July 15th : Admin have blocked my chat without telling me they did so. I am punished for questioning others not greeting me in games. Some servers do not allow 1st move to be played without a greeting first …
I give free teaching games to 6k-12k players.
If interested, schedule a game with me - I am on GMT (British Summer Time in the Summer months).
I teach via live non-handicap games, using variations and comments as we play. I feel that feedback at the time of a problem is best. The review is yours to do afterwards. Teaching lasts about an hour.
Kim Seung Jun 9p videoed commenting on one of his games. Soooooo calm! :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncdIN8X9w70
If you want to see the value of reading, you must watch this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxKaOHF5Foo
Nelson Mandela : “I never lose. Either I win or I learn.”
Lee Sedol : “Don’t rashly play fast-paced moves.”
Me : “Go is a divine combination of fussy detail and broad sweeps”
The Go web sites I have been writing :
http://gopsychology.uk/Attention.html
I promote the idea that SLOW games are the way to improve your game. To give the mind breathing space to read and explore beyond the obvious. This leads to a calm mind, and sometimes games can become like meditations.
When fighting, players should take longer to read but often play faster! And they can stop seeing what the opponent gets when attacking them :
Our minds can narrow into survival mode! So we stop seeing anything other than life and death.
The modern obsession with fast play is madness where games become lotteries. My view is that electronic devices dominating lives creates a demand for ‘instant gratification’ leading to impulsive, ‘pebbledash Go’ play.
https://youtu.be/k5I1g4dr730?t=100 video says it all!
I have endured 28+ years of anxiety, depression and tension headaches. Slow, calm games where I have at least some connection via chat with my opponent is like an antidote to these problems. When slow games become like meditations, your game will never be the same again.
I have never seen this concept explained by any teacher of Go :
Killing a group is where the stones are so inefficient that they get negative points for stones played
When you squeeze a group that then lives or escapes but is inefficient, then they get too few points for the number of stones played
An order of magnitude better but still a loss
When squeezing someone, you will gain points in the attack without any need to check the board or estimate the score, or without a need to kill.
This article is enlightening :
https://tricycle.org/magazine/the-game-go/
From it I quote :
“The point of playing is clearly understood as not that of winning games but of exploring the possibilities to be found in particular arrangements of stones. You seek to create interesting games.”
Yuan Zhou 8dan :
"… close and mindless fighting that slowly spreads over the board is very common in kyu level games … such games are frequently played deliberately as ‘blitz’ games. Perhaps this sort of fast action with no clear idea of what is going on or what is likely to be the outcome is exciting, but it is definitely not what Go is about, and this sort of play hides the real excitement and enjoyment the game offers.
Go is a thinking game.
If you insist on playing without thinking, you will never understand why serious players are so devoted to the game nor will the beauty of the game show itself."
Game History
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Reviews and Demos
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Trophies
