Go, Igo, Weiqi, Baduk. Kaz's original Igo-advice & fundamentals of Igo

Sorry that I didn't write for a long time...

Please forgive me.

But I have some good news for the readers! :)


First of all, I'll be teaching on KGS plus for the fist time
on November 20th.


Here is my teaching time:


Japan Standard Time 　　　　 21th 6:30am
GMTGreenwich mean time(London） 20th 9:30pm
France, Germany 20th 10:30pm
Eastern Standard Time (NY) 20th 5:30pm
Pacific Standard Time 20th 2:30pm


Hopefully you can make it there.


The second good news is that I've been asked to write
some iGo books by Slate & Shell publishing company.


I've got hundreds of materials in my head and in my
computers.

So I said "yes!"

I've already sent some materials to the company.

If things are going well, you may be able to see
my book for kyu players in 6 months or so...

I assume that it'll take more time than 6 months...


In my book I'm going to have an approach different
from my Go Web Services; if it were the same,
people wouldn't buy it.

Hope some of you are interested in it!


Last but not least, I found some disgusting trackbacks
on my blogs.

I didin't notice them until just now.

Not only did I get rid of it, but I also set up a system
on my blog in such a way that nobody could set a trackback on
my blog without my permission.


So if you try to trackback, I'll check it to see if it's
a good one. Then I'll give permission, and you would
see the trackback.

So from now on, nobody is going to see any disgusting
website any more.



Now I'm going back to my blog.

After I had written my last blog
( http://kazsensei.seesaa.net/article/108240400.html ),
I received a question from a reader.

I hope he doesn't mind my putting the question on the
blog...

The question might very well help other readers, so
please allow me to put it on.

(it's a bit modified)


> In your blog ( http://kazsensei.seesaa.net/article/108187284.html )
> you mentioned a 'green-eyed monster syndrome'.


Ooops, time is up! I've got to get going!

I'll continue this...

■ More detailed explanations of 1.
“Common Amateur iGo Players' Syndromes ■　


"Playing each move without thinking" syndrome

"Responding the opponent without looking at the move" syndrome

(1. and 2. are related.)


If one of these becomes a habit, that's not good for you.

Number one iGo syndrome might be more serious, actually.


I've seen many amateurs in Japan who just don't
even look at a situation or an opponent's move.

They just play a move in a flash when an opponent
plays a move.

It looks to me like it's a competition of whoever plays
faster wins a game.


Wherever an opponent plays, they are determined
to play a move faster than ever before.


If you happen to have this kind of tendency; i.e.
you tend to play as fast as a bullet train
from the beginning to the end, then you're
either a superman or a super fast playing.


I must say that there are moments
where you can play without thinking.

But there are many moments where you have to
watch a local fight, the surroundings, and
the entire go board and decide where to play.

It might take 10 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute,
or 3 minutes...

It really depends on how complex a situation
is, how strong you're, how much you know
joseki or a tesuji, things like that.


The stronger you become, the faster you can think,
read, analyze things.


Professional baduk players can read 20 or 30 moves
in a second rather easily.

This I am not exaggerating.

That's what they're trained for.

If they play a 5 second Japanese byoyomi, they
can still read a lot of variations during a
five second.

They also think and read during an opponent's
time.

So each move they can think 10 seconds.

If they take time, they can read a hundred of
moves in a couple of minutes, depending on
how complicated a situation is though.


You can improve your iGo reading as well.


The more you train in reading, the faster it
becomes.

To be continued...

Sorry that I haven't written anything for a while.

I'll do my best to keep writing this iGo blog!


There are many common amateur mistakes as many of you have
noticed.

And over the years of teaching, I've found that
there are some patterns for those weiqi players
who have a tendency, with which they may have a hard
time improving their baduk.


As I said before, many of my iGo students are (were)
at their 60s and 70s. So perhaps the following syndromes
are only those Go players at their 60s and 70s.

But I have a feeling that most iGo players at all age
groups have more or less similar syndrome problems like
the following:


---------------------------------
■ Common Amateur iGo Players' Syndromes ■　

"Playing each move without thinking" syndrome

"Responding the opponent without looking at the move" syndrome

(1. and 2. are related.)

"Killing all the stones" syndrome

"I Can't stop attacking the opponent's stones" syndrome

(3. and 4. are related.)

The green-eyed monster syndrome

More specifically...

"The opponent's moyo and territory looks always
bigger than mine" syndrome

"Assuming too much" syndrome

More specifically...

"Assuming that I'll never become strong" syndrome (due to age, etc.)

