Another month went by without any journal entry from me. Actually i didn’t want to have such a huge gap between entries anymore but it sort of happened, sorry about that.
But december was a non-go month for me until now, so not much to report has happened. Regardless this will be a long post.
Kranich TournamentAt the end of november there was the big berlin tournament the „Kranich“ (Crane). If you remember the goals i set for myself at the beginning of 2014, one was to play the kranich as 1k. Of course i could always promote myself to 1k but i wanted to be confident, that i have the strength to play at that level.
I’m not fully certain, that i can call myself a 1k but i played as a 1k none the less because i feel stronger than the typical 2k. Sort of in the boundary between the two levels, a strong 2k or a weak 1k, depending on how you look at it. So i thought promoting myself to 1k for this tournament wasn’t that much of a stretch.
The main reason however was not fulfilling my goal, even though that was nice, the main reason was to play more games against stronger opponents. In the yunguseng i have dropped so much, and the league levels are so tight, that i mostly played against players of my strength or slightly weaker. (According to the YD rating, all were around 1 rank weaker than me - not counting the fact, that i dropped a full rank in rating over the last season)
And also on KGS i got more 2k and 3k in auto match than 1k. I wanted to see how i fare against good german 1d in a tournament-setting where everybody tries to play at its best.
I finished the tournament with 2-3 and didn’t play against that many 1d, but i’m still satisfied with it. From all the games i got the feeling, that i can play as a 1k if i get more experience and don’t blunder that much. Oh and my current main weakness (according to In-seong) showed itself again but luckily i was able to win the game none the less.
Since i recorded all games i will post each game.
Game 1A game against a strong 1k. I think i made a judging mistake with move 33. If i had moved my weak group out, black and white would have had a weak group. Sort of like a running battle. Neither would have died probably, but neither of us would have made any big points with it. I think i was afraid that she was the sort of aggressive player that would love this kind of thing and i wasn’t that confident in my reading and tactical abilities.
I had decided that giving these two stones away and building influence towards the center would a possible option - one that involved less fighting. But with the two white stones on the upper edge it was dubious what i could gained with this influence in the middle, while the cash she got from taking this two stones was quite certain and big.
On the upside, the lead she probably gained there (around 20 points) didn’t grow. Nearing the end, when i tried to life in the lower left corner i counted myself behind around 20 points and this corner was my last attempt at catching up. So despite this error in the opening i didn’t mess much else up it seems. Of course there are a lot more mistakes i made, but they evened out with the ones she made.
Game 2While my opponent called himself 2k, he was a 1k not long ago. Even though there was probably a good reason for him to demote himself, this meant he was a strong 2k.
Still i think i managed to play quite ok. The part at the upper left to negate blacks influence was probably a bit too much, but it turned out ok.
I’m certain i lost it starting with move 90. I tried too reduce too much and produced another weak group of mine. In addition there was still the aji of R8 so in the end, together with the group at the upper left, i had three weak groups floating around and i had to keep all of them to win the game. It is easy to see, that this was impossible.
A lighter reduction at move 90 like O5 wouldn’t have produced that much problems for me and i could have taken the game to the endgame stage, maybe with a slight lead.
But i’m satisfied with my game up to that point.
Game 3After losing the first two rounds it was natural that i got weaker opponents and so i played against a 3k in the third round. Actually i think the gap in playing strength showed itself quite clearly in this game. During the opening i didn’t feel that much under pressure like in the other two games and i could easily gain a lead. For example allowing me move 83 was painful for white, even more so defending the moyo at move 86 then. Move 102 is also a big mistake by white, but here my main weakness showed itself. Despite having the better position i can’t „close the game“ as In-seong called it. I always give my opponents big opportunities to catch up. After move 108 white can not life in the corner. T18 instead of T17 kills.
I let my opponent life in my corner, so instead of punishing her mistake of 102 she gets a big reward from it. And most of all it was sente for her allowing her to play the big move E3. (Actually i wanted to exchange R18 for S17 first and then cut with D3)
I had big opportunities to gain a certain lead, but screwed up both.
