snakeeater on Go

Lee Sil Do's Amazing Tesuji

2006-11-14T09:30:00.000-08:00

Lee Sil Do, nicked named "Lee with the Flying Dagger", is famous for his sneaky Tesujis that have claimed many unsuspecting pros during major tournament play. Gu Li of China is his latest victim. d uring the current 围棋甲级 tournament, he fell for an innocuous move that revealed its deadliness on the follow up. Here's the game record hosted at go4go.net: record

Here's the position at move 144, Lee Sil Do has just played an innocent looking Q12:

Gu Li, thinking nothing of it, played at C2 in response, believing it is a sente move that white must respond (else white loses the bottom left corner).

Lee Sil Do immediately plays N18(!), ignoring the threat.

Gu Li, surprised, leans over and looks at the board carefully. He then sighs as he realizes he's just been shot by a dagger out of nowhere. The next set of moves, as demonstrated below, is a one way street, black will have to give up either the group on the top side or the right corner. Black eventually choose to give up the corner.

The key moves here are:

- Move 5, setting up for move 13 at T14. Together with S14 and T16 makes a bulky-five shape.
- Move 7, forcing black to chose either living the corner or connecting at M17 to keep the top side group alive.
- Move 11 at Q19. White can play S19 later to rob black of a much needed eye at T19.

It's a brilliant combination of Tesujis only Lee Sil Do could have thought of.

Pro misreads simple ladder

2006-11-03T21:23:00.000-08:00

Well it's happened again. During the 15th round of 围棋甲级 match (11/02/2006), 洪民杓 5p misread a simple ladder and resigned promptly on the 98th move. You can replay the game here, hosted by go4go.net

White must have been laughing hard inside or questioning his own sanity while his opponent continued to play a failed ladder.

Cho U (张栩) loses Meijin

2006-11-03T11:52:00.000-08:00

Cho lost the game by 3.5, making 高尾绅路 the 6th person that's concurrently held the Honinbo and Meijin title. Cho was the 5th person to do so. You can again see the series of pictures
from a Tom forum posting here here.

Follow the same drill to go to the next page.

Cho U in Meijin, an uphill battle

2006-10-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

I found this posting on Tom.com's Go forum where you can see a lot of
nice shots of the Meijin match in action. Starting with players entering
the room, playing the first move, and what they had for lunch!

Go to tom link here

There are several pages of pictures. To go the next page, simply scroll down to the bottom of each page and find these Kanji Characters: [下一页] on the last green rectangular banner.

There are about 16 pages with pictures intermixed with kifu and others commenting on the game when it was in progress. Apparently the postings were happening live as the game progressed. Pretty neat. There are some cool pictures showing the actual kifu when the sealed move was revealed at the next day of the 5th game. Kinda remind me of the Hininbo episode between Ogata Sensei and Kawabara Sensei in Hikaru No Go.

To retain his Meijin title, Cho U had to win game 5, which he did by resignation, and the next 2 games. Although Cho U is still considered #1 in Japan with high percentage of wins against everyone, he's had a rather below average winning percentage against the current Honinbo, Takao Shinji, who took the Hininbo title from him. Takao is considered Cho U's nemesis by many.

In other news, Cho U will be against Lee Sil Dol for the 2006 丰田 cup. He'll be the first Go player from Japan in a long time fighting for an international title.

How to Improve Without a Teacher

2006-09-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, not everyone has the time or the money to get a teacher. So how the heck can you improve? When there's no teacher, how can you possibly know if you are playing the right moves? Well simple, when it comes to Tsumego, Yose and Counting, there's only one right answer. They are the 'mathematical parts' of Go in which you don't need a teacher's intuition to point you in the right direction. They also happen to be the pillars that make up a strong player. Without them, it's just flower go. You may create a nice advantage in the opening with good fuseki, only to collapse under fighting or flounder facing unreasonable invasions.

Time for me to do some Tsumegos.. 87 problems down, 400+ still to go..

