I've made some comments to the last game as well:

No offense, but are you sure you uploaded the correct SGF? That one appears to be without comments (the embedded and the attachment).

Hmm... I'm not sure what happened there, but I'll take a look and see if I can find the commented copy.

Another game - this time on OGS against a 6k - according to this that should be 4k or thereabouts on KGS maybe so.

Weee, I won! I felt my opponent was a bit unreasonable - but while I flailed around I at least made something while he squirmed and made no points, so even with my poor endgame he had no way to catch up. Ignoring my last move after which he resigned (it was a misclick on my part and a big gain for him - I intended to play d6) I know I made a lot of mistakes - and doubtlessly got away with stuff I shouldn't have either, so comments are very welcome. Especially the stuff I'm looking at - should I be able to kill his one-eyed stick there after he plays H5? How should I have handled his invasion into my large knight enclosure (should I just block at R17 instead? Also I think I could have garnered more profit after the cut at H12, either by capturing the cutting stones or making it so that I could capture his stick (if he say stubbornly extends down).

Here is the SGF:


I've also posted the game on GoKibitz https://gokibitz.com/kifu/VybFzCR5W

Today's game (though I hope to play a few more later today):
https://gokibitz.com/kifu/Vk0ky6XiW
I've added some thoughts on the game here - and I'm mostly curious about how I should have dealt with the upper right after I got cut off - and if I got away with murder or not.

I end up winning handily because I think my opponent overlooked that his lower right got cut off - after which I play kind of slack because I feel ahead (bad habit!))

Also, my "attack for profit" on his weak top group didn't really end up that well so again maybe I should have changed directions and targeted his right side group first.



Other things - I'm soon finishing Jump Level Up 4 - so just one more to go in that series and then I'm not sure, maybe "The Endgame" since I find it very difficult to think about and play properly when I'm in byoyomi.

Also, I'm soon hitting my 200th proper game (discounting silly computer blitz and smaller boards) - so yey, arbitrary milestone in 10 more games!

In this game I got a thick position, and my opponent played a lot of weird stuff (well weird to me anyway). And I had 2 great chances in this game to attack for profit or murder - his top group and his right side group were both not alive locally at one point, but I mishandled my attacks and wonder if there were any easier sequences or if I should have tried to cover them instead for profit and force them to live small?

In the endgame I bled away points and felt like I just followed my opponent around.

Anyway, this brings me to 5k so there's that, and I'm sorta on a roll with 4 consecutive wins now - so maybe I've improved - I certainly hope so!

So... I liked my position in both these games - but then I decide to blunder and throw it all away, so there's that. At least it makes me feel like I'm not doing all bad, it's just that I need to be consistent throughout the entire game...


This one felt close, but I liked my thickness and that I had some cash in the corners. Had I not blundered I'd have wanted to lean on his right side to build my center.


This game felt all but won, then I throw away everything and he wins with a handful of points. Lots of complications that I'm really not sure how I handled. I think I should have been able to do better given his tendency to (what I consider) overplay(?).

In the last game, after 172, the cut executed at 180 becomes posible.

It's not easy to see such threats but they can be game deciding.

In line with Knotwilg's comment below, I want to share some advice that I give anyone that I am teaching.

When I am playing and teaching, I often see my moves ignored by my opponent in two specific cases.
1) my move is seemingly defensive and gote
2) my move is played in a strange spot, aiming at something

Many players get into the habit of simply ignoring the moves that their opponents make when they do not make immediate sense. This works well enough until SKD, but when you become a low kyu/dan player, it's a very dangerous habit. Your opponent is striving very hard to make moves that will do something...anything, really, and that something either works or doesn't work.

I caution my students (and myself) to try to always keep two things in mind while playing.
A) Don't blindly follow your opponent.
B) And oh, by the way, don't ignore your opponents move simply because you are following A. Only tenuki if you've carefully considered the consequences. Gote and alive is often better than sente and screwed. - sounds like a quote from a famous pro heh

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Yeah, I've gotten lax I think - with hindsight the cut is obvious, but I guess I only did a very cursory glance and dismissed it - which is odd because like you say, if it doesn't allow for the cut then it is a strange aimless move that I should respect my opponent enough not to make. I'll blame too many blitz games where I play recklessly and carefree - which I think have helped me up my aggression in my normal games, but perhaps at the cost of patience. It's been my first run at trying blitz and it's been a lot of fun, but I guess I can see why people warn against playing too much of it.

Thanks for your comments =)

Finally it's my turn to turn the tables and win a lost (or at least very close) game!

So this game features me not knowing my tsumego or attack and defense directions, and my opponent giving me a million ways to practice these.

I've just had it reviewed by my teacher so I'm still mulling over parts of it but I'll post the uncommented game here. Interesting fact, it was also my 200th game of (19x19) Go! So, what, 800 more to go to shodan?

Ach, consolidating territory, or failing to. I feel I played very poorly at the beginning of the game, catching myself in "blitzing" - which I think shows in the result. And then in the late mid / early endgame I came apart when I tried too hard to consolidate my territory with some crude moves. And I couldn't find a way to turn the game while in my last byoyomi.

http://eidogo.com/#COOeejMO

I've posted a game I played on GoKibitz:
https://gokibitz.com/kifu/4k1g34Y2W

I haven't been playing much on KGS this week because of two things a) few opponents for 3-5k when I play and b) (stupid) rank anxiety that has been flaring up for some stupid reason (the cure is to lose a bunch and realise that it doesn't mean I can never improve despite of it).

