daal's board

[Bonobo]

Too bad that you’re about 130 km away from my place, otherwise I guess I’d stalk you for games but I hope to make it to your city sometime this year, and I’d love to play you then.

[daal]

I must admit, I'm finding this business of studying professional games on my board harder than I expected. First of all, I am not particularly adept at reading game records, and it feels that way too much of my studying time is spent searching for the next move. Playing out a whole game one time usually takes at least an hour, and when I have that much time, I find it hard not to just play a game instead. Also, I need to play the game out several times before I get to the point of being able to watch the game unfold, and I find myself getting tired of it instead of wanting to know more about it.

On other fronts, of the last five games I've played, three of them have ended in a 0.5 win for me! Here is the last one - perhaps someone has a comment or two.

[SoDesuNe]

I found it quite hard to follow your game, especially at the beginning with all the Tenukis ^^
Generally I would recommend to look out for your stones. Sometimes you play moves just to sacrifice them on your next move or you first weaken your stones and then try to rescue them but you end up a bit heavy. Try to make your stones work together.

Then you could have played a lot sharper in some situations but maybe wasn't aware of your possibilities. A good Tesuji book might help here.



Regarding pro games: Which sources do you use? Maybe you have too many moves per diagramme?
I favour the approach of replaying the game just once and then one time without the source to see how many moves I could remember. If I struggle I just look at the source again. Then I'll go over the next game. If I've replayed all games I start from the beginning.
This way you will also learn a lot with each replay but you will learn with baby steps, it's easier to digest : D

[daal]

Generally I would recommend to look out for your stones.

Thank you for this as well as for your other comments. I thoroughly enjoyed your review.

[daal]

Recently I've been thinking about one of the many eye-opening comments that John Fairbairn has made. I don't know where it was or what exactly he said, but it was to the effect that in certain Asian go problem books, one is confronted with certain terms in the answers again and again, and that with time, the reader learns to approach the problems with these concepts in mind. He wasn't specific, but in my studies of pro games, the terms thickness and thinness are starting to stand out.

While we tend to muse a lot about thickness, what it's good for and how to use it, thinness doesn't seem to be as much a subject of conversation, and I'm starting to think that my failure to appreciate or even adequately consider what makes a thin position thin is a source of quite a bit of my grief. Not only do I have a propensity for making thin positions that get cut apart, but I also fail to recognize the opportunities that thin positions present.

I am coming to this realization via my observations of professional games, in which positions crop up where one player seems to have too much, but in fact he doesn't. The thinness gets exposed and the huge area becomes manageable. In my own games, this often doesn't happen - though it probably has less to do with my thin positions than a propensity to get lazy. My impression of quite a few of the games in which I've been trounced is that my opponent is simply trying harder than I am to win. Whilst he is thinking: "Can't let all this thinness go to waste," I'm saying to myself: "C'mon already, I've made all these good moves, why isn't this game over?"

[daal]

I was going to add in a line in the above post about being too lazy to find John Fairbairn's post, and about being too lazy to post a game record (because it was in .ngf format) but although I may be too lazy to think about go for more than 20 minutes at a stretch, I do have considerable energy available for posting.

JF's post is here, and the sequence that prompted my thoughts was this one on the top left, starting at move 73:

[SoDesuNe]

The sequence starting at move 73 is basically (shape-wise) a "simple" and (I think) common Tesuji problem. Although spotting this in a game is obviously more challenging.

Regarding thickness and thinness: I think these are just different sides of the same coin. If you consider yourself able to appreciate thickness than thinness shouldn't be harder to understand. In the end knowing what are the important aspects of a thick position leads to awareness what a thin position lacks.

Maybe the different handling has something to do with psychology? The common sense is to attack from thick positions but to defend thin ones. I know that I don't like to defend when I don't see additionally benefit (as in defending while attacking the opponent). This quite often leads to a thin position becoming a floating group.
So for me it's more like I (most of the times) know where my thin positions are but I can't see good moves to defend (with style =D) and therefore I don't defend at all. (Still practicing my amashi-skills : D )

It's quite the oppsite with thickness. I love thick positions because they are carefree and because a lot of opponents love banging their head against them. I had quite a few games where I just won because my opponent tried unreasonable attacks although I was strong everywhere.

My conclusion is more Tesuji and Life-and-Death problems to better handle thin positions (with style =D).

[daal]

Regarding thickness and thinness: I think these are just different sides of the same coin. If you consider yourself able to appreciate thickness than thinness shouldn't be harder to understand. In the end knowing what are the important aspects of a thick position leads to awareness what a thin position lacks.

I wish this were true, but I think it isn't. Thick is easy - lots of attached stones with plenty of eyespace. There is also an easy concept to follow when you're thick: push your opponent against it, and make points elsewhere while doing so. Thin on the other hand, is weird. Early in the game, a two or three space extension with nothing nearby is solid - you've made a base! Yay! But later in the game, when more stones are around, that very same position can become thin. Same with small and large knight's moves. Like you said, it's not easy to know how or when to strengthen, but it's especially difficult if you don't notice in the first place that the position has, could, or is about to become thin.