I found a neat video on YouTube that talks about Counting, worth a listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry-dFoNDa04

To 1k... yeah... not

2006-09-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

Cgoban 3.0 recently came out and two biggest changes AFAIK are:
1. The new rating system. It appears to have been fixed or normalized to match the AGA or IGS rating system where the spectrum of play strength is packed more tightly in the middle than before. The result is kyu strength from the left side moves up and dan strength from the right side moves down. It's now harder to be 9d but a lot easier to be say 10k. My rating was adjusted from 3k -> 1k. The phantom increase in strength does make it a lot easier to justify some of your dumb moves --- "well this is good because I am close to 1 dan..." It unfortunately also cheats me out of my goal to reach 1 dan a la Cgoban 2.0. Oh well, I guess I'll just set the new target at 3d a la Cgoban 3.0

2. Rengo or pair-go! This is really a lot of fun, esp if you pair up with a stronger player. You can learn quite a lot by just following along with the flow of the stronger player's moves. At the end of the game, you can review them and see why he played he places he played. Mixed in with your own thought process during the game, the review becomes especially meaningful.

6th Chunlan Cup Under Way

2006-09-27T22:06:00.000-07:00

See all the photos here.

Everything is in Chinese but at least you can enjoy the images.

Back to Go

2006-09-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

It's been over a month since I touched Go. Instead of studying Go, I've been busy studying for job interviews... What joy. After five years of tech start-up rollercoaster, I've decided to get off --- only looking to hop on yet another one. With the number of potential companies, big and small, I decided to seriously study for the interviews this time so I could decide on where to go, instead of going to just some random one that happens to accept me. Studying for job interviews is certainly no picnic. It's no different than studying for the SAT/GRE. Everybody has their own little puzzles or quirky coding questions and each expects you in 45 minutes, convince him/her that you are capable. Questions are thrown at you at will and you must quickly get on the right track while the interviewer quizzically stares at you. As you struggle for a clue, the interviewer just smiles across the table --- savoring the moment of superiority because he knows the answer and you don't. If you do well, all your other qualities will be colored positively; if you do poorly, no references will save you from rejection (and by the way, since nobody ever gives bad references unless you are a complete psycho, they carry very little weight in the decision making process). As an interviewer myself many times, I know it's a charade that gets replayed over and over to fool myself into believing that I can actually tell if the person can do the job within 45 minutes. In reality many a times the person could be a brilliant coder (not saying I am one) yet choke on the simplest of problems, or totally incompetent but just happens to prepare for the right problems, and con its way in.

So despite knowing that I am fairly competent, I had to put up with the charade and go back to studying the fundamentals. I went through the old faithful "Programming Pearls", skimmed the "The Art of Computer Programming", Vol 3 and reread the first ~15 pages of each chapter of the classic "Intro to Algorithms" by Cormen et al. I had to memorize all those programming techniques that I've forgotten and practice regurgitating solutions on paper to classic coding problems. It was a painful ordeal but it did pay off well. While I did not get many problems I've exactly prepared for, many were similar enough that I was able to quickly apply the same solution pattern and come up good answers.

So does this have anything to do with Go? Sort of. Your ability after all is determined by how you perform at official tournaments where you must play under pressure. You could be the best kibitzer at your local club but choke in tournaments. In a tournament there's no time for you to read out every L&D, some you must know by memory through preparation. And I believe your strength is mostly determined by your preparation of the fundamentals (Tsumego, Yose, and Counting) and conquering your nerves so you don't make mistakes you would never make in a relaxed setting. It's even said that most pros are similar in strength, it's just only a few excel under pressure in tournaments.

Cho U Signs Goban with Tsumego

2006-08-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

At the opening ceremony of the 17th Asia Speed Go Tournament, Cho U, nicknamed the "Tsumego Expert", puts down a Tsumego in addition to signing his name on the Goban. (Often in many major Go tournaments, contestants are invited to sign on a ceremonial board.)

