I noticed in my malkovich game with Topazg that I am not always confident of my assesment of trades and urgent points, even if I am in the right. Even though I know on one level that I took one and my opponent took the other, and I judged the one I took to be more important, seeing that other move hurts and leaves me feeling I misplayed.

I think that confidence plays a large part in playing well. When I am on the up side of my game, I don't sit and evaluate trades for very long, or prevaricate over them. I know that my opponent is giving me exactly what I want and that he is taking the worse option. That 3rd line territory for a wall? My half was better. That 30 point corner I gave up? That result is going to lose them the game. I think this comes out well because I don't play halfway moves, or lose sente by going back to fix in a panic, destroying the meaning of the original move I made. So long as I am confident I made a good exchange, I also don't panic about my opponents moyos, because I got enough in exchange and can calmly reduce them instead of invading rashly.

Another thing that I've been thinking about, but which that malkovich game really drove home for me, is that there is no territory without a fight. I've also been concentrating on keeping the corner open for invasion when I play around a 4-4 stone (perhaps too much), which is a way of playing to that idea.

For your amusement regarding the last idea, I'm including a game I played about a month ago to drive home the point. Almost all areas of the board were exchanged at least once, and there is absolutely no way I should have been able to win like I did.

Hey Skydyr! I just wanted to say that I've read your journal with a lot of pleasure. You seem to have a very good relationship with Go. It's strange to read you've got online anxiety though, you were so spontaneous when I first met you on KGS! Would it help if we played some games online?

Regarding online go anxiety, I think it has to do with playing people I don't know from anywhere else in particular. Now as I'm thinking about it, I think when I first started playing it was playing with a clock that made me anxious, because I took a lot of time. If I played someone I knew, I could play with time settings that worked for me, but if it was against someone random, it would often be on their terms and then I'd get in a crunch.

Even these days, I go on KGS fairly frequently, but when I go on, I'm much more likely to talk to people I know and go over their games, or look at the beginner's room and review a game for people than I am to play. Part of that is because it's harder to get a lot of time when I'm in a good state of mind to play and I can expect to not be interrupted by the dog, my wife, etc.

The word on the street, by which I mean according to the really strong players at my club, I don't attack enough or try to kill hard enough, and play too peacefully. I think this is why I feel like I've been slumping of late.

There's a tournament coming up this saturday that I intend to enter, the local Slate and Shell open. I think I will try and play more actively there and see how I do.

Last week I played three rounds of the tournament, going 2-1. The last game I played in a manner I wasn't satisfied with, but I don't recall it well enough to post here as I developed a splitting headache in the middle and took a bye for the last round to go home and take something.

Come Monday, I was told I had done well enough to win a book, and picked up The Go Consultants. I must say, I highly recommend this book. It gives a very good idea of the sorts of moves professionals are considering, and why they choose one move over another. The other part I found incredibly validating was the description of the shock and trepidation they seems to feel when one team tenukis earlier than they thought, or plays a move overlooked, or gets to one of a couple miai points first. It's nice to know that the intense feelings of disappointment I feel at not getting somewhere first or missing something aren't there just because I'm not good enough, but rather because I play go, and that they can come at every level.

This is a game I played on OGS in november and december. I tried it as an experiment in reduction, and thought I was doing fairly well until I made a couple endgame misreads. Would someone care to comment on the game? I'm particularly interested in what people thought of my response to white's original reduction move in the top right (Move 54) and my invasion of the left side.

Here's a 13x13 game I lost on OGS today:



I think I know what I did wrong.

At move 46 you could also try to play calm, e. g.:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wm46
$$ -----------------------------
$$| . X . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$| . . . X X O . . . . . . . |
$$| . X X X O . . . X X P . . |
$$| . X O O . O . . . X . . . |
$$| . O . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$| . . O . . . . . . X . . . |
$$| . O . . . . . 7 . . . . . |
$$| X O O X . . . . . . . 6 4 |
$$| . X X O O . . . X X X 2 3 |
$$| . . . X O . X X X O O 1 5 |
$$| . . X X O . O O O . . . . |
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$---------------[/go]

By this way you can sacrifice L11 (B on L9 in move 49 was too easy, after 49 on L10 it would be difficult for L11 to survive) and still have good chances of winning just by territory.

