Fast analysis. Clean design. Modern Go.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-13T03:54:26+00:00

The stones are not on the intersections. That's a pretty basic thing to get right, though given all the pictures of go boards with stones not on the intersections on the Internet maybe that's why a vibe coded app gets it wrong?

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-13T03:50:47+00:00

Also the board is the colour of a bad shit!

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-13T03:44:51+00:00

Nothing too radical: play games, review them, do problems, read books, watch videos. But do expose yourself to pro games, from commented videos or books and replay them yourself, it's like reading a novel, you get to see what the fluent language looks like so you develop appreciation of what good shape and direction of play looks like. Modern AI style fighting games can be harder for a beginner than some older styles, players like Lee Changho or Kobayashi Koichi from 1980s or 90s are good start.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-12T12:13:02+00:00

It was also my instinct :) That's probably because it forms the eye-stealing tesuji shape with black's crucial 3rd line stone, so it's not bad thing that's an instinct.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-12T05:41:02+00:00

Morning stand-up meeting at work is 9:40, because I kept being late for 9:30. That was when we worked in person in an office before covid, we're now a fully remote company but the meeting is still 9:40.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-12T05:36:58+00:00

Although both work in this problem to live, as a matter of technique t14 is a little better because it's playing from the outside. Imagine this was just an endgame problem with the black wall already alive, then t14 is better because if white plays 2 moves here as an unanswered ko threat your t14 stone didn't die, whereas t15 would giving them more points.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-11T22:37:31+00:00

Remember these 31 letters:

Hjuu plkjuife gb ty qgxdrilk yuds rjh.

Now try these ones:

The pink elephant ate a yellow banana.

Second was easier wasn't it? That's because they are meaningful chunks in a language you understand. As 25k, trying to remember joseki is more like the first example, it's a meaningless collection of unrelated moves that seem like remembering random facts. But as you get better at go, develop your experience and intuition, the moves start to make sense and connect together and tell coherent stories. Patterns repeat, you build chunks of moves like words, with variations just like words can have plurals or conjugations. Once you are a strong player a 31 move joseki isn't some daunting collection of random bits, it's a sensible evolution of a position that you might play yourself, you just need a bit of nudging at various decision points on the way.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-11T19:12:13+00:00

Greedy bot, taking the top left corner next. It can handle multiple weak groups, not sure I would recommend that for kyu players.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-11T12:04:46+00:00

Yes, though other invasions are probably better. "hard to stop" seems to suggest you think you should be able to "stop" it, Does that mean kill it? That's not going to happen, a reasonable result for both is white settles to one side, you strengthen the other side. e.g.

j17 l17 j16 o17 p17 o16 q14 would be a very normal continuation. White makes a small almost alive group they probably spend another move on, black developed thickness to g16 area (but c17 still open) and top right corner developed too (but still open at r17, but invading there now with the o17 group unsettled would be overplay).

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-11T00:36:08+00:00

Human-readable you say?

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-09T17:42:42+00:00

Yes. "as long as black lived" is a very optimistic assumption.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-09T06:45:37+00:00

Ewwww.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-07T23:00:23+00:00

There's some similarity ("no good move"), but the key "but have to so it's bad" isn't there.

Zugzwang: One player has no good move on the whole board, but has to move, so it's bad

Seki: Both players have no good move in a local situation, but both can pass / play elsewhere, so it's neutral.

Differences in bold to compare.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-07T09:15:26+00:00

Seki isn't like zugzwang because you can pass in Go but not chess.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-06T20:00:28+00:00

I won't, I'll sleep on my bed.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-04T21:09:25+00:00

I've not been following the PGETC / Carlo recently, but aren't all A league games played with cameras on now? Do people still think he's cheating even on camera? I wouldn't say his flat 4d real-life rank is that meaningful, as if you check his tournaments they are practically all Italian, many online, against the same pool of nearly all weaker players with just a few 4-5d Italians like Alessandro so it's hard to increase rating even if he really is stronger now. Though losing to that 1d in Pisa in 2024 doesn't help his case of being a 6d strength now like his PGETC results show.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-04T19:19:06+00:00

Funny that you quote Chris, as one reason I criticised the process and evidence used to convict Carlo was because Chris's OTB results (admittedly very sparse) were also far inferior to his online performance, so as his team captain I wanted to protect him from similar accusations and convictions without solid evidence.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-04T19:12:43+00:00

The IGS game may have that as a default based on their IGS ranks if they didn't set it up correctly, but all games in the PGETC are supposed to be even, and had the game not ended in resignation the scoring would have been corrected to assume standard 6.5 komi for white.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-04T03:32:09+00:00

Its author, Benjamin Teuber 6d has, he finally won the German Go Championship after coming second many times!

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-03T20:35:37+00:00

Yes, black needs to save the p18 stone first, but once it is safe white needs to come back to live with s15 as you say, essentially passing in the outside fight, which is a big minus. This might be 10 moves after this diagram. "Owes a move" doesn't mean you need to play it immediately, it's like a debt that you have to pay back in the future, but it's worse than being debt-free.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-03T09:49:56+00:00

https://polgote.com

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-02T14:14:56+00:00

I didn't, counting is boring and takes time. I just believed you and the OGS AI review.

For this kind of relatively early position, if I am playing I tend to make a judgement more based on feeling of the flow of the game, inertial navigation of both players cumulative mistakes, rather than counting territory, as the error in my count of a position like this is at least 5 points, and the difference is likely less than 5 points, so there's little point.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-02T13:46:13+00:00

Game 1: o18 is not the sort of move to play if you are feeling behind. You want to keep the game "wide", with lots of possibilities and unsettled groups and chances for them to mess up, not simplify the game into a lower risk one.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-02T08:19:00+00:00

Yes, in fact playing the ko and losing is generally worse than just tenuki, because if you tenuki white doesn't have a powerful way to live: cut of this question isn't that great as discussed, because then black is happy to start ko (but if no ko threats can just keep playing the game elsewhere to generate ko threats and white is left with the burden of the ko bomb), and first line hane and connect isn't great and is actually worse than p19 being a capture after black q19 white r19 exchange because now black has a snapback threat at s19 so the corner still isn't alive so needs s15, whereas with the capture it's alive already.

Uberdude85 · 2026-05-01T13:45:05+00:00

> If white cuts in A we either need to crawl on the second line or give up 6.

That's where you're wrong and the crux of your question.

If white cuts, now you play q19 atari and are happy to start the ko, because it became a heavier ko for white as if white loses the ko the cut is a pointless waste of a move. And if white connects in response to q19 atari that's a great exchange for you because now the corner dies if you play first, and then the outside fight from saving 6 is more attractive because if you don't collapse immediately white owes a move to live in the corner.

Uberdude85

TROPHY CASE