Montag, 29. November 2010

How do I study Go?

I have been asked this question frequently. Here I shall explain to everybody how I study Go.




For that purpose, let me slightly modify the question. How Do I study Go?

A Japanese top pro player (if you know who it was, I'd appreciate it if you told me) once said that ordinary people cannot understand how he studies Go. When asked about details, he answered "I study Go by watching the trees blossom."

The thing is, nowadays I am sort of lazy to open the book and place stones on my awesome home-stuck Go board (in the picture below).


But don't take this as an excuse for not studying. I was very studious when I was still young and promising. In every spare moment, I would solve tesuji problems, replay pro games, study joseki, compete with my rivals and so forth. I was also blessed with the presence of Kobayashi Chizu 5p sensei who taught and spread Go in Vienna for one and a half years. It was also due to her ambition that a few Master Courses with top Japanese pros such as Takemiya Masaki 9p and Aoki Shinichi 9p had been organized.



Of course I also attended (and still attend) a lot of Go tournaments and met a lot of cool people.

This all helped me to improve and solidify my knowledge and feeling for Go.
I would still like to improve, but I am either too lazy or too busy or both nowadays.

Even though I do not study Go as frequently as before, I have found a lot of similarities between Go and other things, say, other games, language, music, nature, also in real life. Imho everyone should find their own enlightenment, so I'll save emy breath, or ink, or whatever, for telling you how I study Go nowadays.

Like the pro studies Go by watching trees, I found that I got stronger at Go by watching anime.
Below you can see my personal heroes:

Akagi Shigeru, the genius who descended into darkness
Tokuchi Toua, a clone of Akagi

(thanks to Namii who introduced them to me:D)
They are really ugly, but both of them are masters at their field (Mahjong and baseball repectively) and have not lost a single game.

They cannot teach me Go moves, but there is a lot more involved in a game than just the moves. I have even been defeated at the first move by those factors beyond the goban. If you are one of those people who don't care for such things, then I will have a hard time beating you too:P


Last weekend at Kranich tournament I had to play my little Finnish rival. Imo I successfully turned his unusual opening into a disadvantage for him, then I messed up big in the middle game, and after a byoyomi-flawed endgame it turned out to be a 2 points victory for me.
I think that I wouldn't have won it if I hadn't watched One Outs the week before and listened to Tokuchi Toua's teachings. On the other hand, if my opponent had done that too, I would have lost the game (probably by time or resignation).

I hope I could answer some of your questions and don't forget to study this site to get stronger:)

Oh, and this one is awesome too. Of course everything is for free! (But you are still welcome to donate!)

Samstag, 20. November 2010

Spielefest 2010

Yet again the Austrian Go Federation infiltrated the Games Festival to promulgate (lol what a word) Go to the world.


Contrary to the Sports Festival, where Go was relatively complicated compared to the other sports, it had the simplest rules among all board and card games this time. Only some games involving hitting a ball somewhere and the spinning wheel of fortune could outrule this suspicious looking game in terms of simplicity. (I won a t-shirt, two puddings and a drawing set spinning the wheel:) ).



Although I was there only on one of the three days this event took place, I was kinda overwhelmed by the number of visitors. Estimations score up to 10.000 visitors.



This time quite a few people got stuck to this game and they wouldn't stop playing it. Out of the people I took care of, there was a cool couple who had a peaceful and consensual playing style, and a father and his son who discovered the very depth of this game's complexity well concealed behind its seemingly simple rules. (Well, they are simple, but there are experts who would rather make them look complicated, too.)

They were all very talented and I am looking forward to meeting them again.



They also took part in the simultaneous games where they had to face Li Ting 1p (whom I have beaten once out of countless encounters in my life at Go in an even game:D, I also beat her at 3-dimensional TicTacToe at the games festival) who was imported from Japan just for this occasion. With anonymous help eventually one person managed to beat her in their simultaneous game! Very talented, and the anonymous dude too^^



Last, but not least, I shall mention the head guy and head woman of Kasu, an organisation with the aim of speading Japanese games, best known for playing Riichi Mahjong. Somehow they also got dragged into the flow and became fascinated of Go.



Btw you might have noticed that the pictures are kind of blurry. That is because my camera is not working properly anymore. I cannot change the settings nor see the pictures it takes until I copy them to the computer. If you want to see better quality pictures, feel free to donate for a new camera:D
(donations so far: 0.20€)