I considered something like your 46, but decided I may as well make what I could of the aji from the corner stone, as I probed there initially instead of taking a bite out of the corner, and the corner is more secure than the side. I am not sure what you mean by the comment about as there is a white stone on L10?

Well, I thought that black can treat the invading white stones more severely, e. g. after

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wm46
$$ ----------------
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . 5 6 . |
$$ . . X X O 4 . |
$$ . . . X 2 1 . |
$$ . . . . . 3 . |
$$ . . . X . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |[/go]

it looks difficult for w. However in another sequence...

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wm46
$$ ----------------
$$ . . . . 7 a . |
$$ . . 6 5 . 8 9 |
$$ . . X X O 3 . |
$$ . . . X 2 1 b |
$$ . . . . . 4 . |
$$ . . . X . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |[/go]

... a and b are miai for life. I am not perfectly sure about the status of the white invading stone (maybe someone stronger knows...?), but I think the black move 47 (not 49, which I mis-typed in my last comment) was too soft.

I feel like lately, I've gotten to a point where in my games, things are a lot tighter, in the sense of walking the line between disaster and success much more closely. There is a strong move to be played, that I think of almost immediately, but it doesn't win outright, or can make everything more precarious in the name of getting a good result. When I read it out and see that the result is precarious as far as I read, I start looking at other moves which lead to more stable positions, and often make these plays instead. In exchange, though, I take an inferior result which puts me somewhat behind, or doesn't quite work, because I was afraid of the real move, or didn't judge it correctly.

Of course, for the past while, I've often played in a way to complicate even when I didn't need to, so there's a balance to be found. I'll try and post some games where I see this happening, but quite often they are in person and unrecorded long enough that I forget them to some degree. Does this make sense to you stronger (dan level) players out there, and what did you do to break past it?

I recently finished this game, and despite a couple of misreads, think I did pretty well. I really enjoyed the situation in the bottom left later in the game, so I'm posting it here to show it to everyone.

Success! I beat a local AGA 5d last night with 5 stones, though I got a bit lucky in parts. I've included the game below, which has some branches where I am remembering the order a little oddly, since it was last night, but the gist of the game is there.

We went over it afterwards, and I've included some of the comments, but more are always welcome.

This is a game I played recently on OGS and lost horribly. I'm not certain exactly where I went wrong, so comments would be greatly appreciated. I've included some notes in the SGF.

I like this willow way, for overall progression strategy in things.

Honestly, I was started reading this journal, and it looked a lot like my adventure with the game. I learned go, played some games for a few months, then came back years later.

I also became stronger without expecting it, from different sources. But also many years have passed without play.

I hope you become shodan and progress beyond.

I'm not sure it's the best strategy, but it seems like as good a one as any. I think that, so long as you are thinking about go, you don't need to play too much to get better, up to a point.

A week ago, roughly, I played in the NOVA Chinese New Year tournament as a 3k and did quite well, at 4-0. Unfortunately, the time limits are such that it is hard for me to record the games, and after 4 of them, they all jumble together a bit, but I can describe a few of them a bit, at least:

In my first game, I took white with no komi and won by about 10-15 on the board. Don't recall a lot of specifics, though.

In my second game, I played against someone I've played several times in tournaments before, with 2 stones. In our previous tournament game, I'd taken 3 stones and lost by 3 points or so after I inexplicably made too large an extension with a weak group and lost it, though I got compensation on the outside. This game, I approached a 3-4 stone, made a moyo following an inside small knight's approach, two space high pincer, take the corner. Beat up on an invasion a bit to devalue the side while I built strength and took sente. My opponent took another corner and invaded the other side and I beat up on that making points on both sides until I won with strong endgame, by about 10 again.

