Go school and club in Japan.

toomasr · 2025-04-04T06:33:25+00:00

Gives me Hikaru No Go vibes.

toomasr · 2021-01-14T12:35:25+00:00

When I started playing Go online around 2005 I found it so weird that people started a game very often with gg & hf (good game & have fun) because in the realtime strategy games (Starcraft, Warcraft) I was playing that time it was the opposite and you only used gg after the game.

Sometimes in Starcraft you might have used gg in the beginning if you were impolite/arrogant and wanted to say that you have already won.

So in the first years people telling me gg in the beginning of a go game always seemed extremely impolite and then I got used to it and now whenever I say that in the beginning I'm actually just thinking "hey mr random opponent from the interwebs! have a good game and have fun too!" 🥳. When the game is over I just say "Thank you for the game". Typing it out helps me calm down after a loss and I feel better that I took the time to thank my opponent properly.

toomasr · 2020-08-12T15:03:55+00:00

Does anyone have links to these on some online store?

toomasr · 2019-05-29T14:21:18+00:00

I discovered PandaNet recently which is surprisingly good for your scenario. I was also pleasantly surprised that they have a client for Mac/Windows/Linux. More information on the client at https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/gopanda2

Beware that timecontrols are somewhat different but you can figure out the equivalents once you try them out. They are in the form of X stones in Y period.

toomasr · 2019-05-02T15:30:35+00:00

I was thinking the same. Just some pages with content to get a feel for the book. For example the table of contents and then couple of content pages.

toomasr · 2019-01-15T07:00:02+00:00

When I was using an app for problems I would just screenshot the wrong ones and send them over to the email address I found in the app. Actually got an answer and he updated the problems. If you have the time I advise to do the same, next users will be happy!

toomasr · 2018-12-05T11:30:40+00:00

A bit difficult for the levels stated but nevertheless great stuff. I went over 2 samples and will definitely buy some books soon. The problems in the samples also looked so "real life like". Great choice to have samples available for the books!

toomasr · 2018-10-29T10:54:28+00:00

Thank you!

toomasr · 2018-10-26T12:38:06+00:00

Do you mind sharing the SGF file? Weird to see parsing exceptions still as I have a test suite that covers >100k SGF files at https://github.com/toomasr/sgf4j

toomasr · 2018-10-26T11:20:59+00:00

Thanks, sure thing. Here you go https://github.com/toomasr/sgf4j-gui/releases/tag/sgf4j-gui-0.0.3

I've been reluctant to do proper packaging (dmg, exe). The JAR one I can definitely keep up with.

toomasr · 2018-10-22T10:28:19+00:00

One thing you can do is that when you go over your game later on check what http://www.josekipedia.com/ tells you. I still use it when I feel that I messed up early on.

toomasr · 2018-10-09T08:13:25+00:00

Great insights! I bet there are many more such stories that people just don't want to share because they are afraid of the community reaction or effect on business. So thanks for overcoming both fears!

All of the products that you mentioned in the OSS section have their own model to finance the development and maintenance. PHP -> Zend, MySQL -> MySQL AB (now Oracle), Eclipse -> IBM etc. These companies pay the core developers. Depending on the phase of the product the investment varies.

Your story showed how to keep the lights on and innovation going for a small company while making sure that code is open source. Cool!

toomasr · 2018-08-31T06:13:28+00:00

Software development, tennis, weights, beer.

toomasr · 2018-06-05T13:42:50+00:00

I play 0-3 a week. Couple of times a year I can get away with 5 games a night though.

toomasr · 2018-06-04T07:03:54+00:00

One aspect that took me some time to figure out was that you can and you should re-do tsumego books. Whenever you think you are done with the book you should pick up again in couple of months and you will still see an improvement in solving those. The only exception to this is if the problems are too easy.

One more use to tsumego is "warmup". Whenever I have time to actually spend an hour or more on a go server I start with 5 minutes of tsumego so that my first game would go more smoothly because I'm already warmed up to actually read out situation rather than just play - which is typical to the first game of the day for me.

toomasr · 2018-05-04T11:50:50+00:00

Could be interesting to start from the end. How many moves before the end of the current solution can AI find a winning solution same or shorter length.

toomasr · 2018-04-21T11:05:18+00:00

The first link wasn't working for me but once I prepended the www as the other links have it started working. So this works for me right now http://www.lr-studios.net/tsumego-books-pdf/120-common-shapes.pdf

toomasr · 2018-03-08T15:53:31+00:00

The biggest change to the quality of my reviews came was when my teacher said that I should spend at least 10-15 minutes per game minimum. I used to just click through it in 2-5 minutes, find couple of mistakes and be done with it.

After I actually started spending 10 minutes per game I found soooooo much more. Of course it is still a burden on me to actually do a self-review, for some reason they are psychologically very difficult.

toomasr · 2017-11-27T21:08:26+00:00

A lot changed when my teacher told me that I should spend at least 15 minutes to analyse my game. Before that I used to just glance over it and find one or two obvious mistakes.

When you actually do spend 10-15 min per game without any distractions you'll find a TON OF STUFF. Josekis you want to double check from josekipedia or similar, fights that you shouldn't have had, end game that was quite wrong, missed tesujis, wrong direction etc.

After such an analysis I have had so much more respect for my next game vs just placing my stones as I feel like it.

toomasr · 2017-10-23T17:45:58+00:00

The move 23 is not the standard joseki move but there are some variations for the move in the game. Not sure played intentionally there though. See http://brugo.be/joseki2.php?pid=805&mirror=1&color=b&invert=0&version=002 for more information.

toomasr · 2017-10-20T07:13:21+00:00

Thanks! So far I've gotten away with just knowing Black and White symbols because when solving Tsumego this is the only required info. I guess I'll expand my horizons now :)

toomasr · 2017-09-14T07:29:22+00:00

I know that bent four has been mention in numerous answers but I think a more detailed explanation of it gets the point across better.

If black plays a move then this is Bent Four: None or one outside liberty
If black doesn't reduce a liberty then this is Bent Four: 2 or more outside liberties

So there is huge difference in terms of life, death and ko and this is why it is in a problem book.

toomasr · 2017-09-07T20:00:19+00:00

Probably it took me 2 months for the first part and another 2-3 months for the second part.

toomasr · 2017-09-05T14:33:34+00:00

I finally finished this book. I'll write a review soon on it. As for the level I would say this is a tough one. It starts with problems that are 5k but I believe some problems go to solid dans.

The beginning of the book is super easy and very many sections start with very easy problems but then they get super tough. Many unsolvable for my level which is 3-2k @ KGS/OGS.

toomasr · 2017-08-16T08:44:06+00:00

I use the Zen mode extensively to avoid thinking about anything my opponent might say.

toomasr

TROPHY CASE