Soaring to 3 kyu
... on wax wings ...

Thanks to some good luck, and lots of good timing - I've managed to crack 3 kyu on dgs. It's definitely going to be short lived though - I've got a bank of other games lined up: from even matches with a 1 dan to a 21(!) stone handicap against a 26 kyu ... and none of them look pretty. I'm even loosing against an unranked beginner (they clearly have played some go but mostly I just keep punching myself in the face).

This game though ... regardless of the reaming to come ... and regardless of the fact I deserved to loose it several times over ... This game is a keeper.



ps. Still clinging to the tail end of 8 kyu on igs.
pps. If they are reading this - big thanks to aralai for the game - I had lots of fun and no business winning - I'd get creamed in a rematch.

Stop believing your opponent's crap moves are good. Move 40 is pathetic. c13 push and capture c12 in a ladder. I'd actually do that instead of g15 (as white gets a lot of profit and can handle the fight if black then pushes and cuts) before black has a chance to fix his weakness there but fortunately for you he plays that absurd peep but fortunately for him you believe him. Also don't forget to c18 atari right after his b18. It would have meant black has to live in gote not sente with d18. A whole move for free for you! 48 and 50 are similar timid thinking. Black is not attacking you, he is throwing tennis balls at a tank. Charge on through and crush him in the dust.

If someone would ask me at which level this game is played, I'd definitely say something around 3k, so don't be too dispondent about your game. Many reviews focus on mistakes, so let this one focus on things done well:

and speed up development at the bottom while Black wastes some time moving against a strong top right
is a thick move, creating breathing space for a group that risks becoming heavy

Still, after Black's moyo is more promising than White's territory. though technically too close to strength, shows correct positional judgment that White somehow needs to live within the moyo. We can argue about timing here

At B103 Black screws up: he could have sacrificed one stone and keep White eyeless.

The cut at W128 is well engineered and White gets ahead, provided that the bottom right survives. Actually, it would probably have been better to capture the lone stone at the bottom right now, to maintain overall thickness and let Black suffer with his heavy groups. The capture at W128 is "only" 25 points.

Lo' and behold, W134 overestimates the capture of a stone and Black reverses the game. It seems impossible for White to save this lump of stones but ...

... the ladder at W170 is again very well crafted and the game is over.

You emerge victorious in both combats, through creative usage of the opponent's shortage of liberties. In both fights there is opportunity to critically inspect the importance of the stones atari'd.

Good game!

Thanks knotwilg - I'm not despondent at all. It was probably not the best game - but for me at least the late stage fighting made it one of the most entertaining ones.


Cheers! It's the most complex ladder I've managed to spot and read out successfully in a game. I really thought I had black - but then he must have spotted it too. Even then I thought black would resign but I have to admire his tenacity ... which almost paid off.

For those reading along at home that don't have time for the whole sgf:

After w172 black is behind - but still continues to fight - he threatens my top right (which I probably should not have responded to) ...

... and then goes back and tries for the stones remaining on the left.

If black pulls the stones out he's still in the game. So there's a massive ko fight at move 181 - we both have big ko factories - and the fight ends with ... Another (much shorter) ko! Love it!

This is followed by a h&a hane at 258 (not that spectacular but I was happy to be the one playing it for a change )

Finished with the threat at 266 and coup-de-grace at move 268


Point taken, Überdude - I do tend to give numerically stronger opponents too much credit (and weaker ones too little). I was obviously way too concerned with trying to stay "safe" and missing out on opportunities as a result.

The center ... can hold?

So this happened:

Ps.

I'm still feeling guilty and I've offered up ten teaching games for <16kyus on dgs as penance. I lost my game against the 1 dan, but won another couple against 3 kyus so my 3 kyu dgs rating has held for a little while. My rank is still well inflated at the moment though and I'm still heading for a loss against a couple of 6 kyus though so we'll see how it comes out in the end. Still it feels good to be getting close to my loose goal of dgs 2 kyu by May.

