Je suis fatigué!

[tekesta]

Just now I played two games against "lechanteur" on KGS. In the first one I took 4 stones and lost by 33.5 pts. Missing White's play @ E10 was one of the things that set me back scorewise. In the second one I took 5 stones and won by 3.5 pts., even though White got to connect his dead group in the center to a living one in the upper right corner, as consequence of a ko. I even thought I lost the game! In both games I was sweating at the brow, especially the second one; I played jôseki on all 4 corners and was able to enclose the center. That's when things got interesting.

The first game.



The second game.



"Lechanteur" appears to be a nice guy and just strong enough to give me a challenge. I hope again to play against him soon

[amnal]

Some comments on the first game:



You would have won if you played the vital point to kill white's big group, but you were distracted first by following white elsewhere and later simply forgetting to read it. I'm sure you can find the vital point if it's just a life and death problem. Don't follow your opponent around! And don't believe them just because they think their group is safe.

[tekesta]

You would have won if you played the vital point to kill white's big group, but you were distracted first by following white elsewhere and later simply forgetting to read it. I'm sure you can find the vital point if it's just a life and death problem. Don't follow your opponent around! And don't believe them just because they think their group is safe.

Yea, there were more than a few missed opportunities. For example, the cleaver-5 White group in the lower right center could've been killed by a vital point placement, followed by eye-stealing tesuji to kill the second eye. I could've won the game just on that and linking my Black stones on the upper right to safety.

I've never played this guy before, so I was stymied by his way of playing, to say the least. I just need to relax and look carefully at the board.