I've attached the picture below. The bottom left is Cho U's name and the top right is the problem, with the four kanji character caption: Black first to kill white. Can you solve the problem?

Finally reached 3k!

2006-08-17T13:57:00.000-07:00

After a solid streak of winnings in the past few weeks, I've finally reached 3k on KGS. I've gotten significantly stronger since I picked up my Go studies last year, mostly thanks to lots of Tsumego practices, game reviews by stonger players and most imporantly, a new positive attitude at the board. I've learned now that it's possible to become better, by studying dilligently and learning something new from each game you play. While I've not advancing as rapidly as most, at least I know how to improve and that's a big plus. :D

Scaling Mt Everest; Becoming a Go Professional

2006-07-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

This past week saw the 2006 Professional Shodan Go Examination in China where promising Inseis and strong amateurs battle life and limb to claim the mere 20 Shodan spots allowed this year. At ~400 participants, mostly consisting of kids in their early teens, that's a 5% acceptance rate. And remembering that the 400 competing for the spots are all best of their schools and regions, those that become professionals are truly the creme de la creme de la creme, many times over. As if that's not competitive enough, China will begin instituting a new 'U15 rule' next year --- no one above 15 will be allowed to try out. So if you can't make it by the time you are 15, professional Go isn't for you. As depicted in Hikaru No Go, choosing the path of becoming a Go professional is hard and cruel. Many spend years as a child studying the game over everything else, most abandoning regular school (unless you are blessed like the mythical Hikaru and can attend school at the same time). It is no easier than scaling Mt Everest. In fact it is harder, it is a path of no return. Once you are on that path, you have effectively chosen to abandon all other pursuits in life. You must succeed, within a small number of years, or become a washed up amateur for the rest of your life, probably struggling to make a living teaching others with the only skill you have.

Life doesn't get easier even when you do become a professional. At the end of the day, you are just one of the hundreds of professionals around. Only the top pros enjoy the fame and wealth covered on TVs and newspapers. Most will suffer anonymity and struggle on with their meager professional salaries.

So unless you are talented and obsessed with Go, AND you have wealthy parents, don't bother. Enjoy Go as a side hobby, not a profession.

Some pictures from this year's examination below:

Place where the examination is held:

Room full with kids with their parents looking on:

Probably an eight-year old, too short for the Go table but ready to become professional!:

Staring down your opponent:

Everyone deep in thought:

Kaya Goban Used in 61st Honinbo Auctioned Off

2006-07-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

Caught a piece of interesting news today. The goban used in the first match of the 61st Honinbo was auctioned off for 5,250,000 yen, or about 50,000 dollars in US. The board is of course, genuine Kaya, and about 6.5'' thick. Parts of the proceeds are apparently going to institutions that promote Go amongst Japanese youths.

The whole set with actual photographs of the match:

The glorious table board itself:

The inside of the cover showing signatures by both players:

The box itself:

Playing for Points

2006-07-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

The quality of my games are improving as I slowly begin to understand what many people understand when they first learn of the game: each move should be made toward the goal of getting more territory than your opponent. It's quite obvious but often forgotten during the heat of the battle.

Here's my thought process near the middle game:

1. A sente move that results in a net point gain for you. Especially one that crowds your opponent into a tight clump. Resist the urge to go all out and kill. Threaten, squeeze and profit. Learn to lean on your opponent. Only play killing moves when you can read out a profitable sequence. Scary but hollow moves will often backfire against a stronger opponent. This is where Tsumego pratice comes in. When you read better, you play real threats. If you can't read it out, drop back from the fight and go to step 2.

2. If two big moves are available, pick one that you like best and let your opponent have the other. Resist the urge to want everything, sometimes you simply have to trade with your opponent. Otherwise you may end up getting nothing at all. When groups begin taking shape, go to step 3.

3. A gote move that strengthens your group while creating a big follow up move yose. Create enough of these and your opponent's territory tend to magically shrink to nothing at yose time. At Yose time, go to step 4.

