Saturday, January 12, 2008

Pine Board is Flawed

The pine board I was planning on using to make my first goban turned out to be irredeemably flawed on the bottom side. So I guess it’s back the attic floor with that one, and I’ll start with trying to make a goban from cherry! Maybe the value of the wood will drive me to do a good job, lol.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Opening Game Study


One thing I’ve noticed in my play against SmartGo is that my closed moyo tend to develop too early. So, although I securely capture some area, I allow SmartGo to capture large segments of the remaining board and so I get crushed.

My game is too “chunky” and lacks the “integrated” look one sees in most games.

At first I wondered whether this was because of the computer style of play vs. a human style of play; was I learning bad habits? However, I decided it must be because I was not fully developing the opening game before proceeding to closed moyo.

To that end (or beginning, lol), I bought “In the Beginning” by Ikuro Ishigure. I have to say that with just one day of reading, it has solved a lot of the problems I was having with the opening. The example here, though riddled with mistakes and lacking good joseki, does show more of an integrated pattern. And, though I got stomped in mid game, I did do significantly better through the opening game than I have been (based on computer analysis of the game).

-Neil

p.s. And I retrieved the pine board for goban number 1 from the attic flooring (yes, I did replace it with other boards, lol). I still need to mark it for size and decide on how to cut it for minimal warping.