Go Seigen Birthday Pack

Yesterday I received 4 books from Slate & Shell. I don't know when I'll have the time to read them, but I couldn't resist the offer: they where half the price!

This is the offer from the webpage:

In commemoration of Go Seigen’s 100th birthday, Slate & Shell is offering John Fairbairn’s excellent set of books on Go Seigen at a 50% discount. The books cover Go’s biography and the historical situation in depth, and his significance as the greatest player of the 20th century, as well as providing detailed commentaries on many of his most famous games. Kamakura is about the ten game match with Kitani Minoru which is one of the greatest matches of all time. This book also covers Go’s early history and the beginning of his career in Japan. 9 Dan Showdown covers the ten game matches between the first two 9 dans in go history: Go and Fujisawa Kuranosuke. Final Summit is about Go’s ten game match with Takagawa Kaku, another giant of twentieth century go in Japan. Old Fuseki vs New Fuseki is about the revolution in thinking about the opening that was a major part of Go’s impact. This book is by far the fullest discussion of the issues around this revolution in go thinking that is available in English. It also includes Go’s famous game with Honinbo Shusai when, as an audacious teenager, he played the diagonal pattern of the 4-4 point, the center point, and the 3-3 point as his opening moves. - 

Watching

I was looking at my cellphone thinking about my next move. On the screen was the go board.
Suddenly my 4 year old daughter approached me and asked (in spanish):

- "¿Papi, podés jugar sólo por mirar la pantalla?"

Which translates to

-"Daddy, can you play by just looking at the screen?"

I laughed, put down my cellphone and gave her a huge kiss.

To post or not to post

I'm back! Well, no, not really. Having two kids is a very demanding and time consuming enterprise, and my awaited time for studying Go is long gone. Anyway, my enthusiasm is still high, so I hope to at least make an appearance over here every once in a while.

These past months I've only been playing correspondence games at DGS, at most 8 simultaneously, specifically the maximum amount of allowed matches for the ladder tournament: I can challenge four people and get challenged by other four.

Fortunately, and contrary to my belief, I kept on improving: from 10kyu in March (my last post) to 7kyu DGS. It's quite interesting to remark that I'm playing much more relaxed and confident to try out new things. I'm not worried about playing the joseki's properly, and relying a lot on intuition. Maybe it's because not investing time to study relieves me from the pressure of amortizing the investment, who knows.

If you never heard about the ladder tournament, I recommend it! It works like this:
Once it starts it can go on forever, new participants start at the bottom of the table. You can challenge players that are N positions above you. If you win, you climb above the defeated opponent. Games are even (without handicap), without regards to rank, although they are rated.

I like it very much because it's a good opportunity for playing against much stronger players (and weaker ones also).

I'm currently in position 147 out of 645, although at this stage I honestly don't care about it (as long as I'm above my friend aurelito), what matters (if anything matters at all) is the rank, and having fun of course. Check out the table here.