King's Baduk Center

Lately I’ve been spending my time at King’s Baduk Center. I study go (it is called baduk in Korean).

When I manage, I get up at 6:30 and go running (this is becoming increasingly difficult with temperatures getting lower and lower). Then I go to my computer, hang around on KGS, chat with Europeans who are staying up late, postprocess my pictures, and generally have fun.

At 8:00 we have breakfast. It usually includes toasts, meat, eggs and jam, which is pretty good. Recently we had a week in which we only got rice for breakfast. Half of Westerners just couldn’t manage and decided to skip breakfast alltogether. After breakfast we have a little more free time and at 9:00 we start studying.

Morning is devoted to solving problems. I’ve taken a few problems from our collections and put them here for your enjoyment:

You can click those 1’s to see the problems. No solutions are provided because life is tough (we also have no solutions, but our teachers sometimes look at our books and draw stars next to problems with wrong solution, needless to say, our books are full of stars).

Lately we have tests at 10. It starts with a joseki test (we learn one chapter from “21st Century New Openings” every day) after which there’s “speed test”, mostly not too hard tsumego in large quantities. Like 72 problems in half an hour. When you mess up badly, you have to run. Also, after few days/weeks, we get the same speed test again, which is pretty evil, as it shows how little we learn.

At noon there’s lunch (rice, why are you asking?), and at 1pm we start our league games. I’ve uploaded a few league games that I’ve recorded. Please note that these were played with the time limits of 30 minutes main time plus 3 times 30 seconds byoyomi (which is pretty tough, in my opinion).

Right after I came to KBC, I lost the biggest group I’ve ever lost in what had been a comfortable game until move 87 in which I forgot to protect my corner. One of my next games against Mateusz was a rather interesting fight of influence against territory, but instead of an easy kill (move 110 push down from two stones), I let Mati live and died myself. Then a funny game against Tunga, which I won by an accident.

Here’s a game against Pierre that we played right after he came to KBC:

(you can use arrow keys on your keyboard to move around the game)

I had a bad start, which changed to amazing game after his 32, which gave me plenty of points in return for nothing. The game proceeded well until I got to byoyomi (move 83), where it quickly went downhill as I lost my cutting stones, but Pierre unexpectedly decided to die with his huge corner, which suddenly ended the game.

About a week later I played against Him, and after his overplay at move 56, I managed to keep an edge in the fight and ultimately killed his group. In a game against Ben I forgot to create territory but got a lucky win after he overplayed and died. The I gotbeaten by Seolki in a 3-handicap.

I had a promising game against Him after he forgot to secure his corner, but I died because of utter lack of global insight at one point (move 83, also at 63 we both missed a simple geta :-|). You can see the game here:

You can also see Seolki’s one man show – I started a fight which was bad in the first place and then played it wrong. Tungalag Tunga is direct descendant of Genghis Khan and so she tries to kill everything (but fails). Oooops, Pierre forgot to connect his stones (but he would have lost anyway).

Next is a typical Mateusz game, which went very good for me until I started a completely unreasonable fight when I didn’t need it. Luckily, Mateusz blundered few times and let me win. Several failed attacks cost me the next game against Him. Some of the higher handicaps can also get pretty rough (though I usually win those).

I had a very interesting game against Pierre today:

The start was better for him, then he ataried 68 without hesitation (“my teacher told me not to think about that”), and we made an interesting exchange. In my opinion, it would have been about even had he killed the corner. I made a bad trade while escaping with my group (move 97) but more than made up for it when I surprised Pierre with easy life of my supposedly dead corner.

The last game is perhaps more interesting than any of the ones before, as it contains commentary by KBC teacher, Kim sabomnim.

(it might be more comfortable to view the game with fullsize interface on eidogo.com)

If you look at the commentary carefully, you will be rewarded. There is one standard situation which happens very often and is played wrong by any European between 5kyu and 7dan (players worse than 5kyu don’t know the trick, and those better than 7dan know that the trick in fact isn’t that good).

After the games and commentary there’s dinner (yay, rice!), and after that a lecture with Seolki or free time, which we invariably spend at the computers (except when we go drinking).

I’m being kicked out of here so I don’t even have the time to read it after myself. I hope at least short fragments make sense. If not, just enjoy the tesuji problems and games (although those don’t make sense either :))!

PS: It is pure coincidence that of the four games displayed here, two are against Pierre and I won both, and the other two are against Him and I lost both. In fact, I lose to Pierre quite often, and I certainly beat Him more often than never. 8-)

PPS: Brought to you by EidoGo. EidoGo rocks. Takes a minute to set up and works like a charm.