Reflections on the status quo, and moving into 2015

As my leave is ending, and I am returning to the office today for another year of stress and travel, I am happy to inform you all that, as usual, I barely did any of the things I was planning for my holiday in terms of baduk related study… Nothing out of the ordinary for me, I’m always full of great plans that make me feel good; besides, I live in Cape Town… this place is just not conducive to serious study efforts over the holidays.

But to start of the year, let’s see how I ratings are looking:

Server	Rank	Ranked games
Real-life (SAGA)	19k	7 wins | 4 loss
KGS	20k	9 wins | 10 loses
IGS	17k?	5 wins | 6 loses
OGS	20k	11 wins | 8 loses
DGS	20k	19 wins | 23 loses

Overall, I’ve managed to move from 23k to 19k in about 6-7 months of playing, which isn’t all too bad. But I think my major obstacle is two-fold: not enough life and death problems, and not enough games. I played a teaching game with a 3d at the club the other day, and he remarked that my opening is very good, and my early middle game as well; where I lose is in my tendency to run away from fights. In high handicap games that usually works (up to a point), but for the most part I run from fights due to my frequent disasters in reading things out and failing to notice snap backs. In terms of not playing enough, while I play a lot on turn based servers, I think I need to get over my live online game phobia, and bring my IGS and KGS accounts back to life. One dan level member at the local club suggested that I actually play online with the board in front of me, and play – for the opening and first part of the middle game – the moves on the board as they happen online; this would maybe alleviate my tendency to lose focus of when I’m staring at the screen of death (also known as a computer screen).

I would love to make a new years resolution here, but if I do, then I pretty much assure myself of not doing those exact things… I basically need something to motivate me in doing more baduk study, and I’m out of ideas…

On wine, baduk, and a bit of shogi

W+11.5; 9H & 0.5 deom [덤, komi]

I learned a new lesson, don’t play baduk after going to a series of wine farms and consuming wine under the guise of tasting… Basically, it is a recipe for defeat. I played this game at a Korean restaurant (aptly named “Soju”… for my favourite poison when I lived in Seoul) with 10k Master; the game was the end of a day filled with wine and food. To be honest, I didn’t do half bad; I was a head by around 15-20 jib [집, moku] for most of the middle game, until I made a fatal mistake. If you look at the enclosed space of 10 jib in the middle of the bottom side, that was a capture, after 10k Master skillfully distracted me by playing in one liberty at a time while we were messing about elsewhere. The 9 white stones intruding into my territory ended up there, after my very alive group went suicidal… Or, which is a better way of putting it, I accidentally threw it under the bus… A snap back was set up, and I failed to see it in time… The shift was 29 jib, and suddenly my lead was far gone. As it was at the end of the middle game, there wasn’t much opportunity to make a come back, and I lost by 11.5 jib. The picture here was take after we removed dead stones, I forgot to do it immediately, so it isn’t that accurate a reflection of the end position…

The loss cost me about 600 rating points on the SAGA system, which took away all my advancement from the previous games I had played; I’m still 3 losses or so away from demotion, but it means I have to get a win in the next few games to stay at 19k.

The point of no return (also known as the point where I got checkmated by my traitor of a pawn… it even got promoted to general by the enemy)

Off topic, I did enjoy a try at shogi during the day; one of 10k Master’s friends is a shogi player (probably the only one in South Africa) and is proselytising severely. Shogi is probably the most complex chess variant there is, and has a steep learning curve, steeper than Western chess or janggi [장기, Korean chess]. Basically, every piece can promote, and every piece captured can be dropped back on the board as one of your own… Those two added components make it as alien from Western chess as Stratego, which by the way is probably my second favourite strategy board game. Western chess used to take third place, but I think I love the complexity of shogi, it makes Western chess feel so simple and bland. I might try it out online a bit when I have the time (someday… someday).