Comment on the first game.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Approach
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$$ | . . . X . . . . . O . . . . . X . . . |
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$$ +---------------------------------------+[/go]

Another play to consider is an approach against the top right corner. Because is a large knight's approach, White does not have a severe pincer against it. looks at a slide to "a".

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Ah, I didn't see that. =)

My goal for this year is to improve by seven stones. At the moment I've improved in almost every aspect of the game except for reading. I played some chess the last few weeks, and it was a real eye opener as to aspects of Go that I really needed to brush up on. So now the plan is simply to do a lot of life and death problems, and I need to find some good collections.

Spending half an hour solving problems per day should make some kind of difference, and I'm now finally at a place in my life where it's actually possible to spend that much time on problems. Hopefully I won't slip up.

My recommendations:

Graded Go Problems for Beginners, volumes 2 and 3 (4 is aimed at high SDK).
1001 Life and Death Problems
Get Strong at Tesuji

Put them in a cycle, and reread each one 3 times.

_________________
Go Books

I have the 1001 book. I'm also considering Graded Go Problems, that really helped me when I played Go a few years back, back then I also felt that just by reading vol. 2 and 3 I was basically prepared to start going at vol. 4 straight away. It's amazing how much I've forgotten over the 3 years I didn't play.

Here's my latest game, it's also up on Gokibitz (here):

A few top of the head comments on your latest game.

This approach is fine, maybe best.

Better to extend on the top side, to make a framework ( ).

Better to play the kick at E-17 and then, assuming he stands at F-16, jump to D-14. Make territory while attacking.

Overplay, but that's how you learn.

The slide to S-04 is better.

Don't run. This threatens nothing.

Bats the air.

Excellent! Enlarges the White framework while reducing the Black framework. All is forgiven.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

You should read this out, but the group at the top is dead as it stands. Even if black tries to connect under, you can cause liberty problems, and there is not enough space to fit two real eyes in there.

You mean at the end of the game? Yeah, I meant to say that when I was too unconcentrated to be sure if the group was in fact dead (now I can see it plain and simple*), I should've played F19 instead of A11, because at the very least it makes sure beyond all doubt. On the other hand, I was too unconcentrated at the time to see that A11 was bad.

*) It's the second time I play Go after having had a cup of coffee, the effect on my reading ability is always horrible. It's kind of like the opposite of doping for me. Next time I will go with camomile tea.

A11 is fine, do you mean A10 (where you commented on it)?

At that point, playing F19 is effectively a pass that loses 1 point, because black's group is already dead. Not playing it is best. F19 isn't even a ko threat for black.