If you can turn of the marker of your opponent's previous move I think you will play a lot better.

I'll defer to you Knotwilg. Your reviews are always interesting. And I am quite busy these days. Still, I reserve the right to throw a jab or two.



Good point. I have a bit to say along those lines, too.



From what I hear, one time when Cho Chikun visited the San Francisco go club, he played some simultaneous games in the afternoon. Then they took him to dinner at a local Korean restaurant, where he got soused. All that did was to release his inhibitions, and he crushed all comers in the evening. Maybe Ian could have used some alcohol.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Okay I'll try to review it. Either later today or tomorrow.
I think you brought up some very to-the-bone comments, knotwilg. For which I'm thankful.



I think this might've been at play subconsciously. I've been studying hard and I love go theory. My theoretical knowledge probably outweighs my playing strength by quite some margin. During games I never seem to put in practice all what I know in theory. I think you're spot on with this observation.



That is indeed the question, what can I do against it? I think part of the problem is the above: I know correct answers to correct moves, but when my opponent throws me weird moves, I don't have the actual skill to make it work against him (yet). My close contact fighting is pretty lousy, too.

Game conditions:
- it's on PC, which doesn't bring out my best reading.
- I think we both spend about 15-20 mins on this game. So fairly fast, yes.
- I never drink alcohol.
- I had played this particular player before and it was a game like this, too. I wanted to desperately avoid it, this time. So I wasn't feeling relaxed at all, I was a bit nervous and eager to avoid such a game.

So I think it's a combination of my mental state (halfway through the game I was already not myself, so that's not really me playing) and my actual Go skill, which is lower than my Go theory.

What can I do? I think patience is perhaps the only course. I can study hard and study for hours, but I think my brains need more time to process everything I study. It looks like Go isn't something that you can put theory into practise instantly. Maybe it's best to compare to learning a language and so far I've learned 1000 new words, but my grammar is pretty bad and I can't pronounce the words yet. So if I speak to a native I start wondering where all my studying went.
Despite what I wrote earlier (enough go for today) I actually spend some time playing Igowin (close combat training) and playing Leela. It calms me down a bit. Against Igowin I'm doing okay, going between me playing white and me playing black. Against Leela I did dreadfully today. I guess I was still a bit "thrown off my game".


Anyhow, thanks for your support, it really helps me. I shouldn't be frustrated at Go, but rather enjoy it (which I mostly do, it's just that some games are, you know...). I want to improve too fast and get frustrated when I still play moves "I shouldn't still play". Rather I should accept that improvement comes naturally and on its own time. Better to enjoy the ride because if I don't, I should stop playing Go immediately.

Ups and downs , I guess. I'm probably not alone in that

I would not describe your play that way. You recognize as a slow play, for instance. You may not have made the best reply, but is not bad, especially at your level. You also recognized as another slow play. But then you blocked it with . Doing so turned a slow gote into a sente. was self-punishing. All you had to do was ignore it. You did not have to do anything to punish it. Just play your own game.

More about self-punishing play. invaded your moyo. Yeah, you made some mistakes in you attack, but you're not a dan player yet. was nice. After Black has made a group with 26 stones and 2 points of territory. (Your corner is weak, but let's ignore that fact. Neither of you saw that until later. ) Even though he managed to live, Black's play has been terribly inefficient. Suppose that the game lasted 260 moves and he played as inefficiently for the whole game, he would have played 130 stones and made 10 pts. of territory.

Again, you do not have to punish plodding play. It is self-punishing.



Excellent observation.

Your opponent makes these plodding plays, and yet is almost as good as you. How come? Because he is relatively good at fighting and tactics. At the end of the game he delivered the coup de grace to your top left corner. Very impressive for a DDK! You can learn from him.

You can also learn from Bruce Wilcox's Contact Fights. I think it's still available online. I have only heard good things about it. Here is the SL page about it: https://senseis.xmp.net/?GoDojo

For inspiration you might enjoy my pages about Spightonians. https://senseis.xmp.net/?BillSpight%2FB ... sePatterns

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Let me be a bit severe here: if you really know the foundation for the "correct" moves, you can punish the bad moves. Otherwise you're probably going through the motions of good play, without knowing why it is good.



Let's focus on the last part: you are sensitive to the opponent's personality. We cannot change this, this is who you are, but we can use this to your advantage, instead of your disadvantage. And we can also reduce the impact of it, by concentrating on other things.



Like you I (and many others) somehow find it less stressful to play a bot than a human. I think this shows we have a strong ego and we do "play the opponent" instead of "playing the board". Like I said, we can use this to our advantage, when aware of it.

