Oscar on Emotional Attachments

Streamed on Twitch on December 12, 2020.


Sunday Problem #27

Finland is celebrating its 103rd Independence Day today, and so, for this week’s problem, I ended up composing a tsumego in Finland’s shape.

There’s a lot of open space, which complicates reading, but as far as I could see there is only one solution.

Black to play.

Solution
Failure
A straightforward defence such as black 1, planning to sacrifice just …

Read the full post here!


Online League Format Changes on January 1

Starting from 1 January 2021, we will make two changes to our online league format, one a large one and the other a smaller one.

Tl;dr version

  1. Pairings will be rolled out monthly instead of bimonthly, are determined directly by league standings, and your results will affect your league standing.
  2. Games that end because of mistakes and oversights will start …

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The Game Is Not over Yet – Go in the Post-AlphaGo Era

Recently, my and Associate Professor Egri-Nagy’s second go paper, The Game Is Not over Yet – Go in the Post-AlphaGo Era passed its peer review and got published in the Philosophies open access journal. You can read the article here.

Most of the main content in the article is by Mr Egri-Nagy, but I am responsible for the parts that relate to stronger go players’ point of view. There are also a few tangents to my Bachelor’s thesis, which I was happy to build on.


Sunday Problem #26

With this post, we have reached half a year’s worth of Sunday problems! In case you haven’t noticed, this page (the link is under the ‘material’ tab and also on the right-side bar) lists all the Sunday problems in easily accessible form.

This problem is from the Japanese book (Tatsujin no tsumego), or Expert’s Tsumego. According to …

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Oscar on the Value of Stones

Streamed on Twitch on November 28, 2020.



Sunday Problem #25

To complete the set, this sample problem is from the advanced section of Maeda’s Tsumego Collection.

Black to play.

Solution
Solution
The eye-stealing placement of 1 looks like the natural starting point, but after White connects with 2, the next move is key. Only Black’s non-obvious sacrificing move of 3 will then manage to capture. After White resists with 4, black 5 connects under and the white group only has one eye.
If White instead responds to black 1 with 4, then black 3 again kills.

Sunday Problem #24

While last week’s Sunday problem was from the elementary section of Maeda’s Tsumego Collection, this week’s problem is from the intermediate section.

Black to play.

Solution
Solution
The key to this problem is the non-obvious black 5. If Black captured the two stones instead, white 5 would capture the black group whole; therefore, sacrificing the three stones to the right is the best Black can do. After black 7, Black lives with a minimal shape.

Viktor on Probes

Streamed on Twitch on November 14, 2020.