Not a lot of opportunities to play live recently - which might be helping my game (concentrating more on dgs). I played a mediocre intro game against violence for the sdk level up group (lots of excuses (my daughter woke up half way through) but really I was just unbelievably nervous - I love the fact that I've played go for almost 2 years now and I still have games where I have too much adrenaline to keep my hands steady). I played a better game at the club - we didn't finish but I held my own against the 6 dan with 8 stones. Finally alothough I've only played on igs a few times - I've been having a bit of a winning streak and I'm comfortably in the 8k bracket now - so all in all a pretty good week or two.

And a thousand thousand slimy things lived on ... and so did I.


I got an unexpectedly quick victory on DGS and was promoted ... To 2 kyu! Now admittedly it's 2 kyu (-49%) - which is to say as close to not 2 kyu as you can get - but 2 kyu nonetheless! I'm also about to resign in a game against a 5 kyu so it's all virtual - but screw it it's good enough to reach my DGS target for the year (and 5 months early!) so I'll take it!

My other goal is to drag my igs rank up to 5k ... 3 stones in 5 months ... Should be doable, but it seems tougher in many ways - mostly just finding time to play. Still I figure if I can maintain 2 (or more likely 3) kyu on dgs my live game should be able to get there.

Edit: I know 2kyus sir - and you are no 2 kyu
My time as a 2kyu was brief and volatile - I lasted an hour before resigning to the 5k (but made it to a respectable 2k-42% thanks to another unexpectedly early victory. )

Chasing the dragon
I've still not had too many opportunities for live go - but I've haven't been doing too badly when I do play, and my dgs games are going well - I had a second victory against a 2k - it was an unrated match so I'm not sure how seriously he was taking it but I think I played well in the second half of the game.

I think my main mistakes were around move 20 - I'm not sure if the shoulder hit was the best choice - and at move 30 - the hane was definitely too aggressive. That said, I haven't played many even games at this level so any and all feedback is appreciated.

Interesting that by the unorthodox is looking quite good. At that stage White wants to play on both the upper and lower sides, so something has already gone wrong. I think White should have pincered in the lower left. Black's stones became well-organised in the game (which was obviously won and lost in the close fighting).

Thanks Charles - as chance would have it I played virtually the same opening against the same opponent - and got an opportunity to pincer - I'll report back later how it works out.

Ahh Tsumego ... god bless you

I'm lax with regard to go problems - I'll go through brief bursts for a week or two then not touch them for months. My reluctance stems in part from a desire to fix my own errors, and some skepticism that solving yet another under the stones problem is going to help my game - when I have yet to see or play one "in the wild". My other gripe is that I suffer from pseudo-tsumegoitis after I do a burst of problems - suddenly ever weak group of mine can live and all my opponents corners can die ... Except they can't and don't.

So it was nice when a chance for a non-pseudo-tsumego popped up in my game and I a) correctly recognized the possibility several moves earlier and b) got to play it out. Nicer still because I was dead in the water without the capture.

I've left the last few moves out in case anyone wants to give it a go (please no spoilers - it's not that hard but I think it's a neat problem if you haven't seen it before)

A game I lost but should have won but should have lost.

Im still having trouble finding time for live games. The move back to Australia is sucking up all our free time and go is the victim. Lots of dgs is my solution but I'm getting very rusty in my live play. The three live games I have been able to play have all been losses. The first two I blame on jet lag the third I blame on a dodgy hotel connection, superficially at least. Although I had my opponent beat I was lucky it didn't go the other way due to some overly risky play in the corner.

Anyway I'm trying something new here. I went back to my game and tried to play it again as white (not reproduce the game but try to do my best each move as if it were a correspondence game). I'm not sure I succeeded entirely (I still finished faster than my usual 30-60 day dgs battles) but the hope was that it would highlight some differences in my live and online style.

Hi S2W,

Happy 2015.

Since has lots of space, did you consider the lower left instead ?

did you consider any other ways to fix your shape ?

why ?

why ?



S5.

Happy 2015 to you too Ed!


