Thanks for the review skydr. Re the ranking - well I was going to say that my DGS rank is only a temporary blip but I've been holding firm at 3k for a while now ... so maybe not?

My other thought is that IGS has a bit of a step jump around 10k-9k I definitely struggled to get over those ranks and have found at least one other sdk player on dgs who was also stuck at 10k on igs. Also IGS seems tougher at sdk level than kgs (but oddly it seems weaker at the dan level).

Other factors that might depress my igs rank are the time I play (often late my time, afternoon/early evening for my opponents in Japan. Plus I play automatch which seems to pit me against a lot of club accounts. Mostly though I just suck if I play fast and it doesn't matter if you have to change a diaper or rock a kid to sleep in a dgs game (but even that is rare these days).

I admit though I'm thinking that I'll get 7k soon (actually hoping to make 5k by May) so maybe I'm just inadvertently sandbagging till my rank gets up. (And queue the ego fueled downward spiral ).

Playing against myself - the rematch

The rematch against the 2kyu finished today. As I mentioned before the opening was identical to our first game so I got to play Charles's suggested pincer. I'm not sure how much difference it made to the game - which played out in much the same way as the first - but I won again so yay! That said it really boiled down to another complex running battle in the center - so fuseki was probably not that much of a factor - though the pincer probably forced the running fight to start sooner than it otherwise would have. Any and all comments appreciated.

A close one!
A very close match against a 4 dan (w 6 stones). I'm in awe of how tough it was - especially because I thought I was doing pretty well in general. As usual any and all comments are welcome.

Ps. Sorry for spamming these two posts - I'm on the road again and figure I'll get out what I can when I can.

Top of the head comment on the 6 stone game.

It is admirable that you are willing to sacrifice stones, but you seem to be sacrificing them to little or no purpose. For instance, puzzled me, but I figured that you were threatening to connect to . Then you played . And then after prevented the connection, you went elsewhere, instead of, say, the diagonal attachment at P-17, or the jump to O-18, threatening to connect or run.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

The short review seems to be that black didn't know joseki, didn't like being sealed in, and got into a complex fight that started out good for black while being unwilling to sacrifice, trade, or even protect his groups.

At :b15, black should double hane, as he has the ladder, and this won't turn out well for white. Even so, the fight looks decent for black and black could do quite well with just connecting at L9 for . But of course, instead black ignored his group, and then when white cut, went ahead and started another weak group that died so that white was stronger to kill. After that, it feels like the game is just a matter of mopping up.

You got into a position that suited you, and won decisively. Congratulations!

Some of the techniques (atekomi in particular) should be thought of as "good servants but poor masters".

Sloppy 7k (and a bit)

I'm currently 7k on IGS and 2k on DGS - while I'm maintaining my 5 rank difference between the two servers - I'm pretty sure the DGS rank will be slipping soon.

This match is my first game at 7k+ - and its a dog's breakfast. I need to concentrate on winning when I've won, rather than letting blood lust talk me into killing all the things. Move 120 was a disaster that was compounded by my follow up (I got lulled into a false sense of security by my opponent's earlier string of moves on the left), and 218 was just as bad. I was pretty happy (and lucky) that I got away with 234 & 236 - but I have to confess I loved the long pregnant pause that came after. In the early game 42 - a misclick - worked out kind of nice.

Wild fighting, certainly. You did OK, but there would be some mistakes.



At , my feeling is you should jump out rather than secure the corner, because the black area on the lower side is the biggest feature on the board. Your opponent made your choice look good.

seems like the wrong shape here: easy to cut.

again makes you look good, putting and onto sensible points. Black should probably try P10 before going in deep.

is high-handed but not necessarily bad.

At White 121: what does White actually want to do here? I'd be happy to capture the L17-M17 group. White's right side group is thin, so White wants to live locally at the top. Think about extending.

White 130 can't be right.

Black 143: things are getting out of hand. White has the tactic at H18 to work with. Black G18, White G17, Black H16 and White has a squeeze to connect out. So ... Black at H13 first, White needs to force with H16 and Black patches at G17. White patches at J12. Then this attack could work better.

Black 171. Starts some tricky close fighting. What about just playing S17 and relying on the "special property of the corner"? White at R18 is then apparently a ko. White 176 is wrong, as is Black 177.

White 182. Maybe you can still help the central group with H18. In which case this atari would be a loss? Helping the right side is probably just as big. See comments on White 121: you don't have three hands.

White 198: So which of the players has read the semeai correctly? (Rhetorical.)

White 218: No, really. White 228: that didn't go well!

There is still aji at H18 remaining.

Just a quickie: that game looks like the sort of position 48 should be at c18 (particularly good if your 7k opponent makes the common mistake of answering at b18!).

Quick comment.

@ K-03.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Thanks for the comments - Charles Bill and Uberdude - I've been reading regularly but life, moving, job hunting etc have seemed to suck up my free time whenever I've sat down to respond. I do very much appreciate the input though - despite my tardy reply.

