You may want to try not playing for influence at all. Go for territory at every juncture. You may find you end up winning pretty consistently for a while, even. Eventually, though, you will come to a point where you start to struggle to counter your opponent's influence, and not just by living inside moyos. When that happens, then you will have a better idea how to use it, because you know what you're afraid of on the other side.

Well, I played 4-4 most of the time because I though learning to attack was one of the most vital things. But this approach seems interesting as well, I might give it a shot.

Haven't posted here for a while.

I tried playing for territory for a bit, but it wasn't for me, so back to the 4-4 stones .

Here is a recent game I played, I won by timeout, but I think it was more or less lost. My opponent got all 4 corners and way too much stones in the middle, so there must have been a big problem. I already went over the game, but can't quite pinpoint it.

Tenuki from the lower left is fine in many cases, but tenuki for this move in gote is kind of small. White already has an overwhelming presence on the left compared to black. You could consider trading C3 for J3 first, but you should probably look at approaching the top right corner to keep the game relatively balanced and simple.

This move is too early. You should be able to profit from attacking it.

Good.
Not so good, IMO. Maybe follow up with another knight's move at H12 to keep pressing black into your stones. It's worth thinking about G12, G13, and maybe H13 too, but you want to keep black confined against your group, not force him into the center where he can remove the pressure on his group.

This is a bit wishy washy. At least hane. When you push for a move, and then hane, black is stronger and can deal with it better.

High is for special situations only. What are you worried about if you play the knight's move approach? On a broader level, can you continue your attack profitably instead? Would it be better to approach on the right side and leave black with a small corner?

This is aggressive. There's aji for white to live in the corner without this, so black should reinforce in some way. On the other hand, maybe you want to invade later and should leave this open?

I think I would prefer jumping to P12 or the like directly. Then you can still invade the corner if black doesn't reinforce it, or leave with sente to deal with the bottom.

This is a big move, but it's also a move that says "I've won with this and don't need to attack your group." To stay in the game, you need to figure out how to make points by beating up black's center group here.

Under normal circumstances, this is a good move, but white's already behind and can't afford to play this way. Once black takes sente to settle the center group, white's behind on points without a clear way to catch up.

This is a shape point, but it's not the right time to hit it. Black doesn't need to make eyes if he can connect out on two sides, and black has decent eyeshape anyways. Plus, it's easy for this stone to come under attack. You could consider F12.

Great idea.

:w108: F12 works even better now.

All in all, at the end, assuming the bottom group lives, white's not doing too terribly.

I'd be curious to see your 'territorial' games. Why did you get slaughtered? Might be good to find out what didn't work and why.

Thanks for the input, some thoughts on the comments:

: I wanted to try this. I think bat mentioned in one of his lectures that taking the 3-3 in this joseki can be a little slow, and I think I've seen this move in one or two of lee chan-ho's games

: Now that you mention this it makes me want to flip a table. I don't know how many times I have read already to push against your strength, but for some reason my subconciousness does not want to comply.

: Mostly the attachment on top, I only know one joseki for this, and it would leave me overconcentrated(at least that's what I felt).

: Aggressive was maybe nicely worded =). Considering there is still a corner left to approach this just looks plain stupid now that I look at it.


On the territorial games: I only played a few, but they really felt off. I don't think I lost them all, but all left me uneasy, mainly because I like having big prospects and I like chasing more then running away . I'm probably to weak to be concerned about style anyways and should focus more on finding the right region of the board to play.

Style is something you see in a player based on their choices when given two or more options that are quite playable. When the options aren't equally playable, you're not looking at style, you're looking at whether the player picked the right move or not. Until you're at the point where you pick a right move just about every move, it's not worth worrying about style, because you don't have style, just poor judgement. Playing from vaguely near the shodan barrier, I certainly know I don't have a style, apart from going on a tilt after I put myself in a bad situation (very frequent), and I'd argue most people on this forum are not strong enough to have a developed style.

Two newborns probably have different personalities, but due to a lack of ways they can express themselves, mostly due a minute understanding of the world-- babies express themselves at first mainly by crying, smiling and laughing-- it is hard for people outside the family to see this personality difference. When a baby becomes a toddler, she/he gains more knowledge oshe to express herself, so you can see the different personabilities much clearer. However, this is not the exact and same personality she or he had when a newborn. The very knowledge that helps her or he to be more expressive slightly changed/tweaked the personality. It also develops the personality into a more complex form, so when this process repeats itself every year you grow, the differences in personality become cleare exponentially. Now replace personality with style (in Go)

I just looked at the major points, not extremely detailed

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Thanks for the hints.

One question about the peep at G12: What exactly does it do for me? I've looked at it for quite some time, but I can't find any real meaning besides maybe preventing eyes in that region in the future for a group that is pretty much out anyways.

