It looks like I abandoned this blog again... Sorry about that. v__v

Anyway, here's a small post to introduce you to two blogs (in French, sorry if you don't understand that language) by two new inseis from Switzerland. They started a few weeks ago and I think they are going to stay in Tokyo studying go for a year. So here are the links:

John's Blog

Flavien's Blog

Those two young players have made tremendous progress over the past few years and I'm sure that with this incredible opportunity, they are going to progress even faster.

Good luck to them!

A new go forum is born: The Go Forum

My hope is to provide a nice place for go addicts or more casual players to chat about their favorite game.

Our goals for this new forum are:

• To provide a friendly discussion place about the game of go.
• Improve it according to its users wishes.
• Hopefully, to help people of all levels make progress in go, including complete newbies.
• Keep it truly free: no ads, no sponsored links, no membership fee
• Respect our users' privacy: no external statistics scripts or web bugs
• Have fun in the process!

The forum is, off course, brand new and does not yet have as many users as more established forums but this is also an opportunity to be among the first to join and help shape the new community. A smaller scale also makes it easier to get to know people and make friends more easily.

The forum has all the tools you expect from a go forum: the ability to share go diagrams and games (sgf files). And if anything is missing, just request it ;)

I hope I'll be seeing you there.

The legendary Tartrate played a game on KGS yesterday after 4 years of absence. The game was set up in advance and announced on many go websites so everybody on the server was in a crazy mood in anticipation of this historical game. Tartrate's opponent was Gentlerain, one of KGS top players with a rating of 9d.

I can't comment on the level of play in this game as I'm not strong enough but it was quite interesting. I don't know exactly how many people watched this game, there were 800 watchers in the game itself but also more than 500 in the clone with moderated chat so it's hard to say what the real total was since many people were probably in both. As you can imagine, the KGS admins had a hard time keeping things civilized but that's part of the fun too.

So Tartrate played White with a 0.5 komi which is interesting given his opponent. Things were getting really complicated and with both players in 30s byo-yomi, Tartrate finally lost on time. Some high dan spectators thought the game was still playable for white. Tartrate left immediately but came back a few minutes later and showed us a better variation for white that I have included with this sgf file (go to move 99) and that would have secured unconditional life for white's group.

Overall, I had a lot of fun watching this game. It wasn't just the game itself but the nostalgia about the time when Tartrate first appeared on KGS. I used to spend a lot of time on KGS back then when it was smaller and it was a lot easier to make friends and have a good time just chatting. But even with Tartrate back, it's not quite the same nowadays...

SGF file: tartrate.sgf

\

Ever since hearing about them and watching the promotional video, I've been quite curious about Yunzi stones. These wei-qi stones from China are becoming quite popular among go enthusiasts who appreciate their unique look and reasonable price.

In the US, they have been available for some time at Yellow Mountain Imports and while they ship internationally I had not yet seen any European store offering them. So when I saw on Sensei's Library, that some were available at WeiQiStore.com, a new online shop located in The Netherlands, I decided to order them and see for myself.

Both single and double convex stones were available. Single convex stones have a flat side and are preferred in China where people like to turn them upside down when reviewing variations. They are also half the price of double convex ones but still I preferred the later. I've never used single convex stones and I'm afraid that I would not get used to them. On the other hand, it would be interesting to try them one day.

So one week after ordering, I received my stones. I ordered the cheap straw baskets with them, since my purchase was more by curiosity than need, I did not want too spend too much and besides these bowls have the merit of looking different. Although I've seen similar bowls being totally destroyed by intense club use, I don't think that's going to be a problem in my case.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the stones to be mostly ready to use. The oil fanatics may want to re-oil them before use but if like me you don't like that too much, you'll be happy to know there was no need to spend time wiping them clean.

I find these stones to be quite elegant. There is no doubt that they are far superior to glass stones. The slightly greenish translucency of the white stones is just perfect. The black stones are less unique but just as good. It would be difficult to tell the difference between them and slate stones (EDIT: actually I now realize they have an intense green translucency but that's only visible with a really bright light). They seem to be the same diameter as Japanese stones, clearly they are meant for the international market, and almost 10mm in width (probably equivalent to a Japanese size 34). There are 181 stones of each color which I appreciate as this is not always the case.

My experience with WeiQiStore.com was totally positive. The shop is still new but they were quick to respond so don't hesitate to contact them if you need some information before ordering. Their catalog is still a little bit limited and I hope they'll have the opportunity to enrich it with more goods in the future.

