Abyssinica's Study Journal

[Abyssinica]

I am white - towards the very end after white 110 I do really really REALLY dumb things. Until then, I'm proud of my game somewhat.

http://eidogo.com/#4lCLlgXsJ

This is against the same person I played in http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10542 about one month ago.

Check the second variation because I messed up black 1.

Every move I make that I immediately think "What was I thinking!?" after playing it is marked with an A.
The marked triangled stone I made after a few minutes of thinking - I wanted to defend my group since it didn't have two literal eyes and was behind black's sector line. I can attempt to be patient about gaining profit, but the rest of my play in the game is a lot more profit oriented than usual.

White 110 is really unfortunate since I was looking at R16, but thought I'd cut and see what happens and subsequently go full retard.


Instead of white D2, I could possibly concentrate on, you know, letting my top left corner not get sealed in...

[Bill Spight]

Even against a 3k (He is white with komi) W+10.5

This is fine since he is 3k and I made bad endgame decisions; I'm glad to have it close

Even against a 4k - I'm not paying attention and I should've connected something rather than deny him an eye and then have him live. This is before 50 moves in the game and he would have a 1 or no eyes 10-20 stone group that had to run. But I don't pay attention and he is just fine and now I am the one with the weak group and I resign later on.

Even against a 6k - I win comfortably.

Even against a 5k - Entering late endgame with a 20 point lead. I even say to myself that I should win if I don't do something stupid and die. I see a chance to trade 4 of my stones for 5 of his, so I take it. Too bad I completely missed the part where he falsified the eye of my group because of that and HE ends up with the 20 point lead.


Why are mistakes in Go like this so much harder to take well than anything else.

(Emphasis added.)

Simple. You are not playing up to yourself. As bridge great Terence Reese said, someone who plays up to himself is hard to beat.

[Abyssinica]

(Emphasis added.)

Simple. You are not playing up to yourself. As bridge great Terence Reese said, someone who plays up to himself is hard to beat.

I might be a native English speaker, but I can't tell exactly what "Playing up to yourself" means - when I google it all the results are for people asking what does "Play with yourself" mean.

[EdLee]

Even against a 4k - I'm not paying attention

I think, and Bill please correct me if I'm wrong, he means you are not playing at your true level.
See his emphasis on your quote.

However, my take is slightly different: I think you are playing at your true level.
"Not paying attention" enough is part of your current level.
If you can consistently fix this attention problem, then you will have improved,
and you will have moved on to another level -- but that's not your current level;
that will be your future level, if you work on it.

[Abyssinica]

Even against a 4k - I'm not paying attention

I think, and Bill please correct me if I'm wrong, he means you are not playing at your true level.
See his emphasis on your quote.

However, my take is slightly different: I think you are playing at your true level.
"Not paying attention" enough is part of your current level.
If you can consistently fix this attention problem, then you will have improved,
and you will have moved on to another level -- but that's not your current level;
that will be your future level, if you work on it.

I completely agree. Let me share a quote from one of my friends:

Obvious blunders like missing a big atari happen and there's nothing you can do. Concentration fails. It doesn't affect your strength.

It's the blunders you don't know you made that are the problem...

I disagreed and said that blunders are are part of your strength and reducing the blunder rate is a factor of naturally getting stronger.

[EdLee]

I disagreed and said that blunders are are part of your strength and reducing the blunder rate is a factor of naturally getting stronger.

Right. Of course, even 9p's make self-ataris. They're just super rare. It means we are only human, after all.

But if we are constantly making silly mistakes, that's our level.

[Bill Spight]

Even against a 4k - I'm not paying attention

I think, and Bill please correct me if I'm wrong, he means you are not playing at your true level.
See his emphasis on your quote.

However, my take is slightly different: I think you are playing at your true level.
"Not paying attention" enough is part of your current level.
If you can consistently fix this attention problem, then you will have improved,
and you will have moved on to another level -- but that's not your current level;
that will be your future level, if you work on it.

I completely agree. Let me share a quote from one of my friends:

Obvious blunders like missing a big atari happen and there's nothing you can do. Concentration fails. It doesn't affect your strength.

It's the blunders you don't know you made that are the problem...

