Who is Pericles ?

Heya !

I was asked that many times, since I started running this blog.
So I'm gonna introduce myself a bit. Better late than never, don't you agree ?

I'm a 30 years old man (at least, that's what I thought, until I saw my Google Twin below), from France, Britanny precisely. I started playing Go more than a decade ago, when I was still a student. At that time, I was studying english and german (expect some german posts someday !) at the university.
That's about when I discovered Hikaru no Go, attending some anime/japan fanclub in my city. None of the volumes were issued officially, so we used to exchange our "collections". I read HnG overnight, litteraly.
The day after, I decided I'd make a quick search on the Internet to find yout about the rules. At this moment, I had absolutely no idea that Go was a real game. I thought it'd been invented just for the manga.
Of course, I stumbled upon Kiseido Go Server and immedialty tried playing a few games, having done the very few tutorials available on the net at that time.

I went to 30k to about 5k without any teacher in a bit less than 6 months. That may sound fast but I used to play 250 games per month, back then. After that, I got taught by some kind teachers, reached dan level within  a couple of years, and started teaching too, you know what comes next.

So now that you know more about me, you certainly are wondering "what does he look like ?", "what's his name?" and such.
My name ? I won't tell.
My look ? well... A friend of mine taught me today that one can load a picture in "Google Pictures" and have it search for similar pics. Of course, I immediatly uploaded my picture (who wouldn't?) to search for my twins all around the world.

So, according to Google, this is what I look like (I'm a mix of all that, use your creativity, heh)

You can imagine me half male / half female, loing flowers, liking boxing,  and ...err...wait...don't imagine more :) Let's keep our imagination for the boards, shall we ?

That's about enough of an introduction, perhaps I'll tell more someday, when I have drunk enough, enough time to share the little secrets about me that you all seem to want to know :)

Pericles

Playing one-color Go

Hoy !


This is one of my favourite Go variants. I thank Pasky a lot for making this possible online with his hacked version of KGS. Using it, all you have to do is say "ONECOLOR" at the beginning of the game, and "MULTICOLOR" to make it back with the two colors.

I made a quick test just now, and challenged a free 7k bot.  I managed to keep up until Move 172, right before the small yose.

At move 172, it looked like this :

After switching back to "double colors", I saw this, which was pretty much what I was expecting, except I was convinced that the middle black dead group was alive and connected to top.

It was a bit sneaky of the bot anyway, after I played a komoku in top right, at Move 1, he made a high approach and started a big avalanche joseki, and I thought "OMG, if he plays that right, I'm toast". Lucky me, he failed miserably there.
Right after that, he played a Muramasa Joseki, in bottom left. Due to circumstances of one-color Go, I thought I'd play the standard variation. Making it complex and relying on ladders and creating cutpoints would certainly lead me to doom, in one-color Go.
After that, the game went quite smoothly (but a bit weird by the bot in the top left, surely doesn't know joseki...)
At the end, despite being cut, the game is quite close, about +12 for white.
I won't add the sgf here - you can find it in my KGS archives (account : Pericles)

That was fun anyway, I'll try that again !

Pericles

Wandering...on Funnode

Hey !

Just a quick "tweet", I was wandering around on another Go server when I came across this player, Ravi, making some promotion for his recently-created own Go Server. I suppose there is lots to do, add new features, make it even better (always!)
Ravi will certainly need feedback, as there are only a handful of players there (told you, it's very new), so have a visit on his website and send feedback, play some games. In a few words, help him get started.

It's worth it, really.

Click here to join Ravi's website (funnode)

You will also find, on the homepage, that you can play chess, checkers, reversi, card and dice games (all for free) among other games.

Have fun !

Pericles

Amateur vs Pro : Second round !

Hey !

I got a lot of feedback about the "Amateurs vs Pro" post from last week. So I decided it would be a pity not to let a good chance for the amateurs to show their skills a few more times against professionnals.

I joined a few games on Tygem, to find one game that will represent both players' skills well enough. As always, it's pretty tough to find a game that meets the criterias. The game has to be showing the difference of skills, obviously, but has to be understandable by the audience too. Picking games with too complex variations or one-sided slaughters is just no fun (to watch and to review)

In the current one, Black is the pro. The interesting thing in this game is about the influence White made. He played to build a moyo which ended up completely destroyed by 3 of black's invasions. Yup, 3. That shows how big the influence was.

Black managed to invade successfully 3 times, thanks to a few defects in white's shape that he could exploit.
I hope you will enjoy the sharpness of their moves, black's moves, obviously.

Pericles

ASR Game #5

Hey !

I wasn't submitted any games by ASR players last week. So when climu asked me to review his game yesterday, I said I'd do it. First come, first serve !
So this game is played by climu (1k) and smarre (about the same level it seems) in ASR's delta Class
Though both players overlooked a few key points while fighting for the moyo / invading it, white (climu) managed to use the fight to his advantage and destroyed one of his opponent's corners in exchange of letting him live inside his moyo.

