KAMAKURA by John Fairbairn

Kamakura is sometimes considered as de facto capital of Japan during the Kamakura period that marks the governance by the Kamakura Shogunate established in 1192 by the first shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo [It’s my favorite character in the game Genji].

This is simply introduction to the name Kamakura, but not the Kamakura book write by John Fairbairn. The book above was about the jubango match in 1939 to 1941 between Kitani Minoru and Go Seigen in which Go Seigen prevailed over the board with the final score of six wins to four loses.

This book contains 190 pages but there were only 10 games in it. The main aspect of the book that distinguished itself with any other GO books written before was the usage of few moves per diagram to illustrate it so that one can visualize it without a goban.

Within 4 days I’ve finished reading the book thoroughly once, since 21^st to 24^th June. The realistic experiences that brought out through all the diagrams really means that Kamakura was a treasure must be keeping by any GO player. It will definitely improve one’s strength by at least one to two stones by finishing this book.

Well, it was not enough just by reading it once. There were too many words that I don’t understand where I’ll use a dictionary when I enjoy it for the second time. Third time will come where I’ll laid out the stones on the goban to feel the experiences and the tense of the games that brought to us from the deep thinking by the players from the time it was played.

All my friends that play me will know that I’ll hardly play hoshi using either black or white. Since komoku and takamoku were my favorites. Now hoshi will be the frequent if not all that I’ll use when I hold white. The 1-3-5 Shusaku’s opening will still be my forte when using black.

Thanks to Hock Doong in telling me about this magnificent book and helped me to buy it. Can’t wait to finish it for the second time and then lay it out.

I’ve now being accepted into University Malaya to pursue my study in music. I’ll not have enough time to improve my beloved hobby, GO. Anyway I’ll still review the old kifu to satisfy my thirst for it and I’m now impatiently waiting for the books ordered by the help of Hock Doong.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

To add some color to the post, I’ve posted this picture which I got it from Jing-na’sblog [http://zemotion.blogspot.com/], first I thought it was the piano keys pattern on the dresses they are wearing but found out that it wasn’t. Still I like this picture and decided to put it here.

Depth Reading; Meijin

Here I would like to share a game that I reviewed today, the 33^rd Meijin Title Match, game Three. This game was interesting in the sense of the depth reading by the current Meijin; Cho U.

In the Diagram I below, the move 99 starts a fierce attack by Cho U, this move was backed up with the profound analysis of depth reading, in which black will eventually trap the middle white stones. 

Diagram I

Diagram II shows the final results of the attack once black switch to move 141, notice that the top left white group was under attack.

Diagram II

The game went through an interesting flow, in which both players hallucinated once in the tense moment of the fighting. I will not go through it, since it’ll need long explanations. 

The 1^st league of the Malaysia Weiqi Asscociation has ended. Following is my results throughout the league that span from February 7^th to May 2^nd 2009. It was not a good result for me but I’ll put up more effort in the 2^nd league.

Wonderful Weekend

This weekend was great. A few things that I did with my friends together were memorable moments.

Saturday we played a bunch of GO games and now Shougi has also become a part of our weekly enjoyment at Japan Club. It’s fascinating to learn something new when playing Shougi, especially the way to protect the weakness of the opening, for example the advancing pawn guarding by a rook. Zaid was really good at this, and he was very careful about the surrounding pieces and thus to win him will be a very difficult task. Now we got Hock Doong and Jimmy joining our small Shougi society initiated by Ryou Takehito, a friend from Brunei.

On the very same night, it was our pleasure being invited to Shino’s sister’s birthday party. It was a warm and lively party, full of her family members and friends. We (me, Zaid and Philip) did enjoy the foods and the relaxing surrounding of it. In Shino’s place, Zaid and me played a game of Xiangqi, although I thought I got better chance of winning, I lost after I did a single mistake by losing a rook without compensation in which I can’t make a comeback and staged an upset to his lead. This shows his formidable strength in concentration.

After that we went to Hock Doong’s place to play RISK, a board game of world conquering. This was my third time playing this game. I and Jacky were playing as a team and we did join forces with Zaid's and Philip's troops. This was to overcome the treaty agreed by Hock Doong and Patrick. RISK is a long game to play and we did manage to finish it in between 3 a.m. to 4 a.m., after being revised by Hock Doong to a simpler version. If not it’ll be at least 5 to 7 hours to finish a single game.

Not to forget our friend in Japan, Boon Ping, was playing as a Malaysia representative. He scores 5 wins and being ranked 20^th, a proud achievement and if I remember well it was the highest we got so far in WAGC.

Sunday, we again meet at Japan Club. The difference between going there on two distinct days was we played with the Japanese players more on Sunday. Mr. Tsuda has come back from Japan and a new strong player, Mr. Imura has been coming to play frequently.

After a few games, Philip and I went to Mid Valley to catch a movie, which we got to watch Star Trek for free, because his friend got three free tickets for it. It was my first time watching Star Trek, even though it was broadcasted in Malaysia long time ago. I was exciting to watch a sci-fi movie; with the idea of speed of light space ship, black hole, teleport or warp, aliens, space travel, mind reading and many more. There’s one thing that I can hardly accept, that’s time travel, imagine another self of yours appears before you. Still I thought it was plausible, since there’s no limit for the unexpected to happen, nothing is impossible.

 

Impressed; Amazed

“Being able to conceive a move like 36 (Diagram 1) is a sign of impressive strength …” by Fujisawa Shuko

Diagram 1

I was impressed by being shown the move of 36 in Diagram 1. It was a move that only a genius can play, and he’s Lee Chang-ho. It was said that this move brought him the title of “The youngest world champion”in the year 1992.

Diagram 2

It was coincidence that the move 54 (Diagram 2) once again appeared in this year 5th ING Cup world title. ING Cup gives the biggest prize to the winner, giving almost a sum of USD 500,000. I was surprised when I found out that this move was once played by Lee Chang-ho, for which he lost in this game to Choi Cheol-han. What I thought was once an impressive strength displayed by a player; he mostly will win the game. In this year case, it was shown by this significant player from Korea, Choi Cheol-han.

Black or White

I played a game in Cyber Oro this morning and my username is viento. From the nigiri* result I’m playing White, which give me a 6.5 komi. This was the third time I’m confused by the color estimation, the first time was an online game and second one was the league game that I played in the Japanese Club where my opponent was Sin Voon aka Xinwen.

As many people know, Cyber Oro do has a function namely Score Estimation and what distinguished it from other GO* servers was it can make score estimation while the game is going. I used it often and I know that was not a thing a Dan player should do.

What really happen was I’m using white and when I press the score estimator I’ll automatically thought that my opponent was white and hence I thought I was behind because of the komi. I tried very hard to chase after the points and in the end of it I thought I was losing one point on the board. As the game end I realized that I’ve the color disorder again. The reason for this was I’m using black too much in the few previous games.

I hope that this won’t happen in the future games, especially tournament time because I’ll make some unreasonable moves to invade which will probably cause me the game.

REF:

1. Nigiri is a Japanese GO term [lit. Grab] adopted into English, referring to the procedure common in Japan at the beginning of an even game to decide who will play the black stones.
2. GO - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(board_game)