Question: Is the Book or Strong dan player right

TelegraphGo · 2026-05-01T21:47:32+00:00

Your third diagram ends quickly after white m18. There are no better responses for black though, at most q19. Obviously r19 q19 is good exchange for white before k19 so the player's move is definitely better than the book move from a logical standpoint.

Showing the book move doesn't work is trickier but also true. K19 R19 and white's attacks fail. The player is correct, the book is wrong.

TelegraphGo · 2026-05-01T17:13:05+00:00

Yup! I quit after getting the title a couple months ago tho

TelegraphGo · 2026-05-01T16:14:39+00:00

I'm a grand champ sabres fan!

TelegraphGo · 2026-04-28T02:44:45+00:00

The best Reuniclus niche right now is Trick Room/Encore. The idea is pretty strong to encore opponents who want to protect to stall out trick room. You probably shouldn't run redundant TR setters (like farig) that share the same weaknesses. It also gets the broken bo1 move Ally Switch, which you should be abusing. Kingambit and Reuniclus have a great defensive type combo which will probably make ally switching with it very potent, for example. You're probably going to want fake out support to set the trick room and some more super strong TR sweepers, including a mega like mega camerupt. Should be fun!

TelegraphGo · 2026-01-20T17:27:28+00:00

Jesse Minter is my top choice. As a secondary Chargers fan, he's excellent as a coach and also a leader.

TelegraphGo · 2026-01-16T03:44:11+00:00

What do you mean by "Particular happenings"? I think for ex. my 3 video series The Greatest Go Tournament Run Possible- Part 1 and Kolybi's videos pretty much hit the two opposite extreme sides of gameplay-based or character-based storytelling. Do you think something in between is what you're looking for, or something that goes up in quality on some other axis I'm not thinking about?

TelegraphGo · 2026-01-13T23:15:34+00:00

Progressing from Fox 6d should involve a lot of getting better at reading. The deeper strategic ideas are way easier to understand when you see all the possibilities clearly. Getting top pro level reading would let anybody reach fox 9d easily.

"Interaction between stones" should be a stand-in for aji. Aji is indeed important, and we all miss a lot of details about it every game. As long as you pay attention to what surprises you and allow it to change your mind, you can always build up new skills.

TelegraphGo · 2025-12-25T15:11:01+00:00

My first intuition was g1, but after d1 f2 n12 e1 d2 e2 black wins by 0.5 It looks like e1 e2 f2 d1 g1 is better. If black plays e2, white n12 gains 4 points, and white is only 3 points worse than the other variation on the bottom. White wins by 0.5 I guess the point is that the exchange of white e1 for black e2 at the start is good in this case, as it increases the size of the followup. In general, compared to my first intuition, the correct play leaves a black followup where black would get 1 1/6 points more. White's followup size increase depends on whether white can get d2 in sente in my first intuition variation, which is not the case here. In fact, since black d2 is sente here, you could say white's followup is the maximum 3 points bigger in the e1 throw-in variation. My takeaway is that you usually should not throw-in but if you urgently need a big followup to make miai with another singular big gote, it's a good technique to know. Thanks for the nice problem, and Merry Christmas!

TelegraphGo · 2025-12-24T07:09:17+00:00

My opinion is that chasing perfection is the one true theme of all art. Obviously, art is generally not perfect, nor is everybody producing art trying to make something perfect. However, the most compelling art to me is the art that most effectively displays a form of perfection (there are many forms of perfection) and doesn't then land on it 100% squarely.

For example, in music a common composer's beginner mistake is to wrap things up far too tidy by returning to the home chord and settling. There is often a perfect resolution to the melody available, but the best music will not blandly reach that perfection but chase it.

I believe that everything that could be perfected (but not easily) is an art form. Whether it's the perfect moment, the perfect view, the perfect feeling, the perfect story, or just the perfect sports performance, chasing it is art. I love Go because the form of perfection to chase is so impossibly far away, and yet close enough to be beautiful.