4. Go for the big points in the order of corner, side and then possibily center. This is where Yose skill comes in, you must count the value of each move! A 20 point swing at Yose time is common between someone who knows how to play Yose vs one does not. Resist the urge of making ambiguous moves that looks big in the center, esp when there are two or more gaps that allow your opponent sneak in. Your opponent can stab your center territory with one jump and it will go poof. Better is play a move in the corner that gets definitive territory and preps for a monkey jump.

The result of following these general guidelines have resulted in calmer games where purposeful moves for points are calculated and slight advantages are carefully sought, instead of the usual bloody game where big groups live and die as you each trade false threats and prey on each other's mistakes. Your calmness also has an extra bonus: you make less mistakes and your opponent's mistakes are magnified in turn.

Northern California Goe Tournament

2006-06-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

Planning on trying out my first tournament:

Northern California Goe Tournament
July 29-30, 2006
San Francisco, CA
United States

Anyone else in the SF area going? Where exactly in SF is it going to be held? Time to study more of those tsumegos! What type of time controls are used in such tournaments? Today I lost on time during a KGS game because I did not understand what Canadian Time Control was, thought it was Japanese Byo-yomi

Back from a long lull

2006-06-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly half year since my last post! Yep I've been a lazy bum to do updates regularly. But I've not stopped studying Go! Since going on a regime of 3 L&D problems a day, my strength has grown notably ( though not in terms of KGS..), which makes me think there's no need to study anything else until perhaps you get to KGS dan level. I've also picked up a reasonable number of josekis by osmosis --- playing against other players and seeing the same moves made over and over again, or through reading discovered the proper follow up in a joseki. (The latter is rare but has happened a couple of times with simple josekis) Hopefully in a couple of more months I will gain a stone in strength and be ready for a real face-to-face tournament.

Take 4 corners, reduce the center and narrowly win?

2006-01-20T22:40:00.000-08:00

I found a pretty handy website that generates kifu out of .sgf files:
http://bisqwit.iki.fi/go/kifu

For starters, I put in my game today and generated this page:

http://bisqwit.iki.fi/go/kifu/29b23533cd7e4394d77a7976475ba5b8

You can get the sgf here.
In case the kifu link does not work. This is one of those interesting games where I played for territory (instead my normal style of getting big outside thickness and fighting). End up winning by fighting for crumbs during yose. Dan players please help review if you run across it. Give comments!

Third Times the Charm

2006-01-18T20:42:00.000-08:00

Well, it finally happened! I got my 3rd replacment board from Yellow Mountain Imports today via Fedex. So a bit of recap. The first board I received in December was damaged during shipping, due to rough handling and poor packaging. The second board was perfect until I put it on the dining table and noticed it was slightly warpped. The third one, well let's open the package:

Looking good.. packaging looks way better than before. Plenty of peanuts to fill the board snugly. Let's clear away the peanuts ...

A tight bubble wrap around the board, still looking good. Let's take it out of the box and set it on the carpet...

Probably the best packaged board I've gotten out of the three. There are some slight intentations on the top of board which at this point I believe are nearly unavoidable given kaya or shin-kaya have essentally the quality of soft pinewood. For example, snapping a stone onto the board will leave an indentation. Nothing you can do there.

Putting it onto the table, nice and level!

Put a couple of stones... nice snapping sounds...

Another view ...

Yet another ...

Putting the board in a dust bag, made by my kind girlfriend. :) Is there a market for handmade Go board dust bags?

Overall I am pretty happy! YMI's customer service sure made up for their lack of quality assurance. They look eager to please their customers so as long as you are patient, you do eventually get what you want. Now I am going to sit and practice some Tsuemgo. I will practice hard and claim that KGS Shodan this year! :D

The 10th Samsung Cup Finals Start Tonight!

