I'm new to both Go and this forum. I've been playing for a couple of weeks now, but only a week against humans, and it became clear that playing against bots is not a good idea =). By reviewing my games I see I make lots of mistakes, but some of them I cannot see how I could have done better at. If you could take a few moments to answer my questions regarding the game below, I would really appreciate it
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Mov. 5 = this was obviously not a good choice, he would always be one stone ahead of me there. What would have been better? My guess would be F6, E or F8, or H5 or 6. Would it be better to play more conservative with E8 or H6, or more agressive with F8 or H5? Or none of the above?
Mov. 19 = I thought the right thing to do was to start attacking somewhere else. Was it a good decision?
Mov. 20ff = I thought E3 would be the best answer against D3, but his play at F4 completely threw me off. I still cannot see a way to respond well to it. My best guess so far is G4...
Mov. 32 = I couldn't find a better answer than H3, although it sucked still.
Mov. 40ff - same thing. Couldn't find a better answer yet. If I had established an eye at D6 earlier, I could have played D9 on mov. 43. Maybe not having that eye was the biggest mistake overall.
Mov. 55ff - I could have taken some territory in the lower left corner I guess. Oh well.
Many thanks!
[admin] Moved to appropriate forum. -JB [/admin]
: No, after 
it is a false eye (and the group is dead) regardless of what black does. (There are two sensible-looking moves for black - J4 and H4 - and both fail. Can you see why? Hint for the sequence played in game: notice that, after 
, your stone at J4 is in atari!)
: Actually, I prefer B2 to all of those moves. As Bill said, try to focus on key points for both sides. B2 is at the 'boundary' of a black group and a white group. Pushing at boundaries gives you territory and extra eyespace. (Notice that white played at B2 soon afterwards.)
: In both of your variations, you lose the three stones at the top. (In variation 2, white can recapture. This is called a snapback, if you're interested.) More importantly, A7 is an urgent move for both sides - if black gets it, the black group lives; if white gets it, the black group dies.