I played black and am the 9 kyu. Any thoughts are very welcome.

I couldn't find my WBaduk game records outside of my phone app, so I had to create the .sgf by hand, the "variations" are actually the main game. They got sidelined where I mis-clicked and went back a move to correct myself



Some of my opponent's moves looked kind of odd, especially in the yose. So I wonder if maybe I was playing a bot? Or are these Dan-level plays that I will only understand when I am on the reach the same heights?

This is also me testing out the software I have available on my devices and these forums. Hopefully this post isn't a total trainwreck.

White is clearly a bot. Here are some thoughts:

is slow. O4 is already strong, no need to reinforce it, and the bottom doesn't have a lot of potential. Play a shimari like O17.

no need to invade yet. You can play the normal joseki R17.

is overconcentrated. Better extend at L17. (Edit: after checking with a bot, Q14 is even better).

now you are very overconcentrated. In addition you are reinforcing an already strong group, while R11 is weak.

now you see that R11 is in difficulty...

is not achieving much. The lower right corner looks bigger.

the standard move is B13, to separate C12 from C15.

is better at B5 if you want to play in the area.

Oh! I was going to say that white is clearly a human (a calm low dan player). White does play an AI-like opening, but IME that is common nowadays.

White did not have to work hard to win. You play a decent game, but you tend to play too defensively and passively to win against low dan level players, so white got a lead from about move 23. By move 46, white was winning. Not much happened aftwerwards, so white won.

Yes the beginning is normal but did you look at the end (move 176 for instance)?

Yes, white played many strange and unneccessary moves in the late endgame, but does that mean he was botting? It's possible that white was just bored and/or trolling.

Thanks so much for your comments guys especially jlt's point-by-point.

On the bot question, I put the Japanese chat from the original kifu through google translate and the opponent says something like "Hi. I am a bot that plays at 4D level. Have fun!"

As far as I'm concerned white passes the anti-Turing test.