One thing to consider is that if there's a reasonable invasion, it was never territory to begin with. Imagine you have a position like so:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . X . O . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . X . , . . . X . O . . . |
$$ | . . . O X X X . . . X . . X O . . . . |
$$ | . . . O 1 . . . . . . . . . O . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

When white plays or a similar move, is white taking your territory away? I'd say no, because with two open skirts, it's reasonable to assume that white will get a monkey jump on one side or the other. Similarly, if you set up a big moyo, and your opponent decides that he doesn't need to invade or do anything about it, despite being behind, he's lost the game already. There isn't territory there until your opponent no longer has aji in the area. Until then it's just potential, and a threat that your opponent needs to deal with in some way or other. This might be invasion, but it might also be reduction or having a competing position somewhere else. Either way, they need to and will do _something_, so it behooves you to have a plan to turn it into territory either locally, or somewhere else on the board (as by attacking an invading group).

Here are some games! All vs 6kyus. 1st 3 were ranked!

The game that ended the disastrous streak


Fun with blitz go in dog-doodoo wifi


Fights galore here

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My Baduk Journey

The next 2 were free.


The game where i first understood & executed the true power of thickness. Bait and reel in.


Revenge game

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My Baduk Journey

Its good to see you using the thickness. But most of the time the use of thickness doesn't result in killing opponent. And we all know you should not make manually territory with it. What thickness gives you is control over any altercation nearby, you get to decide where to play and usually opponent has a very limited set of possible responses. Since he cant do anything to your thickness, one direction if completely blocked off for him. As you have many choices for forcing moves, and opponent has very limited choice of responses, you should be able to find such forcing moves that opponent ends up responding with moves that have little value except keeping his group alive, where as your moves have high value one way or another, carving up territory, setting up another attack, building thickness, or helping reduce opponents positions elsewhere, etc..

Just some thoughts in thickness

Concurring with the previous post, I made a review of game 1, which is perfectly suitable to learn about influence, thickness and attack.

Game 2: two major lessons to draw

1) premature endgame sente will strengthen the opponent and destroy middle game potential to attack
2) - is a showcase of the infamous "squeezing out the toothpaste": http://senseis.xmp.net/?SqueezingOutTheToothpaste

Ootakumoku and Knotwilg, thank you for the very detailed comments and reviews! I currently only have a grasp on using thickness to drive opponents towards it and use it to attack but I hope to pick up the other uses that you mentioned sooner or later.

Knotwilg i was very surprised to see that you said white should just sacrifice and aim to enclose a bigger area. If white does sacrifice, even if black becomes a bit excessively concentrated, isnt his territory rather large and almost untouchable for white to handle? White's area of influence has lots of holes/possible reduction&invasion points. Perhaps it's my lack of confidence in defending large moyos that's leading me to ask this question. A little more insight would be very appreciated!

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My Baduk Journey

I assume you mean the variation at

Indeed Black gets a big territory while White only gets influence towards the bottom. His influence is not thick, so it's an upward battle. White is behind. White must pay *some* price for his premature invasions in those two corners, especially the second one being greedy. But this large scale sacrifice is my best bet for White to come back. Black might become gluttonous and swallow the whole top centre, giving White a stronger influence at each step.

is quite well judged. White plays passively.

The bad style fairy has waved her wand in your direction. You have to learn to live without plays like , , (raw peep).

So you had much more territory in the end. White relied too much on the centre.

Another pretty slow day in terms of improvement! 1 wins and 4 losses!

I lost a very few close games and a few more that I thought I could have won. (1.5 points, and 2.5 points respectively)

For my games, I am still trying my hardest to apply the principles i learned over the past few weeks. But nevertheless, I am sorta confused on why I have been playing rather unconvincingly.In most of my games, my opponents tend to get 2 massive frameworks - and I am always playing catchup. I can't remember the last time where i had a streak of games where i just flat-out dominated and felt comfortable.


Attached are some of the games for some reviews.

Very close game this one. I made 1 major mistake in the middle game.


Made a mistake near the end of the game. Also didn't put up as much pressure as I should have attacking his big group.


So I won this game but this was the classic example of my opponents getting 2 massive frameworks, and me being FORCED to kill. If i couldnt kill his group this would have been a 30+ point defeat. Also in the bottom right of this game, my opponent made life in my sphere of influence way too easily.

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My Baduk Journey

How about playing at D6 and wrecking White's shape? You get a poor result in this corner, but White has played badly.

I would really advise to allow yourself some other determining feedback than winning games, especially if the results become as close as 1,5 pt or 2,5 pt. At our level - yes *our* level - there is not mucht difference between a win or a loss by that margin. It's not like we have the ability to confidently draw a victory by that margin to a close. Rather, we're oscillating towards it.

If you're working on remaining solid (something I recommend), a good idea for positive feedback is "keep losses within 5 pts". Thus you will count your wins AND your small losses as good results.

If you are working on L&D skills, you could set yourself a goal to "surround at least one group and if the opponent does not respond, kill it" even if that is strategically unsound and may result in a loss. Or set yourself the opposite goal "tenuki aggressively and still try to live with my weak groups".



While this is a more reliable kind of feedback, it would be unrealistic to expect a streak of those. Eventually, trying to win big is not a good recipe in Go. But, again, if you are working on your opening skills, you could set yourself the goal of "getting an advantageous position in the opening" and let yourself be evaluated by stronger players, here for example.