Milestones

I had my first win against a 1 kyu in an even game recently. And as luck would have it they had just won a game against a 2 dan in the dgs ladder tournament - which meant I shot up to rank 20! Proving yet again that it's better to be lucky than good. Top ten here we come! (all I need to do now is beat a three dan - can't be that hard I see them loose all the time).

More seriously though the ladder competition and the tournaments in general have been good for me - it's forced me to play against lots of stronger players and I seem to be learning something from the experience. I also wonder what affect the tournaments have had on the dgs ranks. It seems that having more games across different levels would help with the ranking system.

My other recent little victory was getting to 6kyu on igs. As usual I celebrated by losing my first game at the new rank. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be making 5kyu before my birthday as I'd hoped (I'd have to win just about every game at my current rate of play), but I'm not too far off it and I have broken into 2 kyu a couple of times now on dgs - so I did get one of my goals.

In any case my first victory against a 1 kyu is below along with my first loss as a 6 kyu.

1 kyu victory


6 kyu loss

I have managed to win a couple of games at 6k - but not too many. I feel that I'm at that halfway point at the moment where I'm able to win at the rank below but not the one above.

Here's a recent game versus a 3kyu. I think the take home message is to play a bit more conservatively (particularly against stronger players) and read out my cuts.

A rare 6k win.


My latest 6k win. The intensity of reading has definitely stepped up a notch. I managed to win convincingly thanks to my opponents mistakes - but I'm not sure about some if my choices early on in the game.

I'm slipping in and out of 6k at the moment - currently on my way out again but taking a little longer than last time with 4 wins and 5 losses. Naively i had thought that as I got stronger the encounters with 10,000+ gamers would decrease but sadly the opposite seems to be true. Ahh well when they are good ... They are very very good - one I played recently could not have taken more than 5 minutes of his clock to clean mine. But when they are bad... Well actually they never seem to be all that bad, but this game might be an exception.

Despite the solid win I think I made some big errors of judgement in the early game and only managed to come out in top because my opponents mistakes were bigger. I do seem to favour trying to make overly large territory without the skills/foresight to defend it properly. I did like how I handled the attack in this game though - even if my opponent could have taken the win with a bit more careful play.

The short of it: don't be so hard on yourself. You outplayed your opponent by far early on, capitalized on their mistakes, and used the gains to cruise to victory.

The long:


To emphasize the position at more, perhaps black could have taken a larger point, but if black had just taken K11, black could easily have claimed the 20 or so points that white made, not even counting the points on the right side.

Also, please disregard my comment on the 5 stones. Clearly I'm not thinking.

One other thing though: You seem to look at building a moyo as a territory building exercise, based on your comment above. It's nice if they turn into territory like that, but no opponent worth his salt will let you do that. The real purpose of a moyo is to fight, and to put the odds in your favour beforehand. You claim an area so big that if your opponent doesn't come in, they will lose outright on points. So they come in and there's a fight, but the fight is on your turf. Ladders are all good for you. Your opponent can cut all he wants because his cut groups can't run anywhere but into you. When you cut, your cut is practically already connected to a living group. You have the supporting stones all around, and they do not. Success isn't in turning the moyo into territory right off the bat necessarily, but in the profit you gain through attacking your opponent's invasion while they struggle to make a 2 point group. It's often fine if they live, because you will get lots of forcing moves against them that let you turn other areas or parts of the moyo into territory.

Some comments on the opening.



Main focus: Don't sell yourself short. You took an early lead and held on to it. A good win.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hubris
A most unspectacular game on my behalf - and on the behalf of my opponent. Summed up by my last move.

Moral of the story: Count



ps. I'm not looking for reviews of this one.

Well it's been a while since I've posted here - and rather than wait for the perfect game to share I thought I'd dive back in with the sort of dross that is a bit more representative of the games that I've been playing recently.

Rank
Despite not posting I've still been playing fairly regularly. But my rank has stalled out at around 6k on IGS. I'm still at 2k on DGS though - so the gross rank disparity continues. In fact (I hate to admit it but here goes anyway) I got beaten last night on wbaduk with my 16k account. In all fairness it was late, I had been drinking and I did technically win the game (my opponent resigned before counting), but on review I was down by 20 pts with the reverse komi.

Goals
Well I was hoping to get to 2K on IGS this year - but that does not look likely at the moment. 1K on DGS looks more do-able. And (if I'm luck and do not play too many drunken midnight blitzes) I may get to 15 on wbaduk.

Play
Hmmm... well the above game aside I've been doing ok on IGS recently. My secret strategy has been discovering that I can change the preferences on the IGS app so I don't have to automatch with a +-3 stone handicap (only took me 2.5 years to work that one out - and still I wonder why I'm not a shodan). That at least has let me play a little more calmly (at 6k all I seemed to be getting white with 2-3 stone handicaps most of the time - it was making my play a little psychotic).

Improvement
I need to work on counting more and playing consistently even when I feel I'm ahead. The thing about the game above that I feel is most representative of my play at the moment is a tendency to take a big-ish area and let my opponent carve off the rest of the board. Also I need to pause and take a little more time to read. I clearly do better when I play slower.

you are 2k on DGS and 16 on wbaduk???!!!