Monthly Archives: April 2016

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  I’m posting two games here today. The first one is a game played between Dylan and myself at the Columbus Go Club on Sunday the April, 17 2016. I won the right to choose color, so I chose white. Dylan played a blitz style game while I thought my moves out slowly. Dylan seemed to read better than I did in a number of places. I think he might have won if he played slower and looked for more options even if the first move he saw looked right. The game below was played between Dajiang and Jeff at the Go club on the same day. This one was a fun game to watch. Dajiang wanted to remind us of the Asian games section of the Asian festival coming up on May 28-29 at Franklin Park on Broad St. Some of the Go club members will be there as […]

Getting better at Go requires that the game is played, and preferably reviewed. But when a match isn’t possible due to time or lack of an opponent, studying life and death problems can very helpful. I recommend starting with the basics, like low level problems. Some joseki and fuseki problems are ok too, but life and death, in my opinion, will serve you better. My first introduction to life and death was a book. That book is: “The Elementary Go Series, Volume 4 Life and Death”  This book is a good start, but where to go from here. There are many books on life and death, and some additional ones can be recommended if you ask. As mentioned in the THANK YOU post on the home page, Tim Kington wrote a program called GoGrinder. This program is excellent for life and death problems, and the incorrect buzzer is a good […]

The Columbus Go Club would not be what it is today if Devin did not take control. His constant effort to promote the Go community in the Columbus area has led the Go club to where it is today. Devin saw a need for a new meeting location and made it possible to meet at the current location instead of the former meeting place of North Market. THANK YOU for picking up the reigns of the Columbus Go club and turning it to what it now is. The owners of Tea Zone Bakery & Café get a big THANK YOU for giving us a unique place to meet and play our games. There is such a good menu of drinks and food that there is plenty to choose from while playing our games. The setting inside is a perfect theme for Go games and the club. Tim Kington, a Columbus […]

This was an embarrassing game for me, and I almost didn’t post it, but take the good with the bad. All games have lessons in them. I missed an opportunity at H17, but I was still pleased with my game until I played move 94 at O3 instead of N5, even though. I was too cocky and thought I could get away with playing slow. I didn’t read the situation well at all and was relying on my walls instead of reading the situation out. To further my blundering I played move 104. There was no real reason to push in here. I was greedy to separate stones and again did not read this out very well at all. I later missed the reason behind my opponent’s move at R14 on move 155. This was the point where I wanted to resign but played on. To add to my dismay […]

The first step to getting good at playing Go is to learn the basic rules. One of the easiest ways is to use an interactive learning system. One of my favorites is “The Interactive Way to Go” (click the name for a link directly to the site) I like this one because it goes through the rules and gives playable examples as you proceed. The link takes you to a flash version, but a downloadable java version is available as well. After the moves in the interactive tutorial series is second nature, I suggest playing a Go variant called the capturing game on a 9 X 9 board. This game plays like go, except the winner is the first to make a capture. This game helps to instill the need to keep stones connected as well as helps new players escape from traps designed to capture. Eventually a new player […]

I would like to inform everyone of some downtime this site suffered. Due to an error on my part, this site was down for a while, probably most of the day. I neglected to set up my hosting packages automatic renewal properly. I thought everything was OK until I tried to log-in a little while ago. The hosting service provider helped me fix the issue, so it won’t happen again. I know this site is still under construction and has only a few posts, but that was still really embarrassing. If anyone has suggestions for the site itself, feel free to email me at kwostu@gmail.com

This is a record of my first game on 4/3/16 at the Columbus Go club meeting. It is also, unfortunately the only one that I recorded. I am black in this game and I got horribly out matched right at the beginning. I let white, Jeff, have too much at the beginning of the game and felt obligated to attack after attack against a much stronger player. As you can see from the record, it didn’t last long. I kept letting myself get separated and didn’t take advantage of the one group I managed to isolate well enough. Feel free commenting on this game, and how I could have played better. On a positive note, I won my second game, and although I don’t have a game record I had a really exciting third match. This picture is the final result. The prisoners are not in the picture, but black won […]