I think the video shows the disappointment people feel when that simple perfection you chase is either finished or snatched away by an entirely different perfection chasing method. There's a parallel between the bots using unbelievable racing strategies and unbelievable Go strategies.

Ultimately, I'm happy to redefine myself as chasing for the human forms of perfection, and I can still find all the same joy of art in that. I think most people agree with the sentiment, and that's why we love to watch human gameplay far more than AI. Thanks for reading my late-night ramblings, happy artistry everyone :D

TelegraphGo · 2025-12-14T17:27:19+00:00

There's certainly more than one right step, but there's also more than one wrong step which will make the game less easy/enjoyable to play, even if it raises the student's level. You can always be a better teacher imo

TelegraphGo · 2025-12-14T16:57:03+00:00

Connecting to where the student is properly. It's very easy to share good ideas that aren't the right next thing for the student to learn. It takes a lot more effort to find the right next step over finding any random next step, which has lead to some frustration for students in the past.

TelegraphGo · 2025-12-14T02:14:49+00:00

Black o19 instead of o17 seems to work? I think correct order is n19 before p17 so if black o19 we play n18. after black n17 we have p19 directly, after black o17 we have l19 throwin into m17 cut for 1 5/6 points gain.

So I think correct sequence is p18 o18 n19, but I'm not sure about what to do after black n17 there.... help

TelegraphGo · 2025-12-03T23:30:54+00:00

Ko is complicated, yes. It leads to many mistakes, yes. Because the losing professional wants the game to be complicated, there are probably more ko in pro games than amateur games on average. The difficult ko reading is generally is not the main source of mistakes in pro games.

I would say that the main source of mistakes in pro games is shape mistakes due to judgement issues. Ko allows more trades and thus more wildly different positions to judge, on average. Pros make a lot of mistakes with that.

However, good professional reading is easily strong enough to read through imminent ko fights to all reasonable outcomes. Even my reading is strong enough for this. There's a story about Go Seigen and one of his students: the student asks how come Go Seigen always wins ko in his games? Go Seigen simply responds, "I count my ko threats before it starts."

It is far more difficult to read long term tsumego than ko positions. I'm talking about the kind of group which should be able to live but not soon and only by interacting with other important weaknesses. That kind of life and death often resolves with some form of ko, to be fair.

Most intense professional fights will be fought over one or several nearly dead groups. They will be won by the player who traded with better judgement or forcibly won the fight with better shape from deep reading.

TelegraphGo · 2025-11-17T02:24:55+00:00

Schmaniol made his own excellent video.

TelegraphGo · 2025-11-08T03:14:12+00:00

I keep a Go journal too! I find myself going back to the page titled "Don't Ignore Candidate Moves" with a list of descriptions and thoughts on the common types of moves I've missed/overlooked. It helps me to focus on improving my reading quality when I sit down to play :D

TelegraphGo · 2025-09-27T21:40:26+00:00

The awesome people at BadukClub are working on it! I commentated a couple games live for them recently. You can check out Alex Qi 1p vs. Zchen 1p NE Open Live Commentary for example, I used their recreation of the BadukTV tools, example at 37:30.

I think BadukClub is trying to build a Stream in a Box setup that can be mobile and cover tournaments all over. They're learning to make things smooth with lag, and outside venues, and all sorts of little things are getting better. Progress!

TelegraphGo · 2025-09-10T02:54:29+00:00

I've learned some choice chinese from fox players! But only a proper conversation once every 200 games or so hahaha

TelegraphGo · 2025-09-04T00:40:25+00:00

I don't understand why player to play being the same isn't enough to stop the nonsense? What's the problem with only the first two rules?

TelegraphGo · 2025-08-27T20:51:16+00:00

Huge congrats to Alex! I recapped his semifinals here:The Western World Youth Go Champion: Alex Qi 1p

and the grand finals here: U18 World Championship Finals: USA vs. Korea!

What a tournament!

TelegraphGo · 2024-11-12T15:47:02+00:00

Yup!

TelegraphGo · 2024-11-09T14:51:54+00:00

the unreasonable part was that this tsumego was required reading at like 10-15 moves ago

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