You'll see great fights happen in Delta too !

Have fun !

Pericles

Kim Youngsam, crowned champion in Paris Tournament.

Hey !

What a busy week-end !
Like every year, for Easter, Paris had its international tournament happening. It was not so "international" this year, though. I heard they had a hard time finding a place for the event, and found one only two weeks ago.
They had to reserve the place at the last minute, and hardly had enough time to check how many players they could welcome (how many rooms, how many tables ?) and probably a last-minute issue about borrowing materials (clocks and such) from the local Go Clubs around. In consequence, they couldn't accept any reservations for the tournament. That, of course, made it very difficult for foreigners to come. No point in coming and travelling, and having high expenses if they were not sure to be able to play at all. Makes sense.

There were quite a few top french players though. Dai Junfu 8d, Motoki Noguchi 7d, Thomas Debarre 6d, Tanguy Le Calvé 5d and of course Kim Youngsam who won the tournament being undefeated. We got the chance that the organizers relayed one game per round on KGS, however. The games were broadcasted via "FFGscribe" account, whose games can be found in KGS archives.

I managed to attend the 6 rounds broadcasts. More than that, I gave public group Live reviews, thanks to the Forum Go On that helped me prepare the event, and particularly LDL who helped recording the reviews (I also recorded the lectures in audio / video, you can never know when the computer or the recording software is gonna mess up)

So we have recorded 6.  The project was interesting, the "public" was composed of widely-ranged players,  from beginners 20k to dan level (3d+) and I'd like to thank everyone who helped make this possible.

Anyway, we went through the games, discussing, analyzing, answering questions.
The explanations, therefore, cover a large amount of things : fuseki, choice of a joseki, direction of play, attack / defense / yose / counting / tesujis and so much more.

Some of the broadcasts lasted more than 3 hours, so the reviews are pretty long. You can find them below, but be aware that I used French for the reviews. If you can speak a little bit of french that is great, otherwise you may have to "guess" what the comments mean,  by looking at the variations shown. It shouldn't be too hard for an experimented player, but can possibly be difficult for kyu players, sorry about that.

I received a lot of great feedback on Go On forum, and we'll certainly hold other live-reviews in the soon future - in english also, if there is demand for it.

The first record has quite a poor sound. I had forgotten to turn my internal microphone off, and it caused interference with the external microphone I was using (I fixed the issue between round 1 and 2)
The other 5 records should be good (encoded in High Quality - watch them Full screen)
Until today, I had the time to encode the first 4 games only.
It takes quite a lot of time to render the video viewable in Camtasia, then to export it as an flv, or an avi.
And it also takes some more to upload it to youtube.

The first 4 games  (the next 2 should be available tomorrow)

Round 1 : Dai Junfu 8d (ericdai) vs Cesar Lextrait 3d (isbhal)

Round 2 : Dai Junfu 8d vs Kim Youngsam 7d (korondo)

Round 3 : Dai Junfu 8d vs Motoki Noguchi 7d (motoki)

Round 4 : Kim Youngsam 7d vs Tanguy Le Calvé 5d (welvang)

Round 5 (available tomorrow) : Motoki Noguchi 7d vs Kim Youngsam 7d

Round 6 (available tomorrow) : Thomas Debarre (neufx9) 6d vs Motoki Noguchi 7d


Hope you will enjoy !

Pericles

Amateur vs Pro : How stronger are they ?

Hi !

I'm glad to publish THIS post today. I had the chance, last night, to witness one of the best games I've ever watched. Amazing, thrilling...It shook me, really.

Black player is a professionnal ( yuiko(P) on tygem) and white is probably a strong amateur (gogogo6).
The game is a tesuji festival. By both. But yukio's moves are extremely sharp and so was her reading.

Yes, her reading, it's a she. I've heard a lot that "women can't match men" and "that's why they have a specific Meijin" and all. Maybe. But I don't share this opinion.

I made a little of research, in fact, quite exhaustively - I checked every pro pictures from the Kansai Ki In and Nihon Ki In websites, to find out who she is - but I didn't find her. There is no "Yuki" or "Yukio" on either of those websites, and the picture she uses on tygem doesn't match any of those that I could see on the websites either.

What amazed me in this game, is not exactly the sharpness of the moves played, rather than the time used to spot them. All of those sharp and severe moves were played in less than 2 seconds. The second half of the game is played during byoyomi, 30s/move, but yukio never used more than a few seconds to play her brilliant tesujis. As a result, despite great fights, the amateur player is completely outmatched.

I tried to made a fully detailled review, so you will see - there are more variations than I would usually share.

Enjoy the game !

Pericles