2006-01-09T12:47:00.000-08:00

Tonight begins the 10th SamSung Cup Finals between the "Stone Buddha" Lee ChangHo of Korea and "Little Pig" Luo XiHe of China. Lee ChangHo is the de facto #1 player in the world, for having held and still holding most of the International Go titles and major titles within South Korea. Luo XiHe is a bit of an unknown outside of China. Nicked named for his chubbiness, he is famous for his extremely rapid play even during tournament games. A rare Go genius amongst go professionals of the day. (One article reports his IQ was once measured around 160 when he was 8.)

( Image taken from weiqi.tom.com)

Will the "Little Pig" topple the "Stone Buddha"?

You can watch the game live at weiqi.tom.com. The pages are unfortunately in Chinese. I may update the page with a direct link to the java applet that allows you to follow the moves live.

Here's the link: http://weiqi.sports.tom.com/php/dqipu.php?id=8568

After the java window is loaded, you should see a Goban and 8 buttons, in two columns on the buttom right of your window. Click on the 4th button in the first column periodically to refresh.

Button Button
Button Button
Button Button
(Refresh button) Button

Went to an AGA tournament in SF this weekend

2006-01-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

I went to the Jiang Zhu Jiu touranment in SF this weekend in JapanTown. I did not compete but was interested in seeing some real people playing face to face on a physical board. Very exciting. The sound of observers lightly shuffling between aisles ... players pressing on clocks after each move ... people gathered around tables discussing games ... brough back a lot of memories of those Chess tournaments I played in high school.

The best player at the tournament was none other than Jiang Ming Ju, Jiang Zhu Jiu's brother. It's a bit funny that he is playing in such local tournamnent given he is a professional 7-dan. Every game he plays in this tournamnent is likely just he giving a lesson to his amateur opponent. (He should be able to give anyone of the top players there 3 stone handicap or more) He was the only professional there and the rest were amateurs. A couple of high Dans, I saw two 4-Dans and a couple of 2-Dans and Shodans (1-Dan). Most of the players were Kyu level. I spent most of my time watching Ming Ju's game, trying to rub off some professional finesse. (Wish I can get his game records, there was one big ko fight in the middle that meant life or death for one large black group. Ming Ju ended up losing the ko but game still looked lost for his oppponent. Professionals are good at making amateur think they are winning locally but actually losing globally.) Also watched a couple of games between 1 and 2-Dans. I have to say the game quality was surprisingly poor! I don't know how AGA rank their Dans but some I saw there had pretty lousy reading skills. Is it nervenousness? Granted a carefree by-stander like me can see better than those deep in the game but surely 1 or 2-Dans should know some of the basic Life and Death shapes! I did not see anything like that in games with 3-Dans or above. Also saw a high school or middle school kid who showed some pretty incredible tactics. Don't know the name, looked like a 4 or 5 Dan?

Overall was a great experience. I plan to join AGA soon so I can play in one of these tournaments. I have to say an AGA Shodan appears quite weak.. perhaps the most watered down Dan rank in the world? :) I played two games against a Shodan, first game I won with a quick resign and second game I resigned after it was apparent I was too behind on territory. My impression: AGA Shodans sure know a lot about josekis and opennings, but their fighting/reading skill is poor. Lots of canned theory without enough tactics to back it up. Since I don't know how to play josekis, my opponent got pretty confused whenever I veered off his expected sequences. :) Looks like the advice I got when I first learned Go rings true: solve tsumego and tesuji problems first, worry about the rest later.

Solution to last month's (year's) problem

2006-01-08T15:44:00.000-08:00

B-T18 allows black to live unconditionally. After B-T18,
white can only play R18 to avoid capture and prevent black
from forming any immediate eyes. B then responds with S18!
Now it's pretty clear B will be able to capture the R17 and R18
stones and form an additional eye at T19. W can try to put
up some resistance with Q19 thereafter, but B-P19 cuts W off.

A couple of notes on possible wrong moves. Capture at R18 by
black right away may look like the right move, but W would
immediately jump in at T18. B now can't play T17 after that
as if B did, W would play S18 to force B to fill R18, resulting
with just one eye.

