Joseki and Go problems.

This is what I currently think - Joseki are sets of ideal moves. It's basically a combo sequence of play, encompassing best choices for your moves and your opponent's moves. Ideally you want to play a joseki that puts you ahead and gives you initiative, without your opponent realizing that they are playing into the losing side of the joseki pattern. (or maybe they do realize it but they can only play as recommended because it would minimize their losses.)

There was a quote somewhere I saw that said something about "learn your joseki and then forget it." Another one said "learning joseki reduces your playing level by 2 ranks". Both of them refer to the fact that rote learning is bad - you will not learn overall strategy as well, I suppose, and it can make you predictable, for sure. I think that we are just supposed to be able to recognize when joseki is possible instead, and regard it in terms of a strategic advantage instead of playing out the whole thing on a tactical level.

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Do as much as you can with as few actual moves as possible seems to be the order of the day in go.

I've been doing go problems on a website called Go Problems. (what a straightforward name) It looks like they have a lot of material - I'm just looking at the lower level problems at the moment. I like how I can choose what difficulty of problem I want to look at. I also like that there are commentaries on the problems. Also, I can continue playing out the problem past it's ending point in order to see for myself just WHY something is good or not good (because I am a noob). Very helpful, and doesn't cost anything :D

Allen.

Go is not easy

I used the Interactive Way to Go as my introduction to the rules. It looked pretty informative with clickable java programs showing each rule, and I was done with it soon enough. I thought to myself - Okay, now I'm ready to give this a shot! What do I have to lose?

Apparently my dignity, pride, cockiness, and any form of hubris you can think of. It was very humbling.

The past week or so, I have been playing some computer go at home. I have been losing nonstop. This has been really frustrating, especially when I'm given a huge 9 stone lead on a small beginner board that's 13x13 in size. No matter what I put down the computer had a counter for it instantly.

Totally massacred each time.

So I set out to read more about Go. Maybe find something about overall strategy on the internet. I dug into a few go related sites I'd found:

The Sensei's Library
Tel's Go Notes
Wikipedia's entries on Go, and Go Strategy/Tactics
and oddly enough,
Hitachi's Life and Death Problems of Go which is too advanced for me but they give good descriptions of what is going on.
(what's an electronics company have to do with Go theory?)

Even the online game store I bought my Go set at has a pdf that describes how to play.

Anyways, spending this time in front of a computer seems to be more productive than spending in from of a go game at this point, though I wouldn't actually stop playing - I have to try out what I'm reading about after all.

So my splatter movie grade deaths are getting a little less spectacular now, and I get to throw a few punches as I'm sinking.

Sometimes a punch actually connects and I win, though it's more luck than anything else.

Allen.

* The version I've been trying is the open source GnuGo, compiled to run on my Windows PC. (Using a Drago interface)

Cleaned the go stones

As a quick edit, I washed the go stones last night with some dishwashing detergent. After drying, I applied some baby oil by hand and rubbed them clean with some clean kitchen towels. They kept their nice matte look and now smell a little bit like baby oil. (Basically they look the same but don't smell weird any more)

Also, I can run my hands through them in the bowl now without the blackboard-scratching feeling. I guess they just needed a bit of oil to get rid of the scratchiness.

It took an hour and a half of oiling and polishing to get the black stones done. I was doing them one or two at a time until I figured that just rubbing handfuls of oily stones in the towel worked just as well, (just enough so that the stones didn't scratch and rub each other) else it would have taken over 2 hours. In comparison, I oiled and polished the white stones in about 15 or 20 minutes.

Allen.

Go (the game)

I bought a go board recently. Learning to play go is one of those things that I have thought about for a pretty long time, but never really gotten around to doing.

I remember seeing my dad play Go with Uncle Kao here in Canada when I was little, a long, long time ago. They had taken a big square cardboard box and drawn an uneven looking grid on the back, using a ballpoint pen and a piece of cardboard as a ruler. On top of this box, they started playing the stones, deep in thought as I watched them. I had no idea how the game worked, but they were putting the stones on the intersections of the lines, which I had never seen before. Games always had their playing pieces played in the squares didn't they? Checkers, chess, board games of all sizes and shapes, never had I seen one where you play on the intersecting lines. (though I guess Xianqi does it as well)

I thought it was fascinating. I'd only seen them play that one time, but it was quite a vivid memory.

Anyways, I want to talk about the purchase! I picked up the set from the Go Game Store after searching a number of sites, as it looked like they had some of the nicest solid boards. An even better point was that they were located in Canada (Brampton!) so I could avoid having to pay any customs fees as I would generally have to do when purchasing from the US. I contacted the store and got some Canadian pricing for their sets - I ended up getting this set from them.


The board is made from 3 pieces of spruce wood attached together, and is an inch thick. Its roughly about 17 inches by 18 inches, which is the Japanese standard size. I'm really happy with the colour of the board. Its very soothing to look at.


The stones are rounded on both sides, and have a beautiful matte finish to them. They're called Yunzi, named for their original production in Yunnan. They are a special formulation of glass made especially for go stones. The formula was lost at some point in the past, making these tiles a rarity. It was reverse engineered in the last 50 years or so, and are being mass produced now. (with changes in the formulation to remove the now-unacceptable lead content.) The only part of it I don't like is that if you run your hands through the stones it feels like you're scratching a blackboard. Just thinking about it is making my skin crawl. I guess its not a big deal, since we're not supposed to do that anyways.


The stones do smell a bit funny - I think I'm supposed to wash and then oil them, which I haven't gotten around to doing. Info on the internet says to use sewing machine oil, but since I don't have any around, I will probably have to find an alternative. For all I know, the funny smell might even be sewing machine oil already.

Before anyone asks, I did watch the Hikaru no Go anime. All of it. In 2007. Yes it influenced me to pick up a Japanese style set instead of a Chinese style set.*

Allen.

* Japanese style sets use bi-convex stones and Chinese style sets use single convex stones. Like my MS Paint picture? :P