There are a couple of experiments we can try here:

1. Cold Turkey - after doing the review, challenge that awful player for a rematch. You will have studied his strengths and weaknesses and can prepare a strategy to beat him.
2. Awareness training - in your next game, if the opponent does something that throws you off, think of this conversation. "Aha! I'm thrown off here". Any psychological advance starts with recognizing the situation (and step 2: welcoming it). Just continue to be aware and acknowledge the emotion.
3. Denial - in your next game, pretend the opponent is a bot, who has no emotions, no trickery, no plan other than playing the best moves it calculates. This can be a fun experiment, but I don't recommend it as a gaming strategy, because it disregards your temperament, which seems to be emotionally engaged.

One thing that often happens for "book learners" like you and me is that we have learned how to respond well to good moves, but not how to respond well to bad moves. Bad moves have the disadvantage (for your opponent) of being bad, but they have the advantage of throwing you off because they're not in that easy-look-up pattern dictionary you've accumulated in your head.

In general when this happens I need to slow down and really engage the conscious part of my brain that performs reading and does careful whole-board evaluation. The game has turned away from the nice trails through the forest and you're now fighting your way through the bushes, which requires slightly different skills. The good news is that playing these sorts of games lets you accumulate some of the "punish bad play" patterns you've been lacking.

I also cannot emphasize enough Bill Spight's point that a lot of bad moves are self-punishing. Whenever your opponent makes a play that seems wrong, ask yourself whether it is wrong because it has some refutation, or whether it's wrong just because it's small (say). Not all errors have to be pounced on.

Okay. A new day, a new chance. After a good night's sleep, I realize I had a real off-day yesterday and I'm feeling already much better today, even about the game I played. It's still an ugly game to my eye, but I see now how valuable it can be for me to learn from. Games like that especially should be interesting to me to learn how to deal with. I'll never get to be a strong(er) player if I can't handle all kinds of situations at least moderately well.

So, I did some analysis on the game. Not move by move, but the beginning and some key points. The review is added at the bottom of my post.
Main points were (I believe)

- Being too intimidated and not exploiting my opponent's weaknesses. (Being "under attack")
- Not seeing that corner. But that is hard to see. Very hard, I think. (at least for me)
- Playing my opponent's game, and not my own. (when I did play my own game somewhere halfway the game, I made up a lot of ground)


I've heard this tip before. I'm going to purchase it, now. I think it'll really help my game develop.


Awesome! I'm reading these later today!



I don't think it necessarily translate to a matter of ego (though for sure there's some part of it at play), rather some things that are different between a bot and a player:
- you can play a bit 10 times in a row, he won't care, you're not wasting his time.
- Leela is much stronger than me and I like to play strong players who give me hell. It helps me to know that if I can ever defend/attack Leela, I can probably do it rather well.

But, like you said, ego might and probably is still a part of it. Even though I've consistently worked on "killing" that ego the past few years, it's still part of me and it's good to be aware of it, so I can work on it.

I think the awareness training is my kind of method. Now that the emotions have gone, I see the game in a different light already. If I can keep my emotions under control when it happens again, I'll have no problems (not saying I'll win, but I mean I won't go crazy).
The other two methods might be good, but suit me less. First one perhaps. The third one is not so interesting. Go is about people and I should always recognize that. And rather than see an opponent that annoys me, I should see him as one who challenges me out my comfort zone and stimulates me to come up with moves I ordinarily wouldn't play.



I think it's more like dfan says.
Also, if his "bad moves" were not contact moves, I'd probably deal with them a lot better. The fact that they are contact/fighting moves, probably has more relevance than anything.
But as far as contact moves go, you are right, I should know the reason why a particular move is played.



That's actually great advice. It does feel like fighting through the bushes. Very uncomfortable for me, but perhaps these are the games I need to playing more than anything else, in that case.


Thanks everyone for your advice!

Because of limited time today and tomorrow (broken boiler + family business) I've just played a small Go variant against Leela, which I read about yesterday. Give myself 17 handicap stones and try to kill any white stone that comes on the board.
Leela made it difficult by going for a 3-3 invasion immediately. I had to be creative to try to kill it. In the end, I think I played well and came close, but Leela outsmarted me (well, she can calculate 100 000 games, I can only read out several moves )
But I think it was a good training and I made some nice moves.

If only I would not be lazy and read like this every game I play

(I stopped there because I have no more time and I "failed" in the game anyway.

Especially moves 34 - 48 were great, always first option by Leela, too!

