Greetings fellow Oklahoma Go players! Eatwisdom here, writing from abroad.
I noticed that most recently our go community has cooled down quite a bit. I know the controversy over becoming legitimate made some tempers run hot, and the recent loss of Jim really put a damper on the momentum of our group. Because of that, I figured it was time to find the time to write a blog and try to get some things moving. Of course, while there has been some action over at our forums (http://www.oklahoma-go-players.org/phpbb/index.php ) (largely courtesy of our ever-striving Logan) it feels like some dust is settling on our group! (Perhaps it’s just because i’m not around for our meetings, and the mailing list died?!)
But all that aside, it’s spring break for me here in Japan. Unfortunately, the Go club here doesn’t meet over the long, two month lag between semesters, so I’ve been left on my own to study go. Since I didn’t get a chance to write about it, a number of you don’t know much about my experience with the Go club here in Japan.
The school I’m currently attending (Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto) is home to what seems to be Japan’s strongest college Go club. The club meets “officially” twice every week on the 5th floor of the old Student Union building, where no classes are held, and most of the rooms have cracks in the walls and patches of paint missing here and there. The club room, floored with mistreated tatami mats, draws club members at most times of day, most every day. The room is filled with floor boards, floor cushions, books, trophies and go stones both in bowls and scattered across the floor. At any one time, there are usually 9 floor boards out, with another 5 or 6 stacked against the wall, and far more bowls of go stones then should be necessary. Usually, several of the boards have unfinished games from kifu, the left overs from game-discussion, and random shapes that were built across the intersections of a nearby board while somebody had a conversation. The walls are covered with signs that read things like, “Offer even games to kyu players as much as possible!” and “Let’s do our best to throw away our garbage!”
While there are a number of kyu players involved with the club, all of the regulars are above 3 dan. The guys that I usually met when I showed up at random times to play a game or look through some kifu are a group composed of a 3d, a 5d, two 6d, and occasional appearances by 7d and 8/9d. Considering that my Japanese, while at a proficient level, is far from fluent, and I’m still a little unfamiliar with the dialect used by the club members, the Go club can be a pretty scary experience. But I’ve also fallen in love with the atmosphere, and I wish I could bring it to the States.
I showed up for the first time one Monday evening, and opened the heavy metal door that blocked the room from the hallway where the music students were practicing. Stepping in and removing my shoes, I found a group of 6 or 7 Japanese guys gathered around one go board, their necks swiveled towards me so they could stare intently. I took off my shoes, and stepped up onto the tatami, and said weakly, “I can play go.” A hint of understanding passed through the group, but they were still not sure how to react. I noticed that even through the heavy door you could still hear the muted sound of Japanese flutes and traditional Chinese stringed instruments. Aside from that, nothing was happening.
Lucky for me, at about the same time, the club president, who I had contacted a week or two before, walked in behind me and said “Oh, you must be the one who e-mailed me. Join us, please,” before dropping off some books and leaving again. It was settled, my presence was a controlled thing. They all turned back to their board, and I quietly went to join them. I had planned to spend the whole evening sitting and watching, largely ignored until the group got used to me. They asked some initial questions, like “You can play go?” “what’s your name?” and “how strong are you?”
When I told them I was ranked 2k on kgs, they looked fairly surprised, and finally, one of them offered me a game. From the way that they were talking, I wasn’t sure if my challenger, Endo-san, was much stronger than me or not. I sat down to play him, grabbed one of the nearby bowls filled with many different kinds of go stones, all slightly different, and we did nigiri. I took white, and we moved through the opening without my being able to tell how strong my opponent was. In the early middle game, I started to lose my advantage, and when I pressed for a lead I started to fall apart everywhere, bit by bit. Towards the late middle-game, shortly after I had failed to capture an invasion after just barely missing one of the longest sequences I’ve ever read, I asked about how strong he was. He looked up, as if to confirm I had said something, and then, “About 6 dan.”
The game ended in a resignation, and was followed by a game review that I could only partially understand do to my poor Japanese and the wide vocabulary used to explain each situation.
From that experience onwards, I showed up whenever possible, and the club members challenged me one after another, until at last the 3 dan, who had entirely ignored my presence, stepped in as my mentor and started playing me whenever I showed up. As it stands now, I can’t wait to go back to club. But I’m not prepared to go back as I was the last time I left the club room. I’m still working towards the goal I set two years ago (the same goal who’s deadline I’ve missed 3 times, now:) shodan.
And so my summer studies have begun with a slew of life and death problems and tesuji problems taken from some books that have been just recently published in English. The Egnlish series, published by Kiseido, is called “Graded Go Problems for Dan Players (http://www.kiseido.com/dan.htm) and a number of you probably are already familiar with the title. While I’ve come to believe that no Go book is “necessary” to get better if you spend a lot of time playing and thinking about stronger games, but if you’re one of those people like me who feels they get a lot out of problem books, then this is probably a good series for you, and I would recommend it.
Of course, I’m also keeping my game watching up, and I’m trying to study situations that pop up in the stronger games. The one that I want to put up here is a pretty common one, and I’m fairly sure that everyone has heard of it. But my question for you all is this: are you confident about your ability to quickly find the solution?
The English name for the shape is “The Carpenter’s Square,” and, rather than linking you to an answer site, I invite you all to build out these variations on a board and try to understand them. I encourage you all to resist looking up the answer for as long as possible.
Black to play. Alive, Dead, Seki or Ko?
Black to play. Alive, Dead, Seki or Ko?
Black to play. Alive, Dead, Seki or Ko?
Black to play. Alive, Dead, Seki or Ko?
Well, that’s about it for now. Have any of you been seeing some interesting sequences in your games or the games you watch? Everyone still playing? Eatwisdom signing out.
See you next time, space cowboy. . .