(taken from my other blog, to simply post something here)
Beginning Go
My Go life started with watching Hikaru No Go about five years ago during my A-Level time. I thought the anime was really fantastic, and I quickly learned the rules and tried out few games on Igowin software. But I only truly start playing Go on 19×19 board few months later after I started studying in London. There, I sought out a go club on Internet and found Central London Go Club (CLGC). Also I created an account on Kiseido Go Server (KGS) as ‘idazuwaika’. From here, my Go journey began.
Luckily my closest friends in London, Azhari and Hazrul were supportive of my Go. All of us did not care about studies too much 🙂 . Azhari was all into Magic The Gathering whereas Hazrul was more into Playstation. So, I was not psyched to be too studious as I originally planned.
Hazrul played some go too and we fought equally initially. However after I studied Kageyama’s Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, I left him behind. Anyway he was not serious about Go and already had a girlfriend that time, so he was unwilling to follow my pace.
Kageyama’s book actually carried me much further than leaving my first rival. Before I knew it, I was already 16k after few weeks. However, that was not enough for me to play without handicap in CLGC. I had to take 9-stones handicap against almost everyone.
More playing, more playing everyday.
Shodan in A Year
By the seventh month, I was about 10k. I suspected that time, my tactical reading was at much higher level but my knowledge of go theories was still lacking. So, I set out to buy the six volumes Elementary Go Series.
Those books gave me another boost in my ranking, comparable to Kageyama’s.
By simply learning some opening theories, and keeping in mind that ‘the area in front of shimari‘ is valuable, I had twice of 25-winning streaks on KGS, shooting me up to around 8k. I further improved my skills in the opening by reading Opening Theory Made Easy written by Otake Hideo, and easily got 6k.
Promoting to 5k, then 4k, 3k and 2k were much harder. At 2k I reached one year six month of playing, so basically I totally failed to get “1 dan (1d) in a year” which is the commonly stated goal. However, later KGS revised the ranking system and I got promoted to 1d straightaway. 1-d after almost 2 years, I’m not talented it seems.
Haha, I’m not to concerned anyway. My goal is to keep progressing, no end to it.
Meeting Yuki Shigeno
My progress seemed to be quite steady and fast. I was already at dan level within CLGC. So, when Yuki Shigeno 2 dan professional came to London as guest for London Go Open, I was brought to her by my Japanese friend, Tomahaku Urascoe.
Yuki then interviewed me to be featured on her website. I couldn’t describe how honoured I was that time. Interviewed by a Go professional .. shouldn’t it be the other way round?
Anyway that gave me another boost of motivation and spirit to keep studying Go.
Leaving London
So finally in June 2007, I completed university. At that time I was 4d KGS. To mark the end of my four years of effort in Go during university, I joined Go To China 2007 trip, organized by Michael Yao and Carl Johan. The idea was to study Go everyday for a month under high-dan Chinese amateurs, along with other go players.
There I was placed within the first group with Sander, Christoph, Neil, Alex, Wills and Andrew. We all studied together under Wu Qi and later Liu Yuanbo (Peter) who was a Chinese professional 2d. Listening to Peter’s story, I understood how hard it was to get to high level of go playing. It was both motivating, and scary.
The teaching were excellent but after two weeks, I started skipping morning lessons. But in the afternoon, I played a lot with other go trip members and sometimes go to the local go clubs. At times I still played on KGS but my rank was still 4d.
Time was too short to apply what I learned to my play, but one thing became clearer. I knew, I wanted to play Go all my life.
I knew I wanted to play Go all my life.
On July 29 2007, I returned to Malaysia. I brought along quite a number of Chinese Go books back with me, although I could only read a little. I thought, the trip to China would only mark the end of my 4 year study of Go during university, little did I realise it was a start to another journey.
Asian Tournaments.
When I was in London, I only participated in two tournaments, LSE Open which I finished runner up next to Yun He (KGS 9d mrga) and London International Team Go Tournament where our CLGC team finished first. Pretty cool to win international tournament although actually only 4 go clubs participated in it. 🙂
After returning to Malaysia, I have already joined two tournaments within two months span. The first was Asian University Go in Khon Kaen, Thailand and also South East Asia Go Game in Korat, Thailand. I did rather badly in both, mostly due to yose play.
And today … 22 December 2007, I am sensemaker on KGS, at 5-dan. However, I’m thinking of quitting KGS now as the internet is not so reliable here at the moment.
I dont have much time to lose. I will be active on Internet Go again after fiber optic roll-out in Klang Valley is completed and 50Mbps broadband is offered.
Anyway I lent the account idazuwaika to a friend so, at the moment it does not reflect my real rank.
OK, hopefully my story will grow to include more interesting events. 🙂 Jia you myself.
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