But while I expected that ordering from a European shop would be cheaper than ordering from the US this was not the case. It turns out that shipping costs are about the same and with the current all-time high conversion rate of the euro, it looks as if it would have been actually slightly cheaper to order from YMI (but I can't say for sure and also don't know if the stones are really the same size). But that's probably only the case because I live in Switzerland which is not part of the European Union and I have to pay extra custom taxes in both cases. The shorter delivery time was also worth the difference.

So overall, I'm quite happy with my purchase even if it turns out I spent a little more than I first thought I would. Those Yunzi stones are really nice and I definitely recommend them over glass stones (which are often sold at a similar price anyway). Off course, they won't replace my shell & slate stones anytime soon but I did not expect them too. However they'll do find fine as a secondary set of stones that I'm not going to be afraid to transport if necessary.

I played again!

Two games on KGS today. As more than 6 months had passed since my last game on that server, my game history was empty and my rank back to [?]. In those situations I'm never quite sure what I should announce as my rank in order to get a game. KGS ranks have fluctuated a lot over the years, there was a time when I was 8k then I went back to 15k and the latest change probably puts me back again around 8k.

Anyway what matters is that I was able to overcome my fear of playing and play. In a topic on godiscussions.com about go anxiety, I said that in order to prevent that problem, I should be more detached about my games. If I'm able to play calmly without caring too much about the game then I won't feel stressed and it will be easier to play more.

Unfortunately that was not the case. The first game ended quickly by my opponent resigning even though I didn't feel I was ahead at all so I didn't have the time to get too much into the game. The second one, however, got quite interesting and let's just say that I still feel the adrenaline rush 45 min. after the end (and I couldn't stay still for most of that time). I know that the first game after a long pause always feel like that and that if I start playing regularly again it will get better.

But still, it's pretty amazing that even though I told myself not to care about the result or whatever silliness I would play in that game, I was still unable not to feel like each move was the most important thing and that I could not afford to make a blunder. Actually I even wished that I would lose that game to avoid keeping the highly overrated rank that the first one gave me but that didn't make it any easier. It makes me wonder how the pros manage to stay calm under the pressure of the important games...

So I've still not started playing again, not counting a few igowin games at work that probably do more harm than good to my already shaky go skills. When I have not played in a long time I always have a hard time starting again. It's like a weird fear of playing, some people call it Online Go Anxiety (OGA) but it's not specific to online play and it should not be confused with a fear of losing, it's not even a fear of playing ridiculously badly. I think it's just a reaction to the high level of stress caused by go. When that happens I try to slowly build my motivation with go related activities until the urge to play is stronger than the fear.

Among those, my favorite is certainly watching the Hikaru no Go anime again. I watched the whole series again in less than a week. Which wouldn't be that bad if I had not already seen it more time than I can remember (I wouldn't be surprised if I had seen the first episodes 10 times already). But Hikaru never fails, it's impossible to watch that series (or read the manga) and not want to play go.

One thing that the casual viewer may not realize, though, is that many of the places shown in the anime not only exist in reality, but were carefully reproduced. I used Google Earth to try to find the Nihon Kiin headquarters and I was amazed at how easy it was to recognize the area from watching it in Hikaru no Go.

For a while, I wondered what these pool-like things were. It turns out, they are fishing ponds, right in the middle of the city. The ponds are always refilled with fishes and equipment is available so that people can go fish during their lunch break.

(photo by "the detestrian's", used under creative commons license)

My new blog is certainly a source of motivation too, after all it wouldn't make much sense to keep a go blog if I never played again. But it can also be a way to procrastinate as there are always thing to improve on a blog. Tonight, I've integrated Sensei's Library go diagram generator into dotclear (the blogging script I use) so that now I can easily have diagrams just like on Sensei's or go discussions. I don't really have any use for it now but at least it makes my blog look more like a 'go blog'!

So finally, I'm starting my go blog! I've had the domain name and hosting for months now but I was too lazy to get started.

Now, this brand new blog is in dire need of some content. I guess this is the hard part, especially since I've not played in months. What's the point of a go blog written by someone who doesn't even play go anymore? Well, I guess I'll need to get started again...

For those of you that don't know what the title of this blog "kami no itte" means, it's a Japanese term, popularized by the manga Hikaru no Go which can be translated as "divine move". It's used to refer to perfect play, the unreachable ideal that every player tries to achieve. I also want to make it clear that by choosing that name for my blog, I'm not pretending that you'll find the divine move here or anything even remotely near it. Even though I've been playing for a few years now, I still consider myself to be at beginner level.

And since I'm already running out of ideas of things to say, that will be all for this totally boring and useless first post.