My handicap go skills (now talking about me giving stones to others, I am not on the recieving end very often if at all) always lacked something, for whatever reason I used to be totally unable to play the “correct” handicap, strugling with handicap reduced by two stones. Lately, playing in the tearoom (told ya about it already) seems to have improved my handicap skills quite a lot. We change handicap after each game in appropriate direction by one stone, here are my results:

I was able to force 1kyu (Ondra Kruml) down to 6 handicap (which I lost, but it wasn’t that desperate as one could expect), well, he got back to 3 handi, but now he is at 4 handicap again, I succesfully dodge his attacks to try to get to an even game :)

Now even more funny, I managed to get a 2dan (Písa) down to 4 handicap (we were starting at 2 handicap, which is the “correct” one), and while I had the better of it already, after some blunders from both of us he won. Nevertheless, I won the 3 handi we played then and I’m looking forward to put up a fight next weekend in a 4 handicap again.

I am really happy that my handicap go improved this much, now I will hopefully be able to slay some kyu players who always thought too high of themselves in the correct (or higher) handicap.

And, a bit of what I’ve learned:

• in the fuseki, spread your stones all over the board (the higher the handicap the more this applies), never play anything completely out (if possible), the sucker will be confused and won’t know what to do
• play nonstandard moves, the suckers often know joseki, you gain everytime you play something wrong that no one knows (as you are able to read much deeper)
• sacrifice small groups for sente (I can’t stress this enough probably, it is utterly important), the sucker will spend a few gote moves to kill it and probably choose wrong ones so you might be able to live later
• be bold, but not completely unreasonable, if you see your trick move responded correctly, don’t hesitate to make tenuki (the aji is better left for later)
• influence is worth five times it’s real value in handicap games (either it will help you kill something or you will get a huge territory, the sucker will be afraid)
• if you know what your sucker is afraid of, just play it whether it works or not, the psychological gain is usually huge; also, when you do that, it helps to ask over-anxiously “are you afraid?”, this will put him under pressure and he’ll either play something really safe or decide to punish you by an unreasonable overplay

As a side note, the term sucker is meant relatively here and I leave it up to you which advice was meant seriously.

I’ve been listening to some classical music lately, so here are my impressions:

Tchaikovsky: Nutcracker and Swan lake, both are great, the music is very lively.
Mozart: Requiem, ultimately boring, I didn’t like it at all.
Vivaldi: Some concert, well, better than Requiem (if that means anything).

But, Tchaikovsky rulez…

I used to use tasuki@volny.cz, then got tasuki@seznam.cz for registering to suspicious places that could send me spam, and two years ago or so I switched to vit.brunner@gmail.com. I still forwarded the two previous emails there, as sometimes someone sent me something there, but lately I found out that I am more or less only forwarding spam.

Now I recieved about one spam every hour (yeah, I know, it’s still not that bad), so I decided it was the right time to cancel the redirects, so, the old adresses don’t work anymore, use the new one.

There’s no point to this post, just an announcement or something like that.

Do you know sed? It is a program that transforms text (I’ve used it to transfer sgf to my povray format), however, some people thought it’d be funny to make games in sed…

They made classic pong game and sokoban (the old game where you are a man that has to move boxes through a maze). Well, I think they are completely crazy (both the games and their creators), but I really like the idea of (ab)using sed in this way.

Sorry for a geekish post. (but I really do find this interesting :-))

I’ve been living in this room since I was 4 years old or so (I had been in living parents’ room before I think).

To the north there is my sister’s room, to the east there is the living room, and garden is south. There is terrace above my room, and bathroom and corridor below. But what is in the west direction?

Just as I sit here, I have no idea what exactly there is. Well, there is neighbours’ house, and I think they have a living room there, but I’m not sure. The wall is probably quite thick as I never heard any sounds from there, not even music or so.

And why am I writing about it? I find it rather creepy that I have no idea what is there, just one or two meters far. Do you know all the direct surroundings of the place you live in?

I’ve read somewhere that average blog lasts slightly less than three months. Now I can see why.

I’ve had the blog for about three and a half month, so I am already above average, but lately I simply do not have enough energy to write posts. It’s not that there is nothing to write about, there are plenty of things I’d like to write about, but somehow it is too much work and I am very lazy.

So, don’t expect the blog to come to the end now, but maybe I will slow down a bit…

I haven’t made a blog post in quite a while, that’s because I was in Berlin and didn’t have much time.

There was a pair-go championship (two pairs playing against each other, partners alternate in making moves). We finished fifth with Anicka, which is quite nice considering we haven’t played pair-go together yet. Apart from that, it was a nice trip, I saw Berlin (I expected a bit more but I don’t complain), ate some sushi and various different japanese-style food.

I also met In-seong Hwang, who studied go (or baduk, as they use to call it in Korean) for five years at Korean Myongji university. There is a department of baduk at college of arts, it must be totally incredible to study go at university (instead of informatics, for example :-)).

Here it is, in my very own room. :)

It’s a floor goban made of the highest quality wood known as kaya. The stones are made of slate and shells.

It cost 10 000€, which I find quite expensive, might as well be the best goban in the whole Europe. Now I should say that it is not mine, it belongs to “Moravian go players” and it is in my room only temporarily (so if you plan on stealing it you will have to hurry (and I have to warn you that it is damn heavy)).

I fell in love with it instantly, it’s most delightful to play on it (or replay and study games), the sound of stones being put on the surface is gentle, not the usual awful cracky one you experience with thin and hard gobans.

Canada? Civilized country, right?

Hmmm, not so sure… Do you know about Canadian seal hunts? It really makes one wonder…

Keo pointed me to a page that has extensive information about first video game. The game was made in 1958 and played on oscilloscope, which I find utterly hilarious (playing videogames is one of the few things I surely wouldn’t use oscilloscope for ;-)).

There is also a 2 minute video, which is worth watching even if you are too lazy to read the text (and you are too lazy, I know my readership :-)).