Her cut at L9 (Move 152) was also very painful. Since i had already screwed up at the upper part i felt like i was throwing the game away again, like i had done with many games in the past. I think my reading here saved me, even though giving away the G14 group was big. Another big point for her, thanks to my screw-up.
Afterwards it is only normal endgame but the fact that i still won the game, even though it was only a small margin of 3 points, speaks for itself.
Game 4Another 1k, one i already had played against plenty of time. He likes to play a very influence-orientated game, something i have big problems with. Somehow i can never find the right moment to disrupt the building moyo or when i do, he makes more than enough territory to compensate.
This time however i somehow was able to manage. At no point in the game i felt so behind, that i had to take desperate measures. Maybe he was leading a bit, but it was not with 20 points or more, like it was in other games against him.
Surely that i won this time, was partly luck, because the mistake he made at the end is not a typical 1k-mistake. But i’m more happy that i could hold myself against him this time than i am about the win itself.
Game 5Finally a 1d. When i think of previous games i played against strong 1d in a tournament it was usually me resigning around move 60 without any idea what went wrong.
I still can’t surely pinpoint where i lost this game (maybe i could directly after the game, but i don’t remember) but i didn’t had to resign. I could hold myself well enough to bring the game to the counting stage and lost „only“ by 7 points.
Funny story with this game is, that we actually counted that i won by 3 points. Only after we had already cleared the board an observer said that we had miscounted blacks point, that black had 10 points more than what we counted. Since the board was already cleared the only way to check was using the recording-app on my smartphone and it clearly stated black had won by 7 points.
If i only take a look at the actual results the tournament was not a big success, a 2-3 is nothing spectacular especially if one win is against a 3k - considering i called myself 1k this time.
But looking at the actual games and comparing them to my previous experiences i still think my first tournament as a 1k was a success.
YungusengI was standing 3-0 when i wrote my last entry. In the end i finished the month with 3-2. Every winning streak has to end sometime. Also both lost games were quite interesting and i played well in both of them.
In the first one i gained quite a lead, then was too aggressive in reducing (where i have i heard that before?) but then was still leading with komi.
But my opponent found a, according to In-seong, hard to find sequence to kill one of my groups and the game was over.
The last yunguseng game was against my girlfriend and it was a close game. I lost by 0.5 points and according to In-seong i had plenty of opportunity to win, as i was leading going into endgame, but made several big mistakes during the endgame. I attribute that to the fact, that most of my games in past ended with resignation (most on my part), so i lack endgame-practice =).
Thanks to a bit of luck and the other results in the yunguseng-league i still ended on place 2, which means i will move up a league. Well at least in theory, as a new season begins in january, new members will come and a bit of shuffling is to be expected.
Other stuffYunguseng has a break and you could say i also took a go-break after the tournament. I still do some problems every day when commuting to work, but not that much.
In total i played four games this month and strangely enough won all of them. Of course this doesn’t say much as one game was the bundesliga-game on KGS, where my opponent was a 7k. And the other games were played on OGS and at least one game i should have lost. I was behind but my opponent lost on time.
I still haven’t found my „drive“ again. I’m usually to lazy to read really deep and just play something that looks good. Even though i don’t see it that way, reading and tactical ability are my strong points and if i don’t use them, because i’m too lazy, my game will suffer.
But now i’m on christmas break and have lots of free time. Hopefully i will play some more games until this year is over.
Some statistics:In november i played 15-9, a winning percentage of 62,5%. In total i have played 245 games this year so far, with an overall winning percentage of 52,65%.
I doubt i can put that percentage up very much, too many months in summer, where i lost many games. I hope to at least play 5 more games so i can get at least 250 games.
This year was a hard year for me and my go. I had to go through some very painful months but i think the yunguseng overall helped me to improve. I probably still lack a lot of experience due to not playing as much but at least my opening has improved.
I’m optimistic for 2015
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