This kind of goal setting and positive feedback is much more purposeful and reinforcing than just measuring your wins or losses. I know, there's nothing like a good winning streak to make us players happy, but if we're keeping study journals, we should be smarter than that.

Sorry I disagree with this wholeheartedly. I play to improve, and the best indication of improvement is victories. A loss is a loss to me. A loss may contain the most to learn from, but I will refuse to accept a small loss as a good result. There are no excuses for it. Me losing close games to 6ks just indicates that I am not there yet!


In the meantime, I lost 2 more games today. But from these games I did learn a valuable lesson - I really give sente away easily in my games which allows opponents to get almost free moves to develop their moyos to a point where I cannot attempt to touch them any more.

It took me a while to drill in 'Sente Vs Gote' for the endgame, but I am now going to try to keep that constantly in mind when I play my games as well by playing the biggest move each turn.

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My Baduk Journey

I've read a lot about the psychology of improvement and related stuff lately (although probably Bill or Dieter still can beat me to it ) and you shouldn't be disagreeing with it. Improvement is not linear, a game of go is the sum of a lot of decision-making (say, 50 decisions per game, where you choose "where and/or what"). You may have aced 49 of these, making this one of your best games and screw the 50th. You lose, but you'll have improved. If you only focus on results (and not on the process itself of improvement) your "playing mood" will go up and down (after all, once your rank is more or less stable winrate is really close to 50%) constantly.

Improvement is fuelled by confidence, and confidence is built on positive reinforcement.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Fine. That in itself is not a bad attitude. I'm not saying you *should* see small losses as good results per se. I said that these are good results IF you're trying to keep a game close. The metric depends on the goal set.

I was trying to give you ideas for a different kind of positive feedback than merely wins. I did that because a while ago you were very disappointed because of losing. If you can overcome the disappointment without doing so, that's fine.

Good luck!

Ahh okay. I'm back. So i hit another losing streak after snapping out of the initial funk. This compounded with other personal stuff and i decided to take a 1.5 week long break from baduk.

Taking the time off was good. I think I rushed back to it a little bit on my previous losing streak... but now i feel good. I don't feel antsy to play ranked games anymore. I don't feel like I'm gonna lose when heading into a game. In losses I don't get that discouraged anymore. I am mad that I lost but, its enough to fuel me to think - "what can i do to beat this guy next time". Now I'm riding a 8 game winning streak (4 ranked), where I genuinely feel like I outplayed most of my opponents 6k opponents in my games.

But the most important realization I had is - I'm just going to really try not to care about my rank and win/losses anymore. I'll set my goals and just work to get to them.

My next shortterm goal is of course, to break 6k. Looking back, I well exceeded my goal of reaching stable 8-7k by the end of the summer. My next midrange goal will be to hit 3k by Christmas.

I'll attach some of my games later with comments - Until then, happy baduk-ing everyone

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My Baduk Journey

Here is a win and a loss. The loss especially left a sour taste in my mouth as i felt that i had thoroughly outplayed my opponent throughout the match. I need to stop making 15k mistakes, particularly in the endgame.

The Loss


The Win



For studying theory, I am trying to study a bit more diligently - Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, Fundamental Principles of Go, and A&D for reference texts.

For problems, I am still recycling 1001 L&D, GSATesuji, GGPB Vol. 4, and LCH L&D Vol. 2&3. I'm starting to almost memorize the answers to some of these problems... but I still have oopsie moments in my reading ingame, which I am trying hard to get rid of.

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My Baduk Journey

Both of these games are very well reviewed by yourself. You get the major points where things went wrong or opportunities were missed.

In terms of play, I notice an improved building and usage of thickness. You also resist very well (like breaking through at the end of the won game).

About the key point in the lost game, how to avoid making beginner mistakes? By continuously paying attention to fundamentals, like liberties. When liberties become scarce, typically when the board fills up but also when a battle reaches the edge of the board, or a close by group, try to be extra vigilant for shortage of liberties and "tesuji" that may exploit them. In this case it was simply the weakness of a diagonal connection (straight connections are better than diagonals, another fundamental).

You're not far from fixing that, with such good self reviews.

Officially 6kyu!!! It finally feels like I broke through a wall. Hopefully ill stay long enough not to get demoted

Attached are 3 of my most recent games, 1 loss, 2 wins - including my promotion game!



First, The Loss


Second, A Win


Thirdly, The Promotion Game!



I noticed two things.

First, I really need to stop making dumb mistakes. If I made 3 less stupid moves a game (worth about -10 points each), I think I'd easily be 2 stones higher. As the margin of error gets tighter and tighter as I progress through the ranks, this is vital.

Secondly, Simply put - I need to read deeper. Much deeper.

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My Baduk Journey

I've just caught up reading your journal from the beginning, and have quite enjoyed seeing your enthusiasm and rapid improvement. Congrats and keep up the good work!

But I wanted to mention an attitude I see that if you can modify, I think it'll help you improve even faster (and others have mentioned already as well)


Losses do not mean you are not improving!

Winning is great. And makes improvement measurable. But if you think about it, its entirely possible to lose every game yet still improve (its a very extreme viewpoint, and in practice, not really accurate -- yet indeed, still theoretically possible).

Suppose, for example, all your opponents are also improving at the same rate you are improving, and you continue to lose every game against them. You are not getting worse. You are still improving, as they are. Only you don't yet have the win-loss record to show for it.

Learn to be grateful for your losses, as much as your wins, because you do indeed have much to learn from them.