Very good self review. Now my final words on this game and your comments:

- Around 26 you spot the cut. Cut & Connect is the first principle in Go. Very important.
- At 48 you realize it is better to surround first and destroy eyes later. This is another important principle.
- At 70 you realize the importance of the ko and that a non-local threat won't matter
- Yet all is not lost: with 72 you play a fantastic attacking move
- However, at 80 you miss a killing opportunity, playing the first line descent. You play this move often and early, while it is rarely a good move.

If you can

- remember and apply the principles of cut & connect and surround & escape
- keep playing those great attacking moves like 72
- and unlearn the first line descent (to relearn later where it may be good)

then your rank will skyrocket

Here are some variations.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Great advice! Thanks a lot.
I'll definitely try to keep these comments in mind.
I played a serious game earlier today and tried to put them into practice, especially unlearn the 1st line descent. I did fairly well, I have self-reviewed the game move by move here!

It was also against a player to which I had already lost twice, but I went into the game with a calm head and it was a very fun game!

@Bill:
Wow, those variations are a bit outside my strength. But I'm getting closer, I think I did alright up until the point that Leela decided to kill me first

Please note the throw-in to reduce the size of the eye and to eliminate a potential eye point.

Also, the 2x3 eye shape in the corner is very often vulnerable.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

If Leela knew the rules of your game, she could have won at move 9 (b17) or move 16 (b19). She was trying to win a different game
Have you tried playing regular Go on a 9x9 board? That is great practice for fighting and reading, without much of an opening game.

Haha I know, that's what makes the game so funny, my opponent doesn't understand what I'm doing

Yeah I try to play at least 10 9x9 games a week against Igowin. Maybe it's not enough, though. I'm really not good at 9x9 and it's my least favorite dimension on a Go board.

Anyway, playing Igowin, I'm constantly changing between him playing black and me playing black. Igowin ranks me at around 8 kyu, but I don't think that has any meaning towards ranking on OGS, for example.

@Bill. Interesting fact about that corner space. Corners are weird creatures in Go. You never know if one is safe or not (well, you know, but I don't)

Wow. I just met Gerald Westhoff for a sunny afternoon Go playing and I really learned a lot. We played a game, where I got to look into his head for a bit (complex level of thinking in his Go game!) and I also showed him my two last Go games and we reviewed them a bit.
What a great day. Sunny and warm, three hours of Go in good company. What more do you want?

See http://www.h-eba.com/heba/JITEN/jiten1-1.html

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hey Ian

One interesting way of improving is trying to find mistakes in games by much higher ranked players. Other than the technical virtues it gives a boost in your self esteem: hey, I can find mistakes in dan player games!

Here's a game I played today, against a 1d bot, winning by 57,6 points. The bot made some mistakes and so did I.

No obligation here, but if you'd care to spot a few oddities in there, be my guest.

Cool, that's a nice exercise.
Sorry in advance if I spot things that aren't really things


Okay, a few observations from me:

makes black stronger. C4 was another possibility?
doesn't feel right. In fact that entire sequence of black running makes white way too strong and practically gives white the victory. Maybe that kick wasn't so bad after all
Black 155 connect after the peep?

I'd need to look at every move a lot closer to see any real mistakes, because this is above my level quite a bit
I have no time for that now, but I might come back to it later.
At first glance, I'd say black's biggest mistake was letting white just take the entire bottom. It gave white that bottom because it had a weak group it was running out and you profited quite a bit.

Never mind, we shouldn't spend too much time on each of these reviews, it's the experience that matters.

You said:

makes black stronger. C4 was another possibility? -- Well spotted! It certainly was on my radar. I wanted to play as actively as possible though.

doesn't feel right. In fact that entire sequence of black running makes white way too strong and practically gives white the victory. Maybe that kick wasn't so bad after all -- Yeah, Black didn't really try to enter that area, which was a strategic mistake.

For me, the biggest mistakes on either side:

White 88: it didn't have big consequences but I didn't read here at all. Luckly I could retract at 90 but making this kind of exchange is very bad.

Black 121: it took me a while to see where Black made the last mistake, but I think it was here. If he captures that 2nd line stone instead, all the bad aji is gone and I can no longer descend at the top in sente, to kill his group. But this is quite a tough move to discuss.

See you!

Yes, black 121 at B17 seems to be stronger than what was actually played! Black now survives in the corner (well, at least in my variations)


Anyway, yesterday was another great day. I played five consecutive games against my brother (who's a few ranks weaker than me, but still manages to put up a good fight often). Just a month ago, I always played a bit nervously against him, afraid to lose.
I've gotten rid of that fear now, though, and play very relaxed. I actually took these games as a time to experiment and have fun more.
I used the 3-3 double opening for the first time.
I made some experimental moves.

It was a lot of fun. And we both learned.