I did - going right my thought was to put pressure on the right group and leave the left open for a later invasion. Going left I felt I'd be making black stronger in the corner and the right group would still have space for a base. What is your opinion?


Hmm - I dismissed the tigers mouth as bad shape but in this case I guess it helps protect the 4th line stone

Fear? So the idea would be to try extending on the outside then a move to protect the rhs group, then kill the cutting stones? (Sorry I'll try to add a diagram later - time and internet access are scarse at the moment.


Yeah I saw this in game after the fact - but not sure why I didn't correct it in the review. I must obsess over my dgs games more when there's more on the line.

I think extending like you did with puts almost zero pressure on the right group -- the right group is already out, way out!

I don't mean extending left to strengthen Black's left corner.
I mean why not take Black's lower left corner yourself.

Other than your connect and the tiger's mouth, did you also consider any other move(s) ?

But you did not do that. You did not extend outside.
You never extended outside here.
You forced Black to extend ahead of you, and then you yourself crawled on the inside.
Letting B capture your cutting stone was terrible for you.

If you cannot handle the cut, then you cannot hane on at all.
The question is: does your hane work ? Can you handle the cut ?

There are none so blind ... Filling the other cut works doesn't it. I was worried about the left of the two cuts on the 2nd line stone but I can always fill the other on the right then capture.

Forgive my prosaic description - I'd almost give my left nut for a decent internet connection (and this hotel would take it - they are charging $0.10 per MB of "high speed" connectivity - I miss my unlimited data).

Hi S2W, good luck with your internet.
Too bad your hotel does not provide "free", "reasonably" unlimited WiFi.

I was also out of town for 9 weeks and was at the mercy of others for WiFi.

I played a mixed bag of games over Christmas - New Years. Jet lag and dropped internet connections meant I lost quite a bit. But I needed to get more live games in before I rusted up solid. The story has changed since getting back to the us - either the jet lag wasn't as bad or I just didn't play as much during that period - but I have been able to play a fair bit and win more. I'm not sure how deserved the wins are - I feel like I'm playing the overnight shift on the go club accounts - but I'll take em. Anyway here's a recent live game with some of my thoughts - it's a but if a blow out but I felt like my play was sloppy.


For comparison here's a dgs game I played against a 1 kyu/1 dan. I have to say I don't remember playing my last move - so I suspect it was a "but dial" on the ipod - either that or I'm playing go in my sleep. Regardless I think he had me without the "misclick" but it was a close one.

Not much to say about your first game except that your opponent was unreasonable and by the end, you both knew it. One small note though: move 275? Not a ko threat. If black cuts, white plays G14 and black loses the capturing race. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if you play as a 3k on DGS, your 8k KGS rating is wildly inaccurate. Maybe it's slow vs fast/blitz play, but generally I see ranks on DGS as stronger than their KGS equivalents.

In the second game, there's a reason white played out the lower left and the lower right the same, and it's because it's not good for black to make that attachment with that pincer. Jumping out with the large knight's move after the pincer is pretty standard, though there are other options as well. The one space jump directly after the pincer is also pretty simple, pushing white along the bottom in order to counter pincer.

At , one more descent at B16 is absolute sente against the corner group. I'm not absolutely sure, but you may be able to play F19 and follow up with B16, since if white hanes at B16 and black blocks, white owes another move or dies. I recommend looking up the J and J+1 groups on sensei's library.

I like playing B2 for black also, especially after move 60 or so when white plays out the lower right. There's already the aji of P1 and you don't want to deal with that twice. Plus, once your group is quite solid, you can fight much more effectively. However, finding time for it is tough, and points to the initial trouble with the corner sequence.

I'm not sure about the sequence starting with . My every instinct says that this is a bad idea, and leads to a heavy group without prospects, but it seemed to work out in the end without giving white too much. I suspect white tried to kill too hard. On the other hand, it strengthened him enough to kill the bottom, so...

As for the ko starting at :w174:, I'm not sure what white was thinking. This seems needlessly dangerous. Without counting, I think white could have reduced a bit, lived with the corner group, kept black's group dead, and called it a win despite losing the side group.