The third game, I played with 3 stones against someone who later said they had never played against handicap like that. They played too aggressively and I killed a group, cut, killed another in a semeai and maybe a third while I claimed more than half the board.

The fourth game is the one I want to talk about, though. It was, in my opinion, a decidedly low quality game on my part. I was exhausted from the previous three games, and started misplaying right away. I had 3 stones handicap. I approached his 3-4 high, went into a magic sword variant which I misplayed and ended with a sealed but alive group and a few forcing moves on the outside facing one of my hoshi stones. He extended from the wall, so I kicked and fought, intending to sacrifice those forcing moves for a better bottom position. Then I played some early endgame moves in sente, and took the bottom star point behind the wall. He approached the bottom right star point on the inside, so I kicked, he extended, I jumped, and he played the 2-10 move. I don't think I dealt with it in the best way, because I didn't make that many solid gains, and ended in gote with ugly shape. He approached my UR star point on the right, so I defended with the small knight's move since his wall was close. He then approached my corner group with a small knight's move, so I kicked (probably bad) and one-space pincered his UR corner approach stone. There followed a sequence where I desperately lived in the center while conceding a lot, got a picnic ko on an edge hane on the top side, lost the ko to reduce the center, played endgame, and then had him start a ko against the UR corner based on the previous one where I traded the corner for a large group of stones in the bottom right. Then a bit later he played a hane-connect on the right side, only in between my responding to the hane and his connecting, I forgot I needed to fix that, and played a nearby atari. So he took my stone, and I played a few stones to try and keep him from living on the right and saving the traded-for group. At this point, he counted, and counted, and kept seeing the score as dead even, so instead of responding to my original atari and taking his gain, he chose to save the dead stones and fight a semeai against the dead corner group. In the ensuing fight, I failed to notice that he hadn't had time to disconnect my corner from my living stones, played to get an eye in the corner, after which he cut me fully. I was quite lucky that I won the semeai by a few moves, and thus the game, but it seemed like pure luck. I was convinced I had thrown away the game with the hane-connect error.

What I would really like to figure out, though, after all of this, is how to keep myself from falling into that low-quality state, where it's too difficult to read and every senteish move must be responded to. I know a lot of people seem to get it after lunch, but do you all have any tips or suggestions?

Congratulations on your great tournament performance! 4-0 is more than "quite well", which sounds more like an understatement to me. Anyways, your games sound like real thrillers, I really enjoyed your writing about them! The last game especially sounds like it would make a good movie. And luck is at least at amateuer level a part of the game, sometimes in one's favour and sometimes not. In the end, everything kind of balances itself out.

On your question: I know this feeling all too well, it comes to me many times right before the start of the third round on saturday evenings or on sunday after having had a short night (which is not that unusual when playing a tournament). What helped me this weekend was either getting in a little "nap" (I don't really sleep, I just close my eyes and try to relax for maybe 10 minutes) or taking a little walk outside if the weather is nice - like in that saying "After dinner rest a while, after supper walk a mile!". I found that to be a good tip. But I'm also curious to read what others suggest.

_________________

Well, it was a kind of odd tournament, results-wise. I went 4-0, as mentioned, but so did four other people, in a field of about 26 or 27, and I don't feel like I really deserved the last win.

Quite well seems like a bit of an understatement after winning 4-0...



The million dollar question. All I can say is that trying to brute force willpower your way through it is probably not going to work, and that you just need to accept that your brain needs rest. I've noticed that at the conservatoire where I study the best musicians seem to take lots of brakes to the extent that I initially thought they were quite lazy, and I wonder if this is a two way thing. It's easy to see that they need to take regular breaks because it's not possible to maintain a high level of concentration for an extended period of time, but perhaps they're so good at reaching that level of concentration because they always take breaks when they need it and so are also practicing this deep concentration every time they practice their instruments.

Edit: +1 to napping as well. We were actually told when we first arrived that we should all learn to power nap. XD