I see it like this: thickness lets you wave your theory flag around, but thinness is where the action is.

[EdLee]

daal and soudesune, interesting discussion in the last 2 posts.

[SoDesuNe]

Thick is easy - lots of attached stones with plenty of eyespace.

How about: Thin is easy - few loosely connected stones with undefined eyespace : p

Like you said, it's not easy to know how or when to strengthen, but it's especially difficult if you don't notice in the first place that the position has, could, or is about to become thin.

Hm, I know this feeling when it comes to certain corner patterns. E.g. when to defend a Shimari or when to defend the 3*3 weakness after this Joseki.

$$Wc :w5: omitted
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . T . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . 4 . . .
$$ | . . 2 . . . . . .
$$ | . . 1 3 . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc :w5: omitted
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . T . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . 4 . . .
$$ | . . 2 . . . . . .
$$ | . . 1 3 . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

In the beginning I always thought Black's position was quite strong. After a douzen handicap games, I wasn't so sure anymore =D
But yes, as you correctly said, it all depends on the surrounding stones - that's why I omitted . If White's group is strong he can freely invade at the marked point, yet when his group is weak, respectively not defended properly, Black can descend (left of ), let White take the corner and after getting Sente (there's are some patterns), Black can attack White's group below.

In the end it comes down to knowing which possibilities lay within a shape. It's mostly experience and Tesuji and L&D knowledge again, I think.

[skydyr]

I think it's important to realize that thick and thin are not terms that can really occur in isolation, but rather describe a group in terms of the other groups on the board. Without looking at the nearby groups to make relative judgments, it's hard to say if you are thin, thick, or just overconcentrated.

[Bill Spight]

I was shodan before I was fairly confident of being able to tell the difference between thick and heavy on the one hand, and light and thin on the other.

As for the pro game, the sequence starting with looks rather complex to me, with the players making offer and counteroffer. Deciding what to play is difficult, I think.

[SoDesuNe]

As for the pro game, the sequence starting with looks rather complex to me, with the players making offer and counteroffer. Deciding what to play is difficult, I think.

I have to admit I only looked at and the following moves to , which seem very natural to me. Not naturally to be played out but laying there as a possibility. (Yeah, I most likely made it myself very easy with just looking at this sequence ^^)

[daal]

This isn't a particularly active journal, but I've been active in other ways. A few weeks ago, I started a thread called "too many go books sinking the game boat". In it I lamented about my game falling apart while taking in new information, and a number of people responded that this was part of the learning experience, and that it takes some time for new ideas to sink in, and this seems to be the case.

The book that captivated my interest most has been Vital Points and Skillful Finesse for Sabaki by Yoda Norimota. In it, he presents a situation in which a tesuji for sabaki is called for, and usually offers a choice between two moves. the central idea of the book is that one's judgement of what sort of move is called for is dependent on the strength of the surrounding positions. Although my finesses are still anything but skillful, I have been paying more attention to how early decisions affect the relative strength of groups. I am noticing how my interest is shifting from getting a big chunk of territory somewhere to taking care of my groups and looking for opportunities for keeping an opponent's group off balance.

I'm a bit tentative about trying to put my new knowledge into words, because go concepts are rarely as simple and clear cut as they might seem when verbalized, but I am feeling confident because a number of tidbits are starting to gel. In another thread, I talked about what sort of mistakes cause me to lose and I've latched onto two passing comments that have helped me get a temporary handle on two of these problems.

The first is something that Michael Redmond said when he was visiting the UK, which was that "a group on the edge or in the corner enclosing about 6 points is often unsettled, and should be given priority when looking for potential targets for attack or defense." Not considering this - particularly with regard to defense - had been the cause of at least 3/16 of my losses. I've started considering this, and a few disasters have been averted.

The other was a comment by EdLee made during a review of one of my games. It referred to a corner exchange, and Ed said" "You want the outside." Now this is really too simple to be applied generally, and indeed, one of my painful observations in the thread about the books was that in good go, judgments about results are based on comparing potential sequences. Nonetheless, despite it being just one criterion for judgement, one is better than none, and I have been asking myself if a sequence leads to getting the outside or not, and whether or not my conclusion is right or wrong, at least I am trying to make a judgement.

Recently, I chimed in on a thread about getting over one's wall and said that I was identifying mistakes, but not eliminating them. My goodness, what if this isn't the case. Suddenly, 4ks are no longer looking like unbeatable go gods.

[EdLee]

"You want the outside." Now this is really too simple to be applied generally...
...at least I am trying to make a judgement.

[ My emphasis on generally. ]

Exactly. That's also one thing I learned the hard way.
When people write notes on a move, like "Extend," "Hane (head of two)," "Capture (ponnuki) instead of connect,"
"Connect," "Bad shape," etc., what's unwritten but implied is "for this specific situation!"
So in that example, when I wrote "You want the outside." I meant "In this particular situation, you want the outside."

Otherwise, all the notes would read like this:
Extend, in this case.
Hane (head of two), in this case.
Just connect, in this case.
Take (ponnuki, instead of connect), in this case.
Cut, in this case.
Bad shape, in this case.
And so on.