Progress in Black and White

[Shenoute]

Hi Majordomo,

A few thoughts (which I hope are not too misguided ):

- Yes, O9 was really big. should have been at Q9. I don't think white can kill black in the corner even if he plays first (especially since his Q5 group is also not alive yet).

- to doesn't feel good too. Black's group gets out (somehow) but at the cost of having his C9 group sealed in. B12, B4 and the other moves are very pleasant for white. Instead of , maybe jumping out (around L8? N9 ?) would have helped black's group without making white so strong in the area.

- is a bit the same idea. This move pushes from behind and does not link up black's groups. If black is going to play from this side, the keima at N11 seems better. It is more efficient to build the top right and, most important, it reaches out to the K10 stones.

- After , still the same idea. is one step behind white and helps him in keeping the two black groups separated. It adds stones to the R9 group that wasn't in danger and does nothing to help the the K10 group. Simply getting out at K11 seems enough.

To sum up, these three moves/sequences (moves 49 to 55, 57 and 77) made it easier for white to achieve something. Incidentally these are all contact plays, making black but also white stronger in the area. In these positions, standing back and playing non-contact moves (jumping instead of , keima at N11, K11) might have yielded better results.

[Majordomo]

Far less misguided than mine hehe, thanks for your comments! And yeah, this pushing from behind thing is way to easy to convince myself of as a good thing (or at least not a "bad" thing) but yeah, probably the reason why I always felt a move behind locally (because I was). Connecting at Q9 would have been great, but how do I live after? I'm not even sure what white's best attack is, R3?

[Shenoute]

I tried to add some comments. I admit the corner situation is more complex than I thought, but still I think black can handle it (see also my comment about what may happen even if black cannot live in the corner).

[Majordomo]

Nice, thanks for the variations!

So continuing the trend by posting today's loss:



Ugh, I ended up in byoyomi way to early and never managed to read anything - so he ultimately lived everywhere and I missed a Ko for the lower corner and then after that I don't think I could have done anything (?). I feel with sharper reading something should have died here, maybe, or maybe I'd just have enough points to win from him living small everywhere.

One question in particular, giving up the lower right corner for the outside potential, worth it? Could I have started with Q2 and tried to do something against his group?

At least I managed to win two games as well heh.

[Knotwilg]

First of all, I would love to play this opponent myself, only for kicking his butt for behaving the way he did.

Overall, you play fundamentally well, except for 1 aspect

+ You play for connectivity
+ You follow the logic of earlier moves, even if that means you need to give up some stones
+ You surround and attack

but

- You play many moves which achieve nothing, hence are aji-keshi, if only for loss of ko threats

these are the THEME MOVEs

Next to that,
- missed opportunities at 115 & 133 to kill the dragon
- 141 is perhaps the only move which sins against strategic fundamentals
- 191: needless risk taking
- 225: painful ko's lose the game

You would have easily won thanks to your fundamentally sound game, but for missed opportunities and risk taking at the end.

[Majordomo]

Thanks a lot for your thorough review! I'll have to go over that a few times!

but yeah, threading the line between what is aji-keshi and what I think is just good “shape poking” is difficult for me. I have a hard time letting go heh, when I feel that I really should be able to kill.

115 - that’s the sort of autopilot move, I didn’t think, it’s just “business as usual” - but yeah that’s a missed opportunity heh.

191 - Yeah, risk taking, I didn’t think I was even close, my mind was stuck on him having “lived everywhere” and I didn’t do a count to check if I actually needed to make life on the bottom like that to have a chance, just blindly assumed. Though what you show with the variation at 205 was kind of nice heh

221 - Oh my - yeah, that would have been better than just playing a no-gain forcing move heh I don’t know why I thought taking wasn’t the way to go - I often feel I have a blind-spot for Ko, I just dismiss the variation once I see that oh, he ataris I connect and he connects - but yeah, if I take and cut that changes things.

again, thanks a lot! Always really helpful - and a good theme you found for the game!

[Majordomo]

Very happy to have won a game against a 2k! After he failed to defend the corner I got a good lead - so my following cut (overplay?) was not needed I think and better at K4 - but I wanted to try it since I feel I often get too passive in my games and bleed away any advantage. However, I use up almost all my time in the process and yeah - it's scary to have 2-3 byoyomi periods for the most of the game!