"Assuming that all my moves in this game are bad, so
I can't learn from it" syndrome

etc.

---------------------------------

All these syndrome are pretty tough to get rid of it.

I had the similar experience when I was a teenager.

I was once addicted to pachinko, a common gamble in Japan.
It's legal, but you lose a lot of money very quickly.

In Japan many people are addicted to it, and they
tend to neglect their work, or accumulate debts
to play pachinko.


Fortunately for weiqi players, being addicted to Go
will not make you lose a lot of money.

But having any of those syndromes may prevent you
from becoming a stronger baduk player....


I think I'll explain the syndromes further next time...

When I'm in a local fight, I always try to think about when to
finish the fight as well as about getting sente to play somewhere
else.

I try to control myself so that I will not play an overplaying
invasion.

Playing greedily will not help me. So I try not to be greedy.

During the game, when I don't know what to do, I just play
based on my senses (or feelings or intuitions).

(I'm not sure how to translate "senses" here. When it comes
to the game of iGo, Japanese pros often say "kankaku"
which can be translated as something like "senses, feelings or
intuitions. Does anybody know the correct translation?)


I try to review lessons in my iGo school and Kaz sensei's lessons
a couple of times a week. The more I understand iGo, the more
my interest in iGo grows.



■　Conclusion　■

The lessons in the iGo school and Kaz sensei's lessons have been
bearing fruit.

------------------------------------------------------------------


He reminded me of some of the common syndromes when I taught
at that baduk school.


One of them is "playing-most-moves-without-thinking syndrome".


Once in this blog I said "If you think for a long time,
you might want to play fast."


(To think for a long time means thinking for more than
10 minutes each move and every move...

In fact, my dad thought about each and every move at least
10 minutes... often 20 minutes from the first move to
the last move.

So each game took him at least 2 hours, often 3 hours.

Almost all iGo players in Japan hated playing with him.

I guess I inherited it from him. So when I was a child,
I thought about a move for a long time.

Now I play very fast, though.)


Yes, thinking each move for 15 minutes is not a good idea.

BUT!

"Playing-most-moves-without-thinking syndrome" is
not good either!


You should think when it comes to life-and-death problems
and capturing race at least.

If you have "playing-most-moves-without-thinking syndrome",
one way to prevent is to put a towel on your go bowl.

So you can't hold a stone immediately.

This is how Abe 9-dan pro in Japan did it when he was
a child.

Yes! He did have "playing-most-moves-without-thinking syndrome".
And he successfully got rid of it!

■ 73-years-old iGo player improved. How? ■

I taught at one of the most well-run iGo schools in Tokyo.

One day there was a 73-years-old iGo player came to my
simul teaching place and started taking my simul lessons
along with other 15 or 20 iGo players once every week.

Right after taking my lessons, he kept winning 10 games
in a row in his class.

Even after that, he continued to have a pretty good
winning ratios.

After 10 months, he thanked me and handed a note to me,
which showed how he learned from me and how he studied.

The note was impressive to me, and I thought that would
help other weiqi players, so I copied it and handed to
other Go players.


His case may be an exception, or not everyone could
imitate him perhaps.

But maybe there's something you might learn...

Here's his note (the following note is a translation
of Kaz iGo E-journal in Japanese
http://archive.mag2.com/0000146267/20051018222359000.html:


■　This is how a 73-year-old Go player studied　■

In July 2003, I started going to this iGo school as 7 kyu.
I kept improving up to 2 kyu in a year.

But up to that point, my improvement stopped. I had to
stay as 2 kyu for a half year.

At that time I thought "I'm 73 years old, and I don't study
a lot, so I guess I'm not going to improve much any more.

Then I heard about Kaz sensei and decided to take some
lessons from him.

To my surprise, beginning my next class, I kept winning
10 games in a row.

Furthermore, my winning ratios had become 84% for 10 months
even since I stated taking lessons from Kaz sensei.

Now I'm a little behind one-dan, and I've been amazed by
my improvement.

What made me really happy was that I still have some
potential to be stronger even though I'm such an aged
person.

In retrospect, I reflected how I studied iGo for the past
10 months.


Every time I took a lesson from Kaz sensei, in my
recording Go sheets, I wrote down some notes just
a couple of places which impressed me most, so that
I would reviewed them later.

It's very hard to learn joseki, so I try to learn
only some joseki which has only a few moves rather than
a long, convoluted joseki.

When I play a game, I always try to think about
where is the biggest point, watching the corner, the side,
and the center.


To be continued...