Another possible sequence is: B-R18, W-T18, B-S18, W-T17. Now
B cannot make two eyes because the T19 eye possibility is gone and
B still have to cover Q18 somehow to make it a true eye. (Letting
W take Q18 later would result in a false eye at R17 for B!)

Tough problem, just shows how rich the possibility is at the corner.

2005-12-22T22:33:00.000-08:00

I ran across the following interesting tsumego problem today, Black to play to live:

Try to solve the problem without playing it out on a board! :D And no, the answer is not B-R18. Though how should White kill Black if he does play R18?

I will post the answer in a few days.

Tsumego practice can temporarily weaken Go strength

2005-12-18T18:17:00.000-08:00

I've recently (for about 4 weeks now) begun to stick to a schedule of solving 5 tsumego problems each day. This has surprisingly made me weaker! :) I've gone from nearly touching 3k to 4k then briefly back to 5k again on KGS. What's going on?

Then on Friday I played against a regular opponent who remarked that "You've lost your fighting spirit". This made me realize that before studying tsumego I was oblivious to the dangers or weakness of my groups -- constantly making unreasonble moves that kyu players did not know how to exploit. (Maybe that's why I disintegrate easily against Dans. :) ) Now that I am doing tsumego regularly, my sense of danger has heightened, making me extra timid in my moves!

So hopefully this is only a temporary set back and I will eventually reach 1d. Maybe then I'll be able to appreciate professional games...

Go Board Part Deux

2005-12-16T17:46:00.000-08:00

Now that I've had a chance to play with the Go board, solve some problems, replay some games on it, I've noticed that it's really warped! On a level surface, you can actually rock the board slightly by pressing on its diagonal corners. So I took a ruler and measure the height of the board from the surface, well, indeed it's a couple of mm higher in the middle that from the sides. Under a good light I can actually see the curvature of the wood!

So I email the YMI guys and they were again very responsive! Told me to send the board back and they'll send a replacement at no shipping cost. Swell! Hopefully I'll get a good board thist time. So I have to give these guys an A+ for trying to do things right and I hope they do this time. Stay tuned for next week when I get my replacement board.

Go and Girls

2005-12-15T13:07:00.000-08:00

I accidentally ran across this while browsing for Go game records: Girls playing Go! And extremely attractive ones at that. (The home page for one of the Russia's Go Federations?) Looks like ones you want to lose your shirt over huh? Figuratively speaking only of course.

So this got me thinking and doing some researching. For the greater good of mankind of course. (Note the emphasis on man.) It appears that in nearly every Western country (Asian countries go without saying) where Go is played, there are attractive girls who play Go and are good at it! EXCEPT in the U.S., (Janice Kim may be an exception.) where Go players are made of the usual suspects of male nerds and geeks, me included. In fact I'd like to extrapolate that to nearly all activities that require intellectual effort. Before someone screams "male chauvinist pig", hear me out. It looks to me that U.S. is probably the only country where being smart or intellectually curious == unattractive or uncool. Can someone back up my claim that there is a subtle undercurrent of sexism in the U.S. that discourages women from engaging in pursuits intellectual, despite the common perception that U.S. is an open, democratic, progressive country, all for women's equality? I mean when was the last time you met a female, American programmer? (Majority of those are immigrants I bet.) Other more enlightened cultures are not like this. For example I happen to work for a software company that has a branch outside of the U.S. and a good percentage of them are female.

So Go players, if you want to get girls, Go play somewhere else.

The Go Set Arrives

2005-12-13T21:31:00.000-08:00

I finally got the courage to plunk down some good money to buy a Go set online. After some research, the biggest bang for the buck appeared to be the Shin-Kaya set from Yellow Mountain Imports on ebay. They offered a 2''-thick, one-piece-wood shin-kaya board, wooden go bowls, Yunzi stones, all at starting bid of $99! A similar set from Japan would cost around $250! What a deal! This was around end of November, they may have changed the price since then.

Anyhow, after a couple nights of unsuccessful bids, I was finally able to snatch one at $107 + shipping and taxes = $130. I was stoked. A sweet looking set for at $130? NOICE.