I disagreed and said that blunders are are part of your strength and reducing the blunder rate is a factor of naturally getting stronger.

Playing up to yourself doesn't mean avoiding mistakes that you know not to make. As you say, that happens. Golf great Gene Sarazen said that he knew that he would make two bad shots per round, so if he made one, it didn't bother him. But it certainly would have bothered him if he had made four bad shots in a round. He would not have been playing up to himself. Go is a game of endurance. If you try to play at 100% of your capacity all the time, you are setting yourself up to make blunders when you cannot keep up the pace. Playing up to yourself means finding and playing within your zone of competence, so that you do not make too many blunders, because you do not play in ways that cause you to make blunders. It means seeing a false eye because you are looking for false eyes. It means paying attention. Even a 30 kyu can pay attention. It means deciding upon a play before you make it. It means not dithering. I have told the story a few times about the Korean 5 dan who visited our club and remarked about some players who were around 7 kyu, "Why are they taking so long when they have nothing to think about?" That remark was a bit unkind, but at best they were wasting time and energy trying to read out positions that were beyond their capacity to read out, instead of taking a reasonable amount of time and effort to think and then using their judgement to decide upon a play. That is the kind of thing that leads to later blunders.

If you are making errors that you kick yourself about, that is prima facie evidence that you are not playing up to yourself.

[EdLee]

the Korean 5 dan who visited our club and remarked about some players who were around 7 kyu,
"Why are they taking so long when they have nothing to think about?"

Two possible factors (there may be others):

• the 5d forgot how he played when he himself was kyu.
  So easy for us to just think of our current understanding and forget at one point, we were there, too.
  Most likely the 5d started when he was a kid, so he never played slowly as a beginner (most kids play super fast).
  He simply never had the experience of being a kyu person as an adult and taking a long time on moves.
  Of course he could not relate to them -- he had no idea how they think and feel.
• the 7k's had no idea they were wasting most of their time reading bad moves or variations beyond their level.
  If they knew, they would not be wasting so much time, and they would not be their level -- they would be better.
  That they did not know, and that they thought so long, was exactly their level.

[Abyssinica]

Beat a 4k in an even game as white by 23.5. We checked the game afterwards and, yes, there were many places where I could've either killed him (Two places), or one place where he could've not made a small move and gotton a huge lead over me. Still happy.

[Marcus]

Sounds like you'll be beating down on me soon enough. Good work.

[Abyssinica]

Somehow Cho Chikun's intermediate tsumego have become far easier to the point where I ask if there's something I missed that made it so easy.



And then I come to a problem that utterly stumps me for 20 minutes.

And then rinse and repeat.

[Abyssinica]

Can anyone review the first 30 moves of this game and then explain how I should go about attacking the two white stones at move 30? I am black and have little experience with 2 space high pincers.



A tewari sequence of the first 3 moves, switching the places of 1 and 3, makes me think of the chapter "Move two lost the game" in the direction of play.


I didn't know how to attack so I picked black 31. Maybe I shouldn't have taken gote on the right side?

http://eidogo.com/#NWO70jYb

Come to think of it, a peep at r2 looks interesting.

[Uberdude]

Maybe there should have been a chapter "move 9 lost the game". You must block to separate white's corner from the pincer. Move 2 only loses the game (figuratively) because a white pincer is disconnected from the corner and a weak group in your sphere of influence. Once the white pincer is strong your top side moyo all but disappears.

Gote on right (r7 or r8 also possible) was correct, you can't let white hane there.

Don't attack move 30, laugh in its face and tenuki to a larger area of the board. Your 31 is ok too though as it combines defending your rather pointless eyeless wall group to the left with attacking white's lower side group.

[skydyr]

You could also consider some sort of capping strategy to force white to live small, but I haven't done any real reading to back it up.

[Bill Spight]

Pretty much what Uberdude said.

should block. De rigeur. Divide and conquer!

But I prefer to attack with . Otherwise White has a good play at G-03, also combining attack and defense. A White clamp at F-03 is also a thought. For you might also consider the jaw strike at J-03.

If White takes gote in response to the attack, you can play sanrensei on the top side. If White takes sente, you can continue the attack.