Archive for the ‘ama vs pro’ Category

Fujitsu Cup 2007

Sunday, April 15th, 2007

The International Fujitsu Cup 2007 started this weekend - and unfortunately everybody’s favorite “pro killer” amateurs - Fernando Aguilar and Jie Li - were eliminated in the first round.

I wrote a few thoughts on their games - unfortunately none of them seem to have had any chance. Of the two, Aguilar’s game is by far the more exciting.

Official matches between amateurs and professionals are unfair both ways: they are unfair for the amateur player, because the professional player has so much more experience and is playing Go for a living, but they are also unfair for the professional player because of the psychological pressure involved: there is nothing special if the amateur loses, actually that is 99% the expected result, while it’s such a painful outcome for the professional to lose…

Posted in ama vs pro, fujitsu | 1 Comment »

From Novice to Expert

Friday, February 16th, 2007

Novice: Hey dude, so what’s better here, A or B?

Expert: Hm,…, er,… C.

Novice: What? Why???

Expert: Trust me.

Novice: Year, right…

What is this all about? It is about the Dreyfus Model, which lists stages in skills acquisition that apply to most domains - including Go, I believe. It explains, among other things, why professionals don’t seem able to explain to us the reason behind their moves, and why we shouldn’t be frustrated with this. I wrote an article on this.

Posted in ama vs pro, article, beginner, dreyfus model, professional | 1 Comment »

North American Fujitsu Qualifier results

Monday, February 12th, 2007

Today was the final in the North American Fujitsu Qualifier - the tournament to decide who’s representing North America at the Fujitsu international Go championship.

Jie Li, who is an amateur, defeated Mingjiu Jiang who is 7 dan pro. Jie Li has won many games against professionals - most recently a best-of-3 match against Feng Yun 9p - including victories in the past against Mingjiu, and against Jiang “Jujo” Zhujiu 9p (Mingjiu’s brother).

In today’s final game, Jie Lie started by playing a calm, solid game, and strangely it was Mingjiu who seemed to try to push and complicate things, and got himself into trouble. Maybe the psychological pressure influenced Mingjiu’s game in a negative way - having lost to Jie Li before, and given that Jie Li has an amateur status, and that a pro isn’t supposed to lose against an amateur…

The game was very exciting, a lot of fighting: a big group of Mingjiu’s died pretty early on, and he tried next to catch up by attacking several groups of Jie Li’s, but that didn’t work out well.

First and second rounds of the Fujitsu Cup will be played at the Nihon Ki-in, on April 14th and 16th - looking forward for some exciting games. Go, Jie Li!

Posted in ama vs pro, fujitsu, jiang mingjiu, jie li | 1 Comment »