Well, not so fast.

A week after payment and the board arrives. Damaged... (The bowl and stones arrived in another package) A badly chipped bottom corner due to poor packaging and rough handling. Now the chip revealed something very interesting about the board.
First, it really is made of one-piece wood with beautiful grains! But it is unfortunately covered with a thick layer of clear laminate that is much darker than the actual wood underneath. Also the playing grid appear to be drawn or silk-screened on top of this laminate surface! Note in a truly quality Go board, the wood is only thinly brushed with a wood stain and the grid lines are either drawn by hand directly on the wood or cut using a Katana. Well, doing that is labor intensive and costly. I am pretty sure it's extremely hard to draw or cut clean, straight parallel lines on wood. Your eyes are pretty picky if any line do not neatly lineup. So it's much cheaper to use a machine to 'stamp' on the grid, which explains why these guys are selling the sets starting at $99.

Anyways, eventually the Yellow Mountain Import guys were nice enough to send me a replacement board at no cost. It arrived better packaged with no chipping. Only problem: it does not place completely flat on the table, the wood appears slightly warped. I was actually half-expecting this as again, the reason a good Go board made of one-piece wood is so expensive is that it usually requires 10+ years of drying to avoid warping. Okay, enough bitching. The warping is slight and it's hardly noticeable. The Go bowl and Yunzi stones look beautiful. At $100, I wasn't expecting the best. I got what I paid for.

Nice bowl and stones huh? I'd paid $50 for just these guys.

Here's the replacement board:

The game on the board is replay of a professional game between Gu Li of China and Lee Sil Do of Korea in a title match. More on this later as I will discuss various Chinese and Korean Go titles. The West usually focuses more on the Japanese Go world but the best Go players today are Koreans and Chinese who hold most if not all of the international titles. Japanese Go is in decline at the moment. This was one of the motivation for Hikaru No Go, to inspire Japanese youth to learn the game and regain Japan's dominance of the game in the 1970 and 80s.)

Notice the awesome grain from Masame cut:

Okay, the bottom line. I am happy with what I got. I doubt the Yellow Mountain Import guys actually made any money on me considering the shipping for the replacement. I would recommend buying from them if you just want something that's pretty good but not top of the line. If you want real quality, either visit China or Japan and bring back a good set. Or go here. The shipping cost is considerable but again, you get what you pay for.

Go Crazy

2005-12-12T12:59:00.000-08:00

My first blog. Yeeppy! Seems like a good outlet for my narcissism.

Moving on...

This blog is about Go. What the heck is Go? It's a game; it's a struggle,
between two opponents in their endless pursuit of excellence in a microcosm
of life (and death). That's the Confucius speak, in a off-lip-synch-martial-art-movie
kind of way.

More succinctly, it's another way to show someone that your brain is
bigger by kicking his/her ass on the Go board. Mostly his. (If you
were hoping to get Asian girls by playing Go, you've way off track)

Why play Go? See above. Again, not to get girls. Though it can become
very addictive for no good reason as soon as you understand it. So beware.
Also DO NOT WATCH HIKARU NO GO!

Why is it called Go? Because it's too hard for Westeners to pronounce
it in Chinese: WeiQi, or Korean: Baduk. (That's BaaaDook, not bad duck).
So everyone decided to adopt the Japanese pronunciation instead. (It's
actually Igo to be precise.)

Do I need to be smart to play Go? NO! Like many things, playing Go can
only convince you that your brain is an amazing piece of wetware. Every
time you come up with a move, you'd wander, where did that come from?
In other words, having epiphanies on the Go board is a frequent and pleasurable
occurrence.

Is this a blog where I can learn to play Go? NO! There are far better sites out
there that teach you how to play. I am starting this blog to mostly share my
learning experience with other beginners and intermediate players, post problems
regularly and provide discussions about the game. With the hope that perhaps
it would help spread the game to more people and help them appreciate one of
man's most beautiful creations.