The peep at G12 does nothing for you, unless the group is already surrounded and this becomes a killing move. Until then, it is aji-keshi and a bad exchange. Depending on later developments, you might well prefer to play F12 or G13, threatening two cuts. In the meantime, you would not really be upset if B spent a move defending here in gote. The situation would be different if this peep destroyed and eye and you could anticipate a profitable attack, but here B is happy to run into the center, making useful center thickness, and there is no significant attack.

So, this game was weird. I felt like I had the initiative for most of the time, but still ended up short on points. My endgame was super sloppy, but I think I made some bigger mistakes before that, or otherwise the score difference wouldn't haven been this big.
All help is welcome

Highlights of the game

cutting yourself
cutting the opponent on too small a scale, rendering your original thickness inefficient
:b109: the ko was well crafted but ending it with 16 points was actually too small

:b127: The real highlight of the game. This blasting placement of a move is capable of killing the whole White bottom. From 135 to 151 you keep missing chances to kill the group and at 152 it is alive while it should never have been.

:b183: missed chance to kill the centre, though there might be bad aji against your top left

See commentary below.

Thanks for the help. Seems like its the same old problenms, Joseki deviations by my opponent, not optimal attacks and reading mistakes.



Maybe its time to do some more problems. I've been doing about 12 from Get strong at tesuji and one page from cho's elementary per day, but it seems like an hour of tsumego every day could really benefit my game

I can recommend http://www.hitachi.co.jp/Sp/tsumego/past/index-e.html

A daily expanded resource of high quality problems, going back almost 20 years.

In the meantime also gogameguru.com is building up a treasure of weekly problems (127 triplets to date).

Both collections are high quality problems by a 8d ama and 5d ama/8d pro respectively.

Enjoy.

Thanks a lot.

I think I'll try to finish the ones I mentione first, but those look really nice and I'll probably do them afterwards.

Though at this rate its probably more about the volume than what I do, ~30 problems a day just doesn't give me the rate of improvement that I would like.

New game, new loss.

Even game against a 7k and it was close, but I think it was more then winnable and I'm not really sure where I messed up.

Comments highly appreciated.

White 12 is kind of weird, but in my mind, if he had extended 3 spaces I would've played something like

W R10
B R11
W P10
B F17
W C14 (Hopesuji)
B K16

A few quick comments:

H16/H17 is a key point, and it's painful when white gets it.

With R11, you are attacking white, not the other way around. The keima is pretty aggressive as a response, and you may be able to cause trouble.

D11 feels premature.

Once you build the central wall, you are the strong one, not white. Don't let him bully you around but look for ways to counterattack.

On black's move 131: Kill white group without ko and take around 30 points of cash . This should be rather easy, but it's important to spot it during a game.

pak0, Schawipp beat me to it and I was going to offer it as a challenge for you, so let me phrase it the way I wanted to:

As usual I browsed through the game to find the major issues and find the highlight of the game. I kept browsing and browsing and ... browsing. I was really impressed. Only by move 83 I found something to say but then the situation restored itself and I kept browsing and browsing.

You played a very very good opening and middle game, playing calm moves, playing technically sound moves, resisting when it was appropriate, playing elsewhere when appropriate, playing carefully when appropriate and playing ambitiously when appropriate. It is this way, by playing normal, good moves, that one becomes a dan player fast and you can be very proud of it.

So I leave it to you to find that single highlight of the game, which is, as usual, a life & death issue, where you could have clinched the victory (well, schawipp gave the hint; still, find the better move).

Then I will add a full review. You should really take that review as comments on a more subtle level than the kind of comments I gave before. This is a reference game for you. Never mind the 4,5 point loss. Play this way (and take the odd chance to kill the opponent) and you will win many more games.

Congratulations.

Now that you said it, it took me like 3 seconds over breakfast to figure out that S9 does it.

@Abyssinica:
I've never heard of that attachment. If I were to play a move there I think I would have gone for R12. Still, I'll keep it in mind.

@skydyr:
H16/17: I'll consider the hane next time. During the game I felt like I got a good result after D11 and I wasn't sure if I can hane safely because the push at E17 is still there for white. On the other hand there isn't a lot of potential on the top for him, so I was less scared of his hane there.

R11: Do you have a suggestion for a followup for black? I think at that stage of the game taking cash should have been the win for me(provided I don't fail to kill the invasion there^^) so I wasn't looking to hard, but even now I have trouble to find a satisfying move. Q9 looks natural, but it seems to go into a hard fight.

@Knotwilg: Thanks. I actually really liked the way I played during that game(doesn't happen too often) but that makes the loss sting a little bit more, even if the guy was a couple of stones stronger then me.