O'Learys

I am now at the Copenhagen airport in Denmark with Jimbo. We have been on a BMC CMDB Atrium 2.X Administration course. Now the week is over and we are on our way back to Sweden.

We have a couple of hours to kill at the airport so we are eating dinner and drinking a couple of beers at O'Learys. The burger was good but was not very warm when served. The beer was as usual very good. Soon we are done and will look for some present for our girlfriends.

What should we buy? What do girls like?

Decide before you read

I played a game of go (weiqi) recently. Quite early in the game I was ahead so much that it should have felt so hard for my opponent to continue without to resign.

In those situations you should try to play simple. Don't hesitate to connect and give away small points if that makes you stronger. Never play aggressive moves that create fights that you might lose.

I played an aggressive move to stop my opponents advance in to my territory. It was stupid... but it was a reflex move and as soon as I placed the stone I saw it and thought... OH NO! This is not good... This looks dangerous! And yes... my opponent cross cut me.

From this I had to find the best way to minimize the damage. So I started reading. I read all the variations of all the moves I could think of. Then I saw it! The move! The move that would stop my opponent and then save all my territory in a single move.

So I played it... and after two moves I realized that I read so wrong. Fuck! Now the opponent is running out with his stones in to the heart of my territory. From here it went down the hill and soon I had lost on time.

I showed the game to Girlwing and I got scolded for playing this stupid move that let my opponent run out in to my territory. I tried to defend myself and explain my stupid reading mistake. No use. She just got upset of me blaming on bad reading.

But I didn't feel that I was blaming. So we talked about this for a while and after a while I got it. I should never had read in the first place. First I should have decided in what direction I need to play to get a winning situation. After that I should read and find the move to realize this direction of play.

In my future games this will be something to think about, but it will be really hard. I have really no experience of this way of thinking. Usually I just go on hard reading and sometimes pure feeling. But I think Girlwing have some really good idea about this and it is probably the perfectly right thing to do.

We will see if this knowledge will make any measurable impact on the results in my games.