Anyway, I'm reasonably happy with this game - but I don't think I adequately took profit from attacking - and maybe I gave him too much in the process of trying to harrass his group (paid of when I killed it, but I don't think I should have).

The SGF (I've done more comments over on Gokibitz):

Still on OGS - two games against the same player. One wherein I make a big reading mistake then go full tilt in the hope that he'll return the favour (he didn't and I knew what I was doing didn't work) and one where I made a better showing and win despite a few mess-ups near the end (though still comfortably ahead despite them).

For the first game, is the p5 hane an overplay or did I just follow it up wrong? I think instead of connecting Q2 I first atari his stone and maybe we exchange where I get a ponnuki on top and he on the bottom of the board? I think I expect too good results in situations like these because I've been taught that this kind of attachment is "bad" - but again, they aren't the "you lose now" kind of bad.

The second game I went over with Leela, just to see if it actually agreed that my position was good once I start running with my center group, and it does. I no doubt made a ton of mistakes because a lot of that sequence was played with only one 20 second period remaining so it felt really stressful heh.

Anyway, the games:

So, I've not been very good at posting here this week - and I haven't been playing any games on KGS except my regular monday teaching game. Instead what I've done is to go and play on IGS instead - mostly because there's a draught of 3-4k's who are playing (and will accept my game requests) when I'm online on KGS, but also because I wanted to shake of some of the rank anxiety / obsession that's been creeping up.

So far IGS has been good, and unlike on KGS I get games almost immediately though with less control (so I often end up against weaker players, but that has been educational as well, I really haven't played white enough because KGS will always make me black even when I request even games against those a rank or two stronger - probably because there's a setting I forget to fix).

Besides that I've also been reading here and looking over quite a few games on GoKibitz and from the KGS game archives (looking at the games of stronger players or people I know and try to see what they are doing and by extension what I'm not doing). I'm also wrapping up Jump Level Up 5 this weekend, after which I don't know where to go - very open to suggestions - I'm thinking Get Strong at Tesuji, The Endgame or re-doing / re-reading something I've done before (Attack and defense?).

I'm also going to try to up my number of games played since that's become very apparent looking at the archives of others, I don't play enough (volume wise). Many of those I've seen have played more games in September than I've played since June.

I'd also like an opinion on playing the KGS bots? Offline I've played some vs. Leela, but online I've stayed away from them, even those at or close to my rank, but does the MCTS bots have similar weaknesses as GnuGo - aka the same "artificialness" to their play? Are they perfectly valid to practice against as compared to human players? I'm probably swayed by a lot of the scepticism I've picked up on in regards to playing bots but I'd be happy to revisit the idea.

I'd highly recommend Get Strong at Tesuji, if you haven't read it before. I usually read 1001 L&D at the same time, simply so GSAT can break up the monotony of 1001. But GSAT is an excellent volume. If you're at 3-5k, you'll likely breeze through a good portion of the book, but even so, it'll be worth it.

For bots, tonight I played CrazyStone (DL version). It was enjoyable (though, I did continue my losing streak).

Have you considered joining Tygem? If you're on a mac/linux, there's instructions somewhere to install it. And you can play even games galore there, plenty of players. I'd recommend joining as a 3-4k. Like you mentioned in your post to me, it might help with rank anxiety, as its a new, anonymous account that you can just ditch whenever.

I haven't played the bots on KGS, so no advice there.

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Haven't read it, only read Tesuji (but did not complete all the problems at that point, just read through the examples and a cursory attempt at them) and of course the tesuji-problems given in Jump Level Up. I'm sceptical that I'll breeze through them heh, but it'll be good for me to try!

Yeah, got Tygem up and running (on a mac). The thing that bugs me the most is the hassle of extracting the SGFs for reviewing later (compared to the ease of KGS archives or IGS game records). But I guess it wouldn't hurt, do you find that they are more aggressive there? Fighting spirit is a weak point of mine after all.

How's 3-4k there? I'd be tempted to just start out as maybe 1d since I've heard of KGS 4k's OGS 6k's who are able to hold that rank (maybe in part due to the weird system they use) - and as long as it's easy to get games, losing against stronger players til my rank settles wouldn't be too bad heh.

Skip a few ranks. I'm 29-2 at 3d on tygem and have a hard time beating 1d at KGS

3-4k is relatively easy to beat if you're already 3-4k KGS, so yes, it's probably a good idea to start higher. 1d would be a good starting point, like Knotwilg says. Or just jump in at 3d and play strong players until you're close to the rank you should be.

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I enjoy playing the bots on KGS. They have some idiosyncratic play styles, but as long as you don't play ONLY the bots and develop your style to beat them I don't think they'll harm you any more than regularly playing the same 4k/5k opponent would. One caveat: don't play the bots that are weaker than you too much. They play noticeably worse moves and can make you lazy.

One nice thing about playing bots occasionally is that they make it easier to gauge gains / losses in strength. The funny thing is what a nonlinear process that is. There are weeks where go seems easy and neither humans not bots around my level seem like a challenge... and then I'll follow that up with an extended losing streak. My frame of mind has a tremendous impact on my actual playing strength.