into a sense of security.
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Feb 14, 2014 02:03
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 Black to play a good move. Black can still win without it, unless Black is me and doesn't count above two. EDIT: 
Xom fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Feb 14, 2014 |
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Feb 14, 2014 08:36
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a5? Should let you capture that entire corner group.
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Feb 14, 2014 08:53
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(EDIT: moved to the end of my previous post)
Xom fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Feb 14, 2014 |
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Feb 14, 2014 09:35
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I uh missed the entire bottom row. I might still be right? I can't comprehend your image at 3 AM, sorry, and I'm also bad at this game.
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Feb 14, 2014 09:45
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| # ? May 12, 2024 23:32 |
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It appears to me that Black is going to lose the capturing race in the mid left unless he prevents white from making an eye on his dragon. G9.
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Feb 14, 2014 10:15
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