But I managed to get my group out and grab enough points to win comfortably - ever thankful that I had the margins to survive with my abysmal endgame. I really need to get on with practicing that - With enough time I'm sure I could do it decently, but I'm always in byoyomi and nowhere near good enough to see the important endgame points on the board with the time available.



Also, bought all the packs for Tsumego Pro for Android and have been doing like 100 a day of the easy ones just trying to sharpen my accuracy and intuition for the "basics" - I especially like that there are a few cut / connect & other tesuji in there and not just only life and death problems.

[Majordomo]

The game that took me to 2k - the next game will be when I drop back to 3k heh, I don't think my game is up to playing 2k's even but time will tell.

I won this by less than komi and it was a no komi game so heh - also, I self ataried for infinite points in the endgame but he either ignored it or missed it.



Besides the self atari, I feel he overplayed when he started poking into my center group, but I couldn't see anything that worked so he got too good of a result here I think. And I think the initial fight I started in the bottom left was premature or just plain overplay, when he simplified by letting me capture the one stone I was very happy - and then he gave me sente to rescue the bottom group at one point as well so. Had he been less willing to compromise I think I'd have ended up with a lot of dead stones.

[Majordomo]

Looks like I haven't dropped back yet!

Posting one game I'm quite happy with, since I beat a 1k in a 0 komi game! Probably a bit lucky, since I think he screwed up quite a lot in the top right - so I got to have the "comfortable" side and he seemed unwilling to create nasty complications for me to deal with and then resigned before I'd bleed away everything in the endgame heh. This is also one of my recent games where I feel like I haven't "gambled" by doing something aggressive without reading out beforehand.

Comments are welcome I'm probably more proud of the game than I ought to be heh.

[Shenoute]

Nice game! I don't find much too comment upon. Maybe the following:

- , maybe better if played high, to achieve better balance with the c5 stone
- , black's upper right being so solid I would be tempted to play on the other side (p11), pushing white towards black's strength.

[Majordomo]

Thanks for your comments!

I didn't consider playing high, but yeah, given that I make a three space extension - is a mixed (high-low) more resilient than 2 low stones? or is it just because it maybe asks for more that it is appropriate here? I remember wanting to sort of "claim" the upper left side as territory and accept him invading into the three space extension.

At 61, I guess I never considered "asking for more" - and was happy because I figured he just killed off his upper right stones for no real gain and would be running with the invasion for a long time - but yeah, I guess I could just try for everything - my corner is safe regardless so I would gain a lot on the lower right side potentially?

[Knotwilg]

The sequence 43-53 is nothing short of impressive.

After 75, it's a very hard game for White.

[Majordomo]

Well thanks, I can't really take credit - it's one of the joseki I've been practicing (except he deviated a bit but I tried to do what the joseki wanted to accomplish which is connect back to the corner with that bump / diagonal kick tesuji-thingy) because I find people jump out a lot in my games and then try to cover expecting me to crawl along the side - but with the ladder / support you the push and cut and a lot of people don't know how to deal with that, so I read up a bit and tried to learn it. A bit scary of course because it can lead to a lot of weird fighting where I don't know if I'll come out ahead - but here I figured I had support enough.

[Shenoute]

Thanks for your comments!

I didn't consider playing high, but yeah, given that I make a three space extension - is a mixed (high-low) more resilient than 2 low stones? or is it just because it maybe asks for more that it is appropriate here? I remember wanting to sort of "claim" the upper left side as territory and accept him invading into the three space extension.

At 61, I guess I never considered "asking for more" - and was happy because I figured he just killed off his upper right stones for no real gain and would be running with the invasion for a long time - but yeah, I guess I could just try for everything - my corner is safe regardless so I would gain a lot on the lower right side potentially?

This idea of balancing 3rd and 4th line is somewhat tricky. It is something I've just begun exploring so take everything I say on this with a grain of salt. C9 leaves an invasion at c7 which will isolate c5. But if white plays c7 immediately, black can jump at e5, threatening to confine the corner stone or to swallow the invader. Playing high at d8/d9 gives black more potential and makes it easy for black to deal with c7. But being high it leaves much more potential for white to do something with c13 or simply (if black d9) invading at c7 and living under...So all in all, I don't know which is better here, high or low (and there might be other options, e4 looks interesting too).

As for 61, given that attacking white enabled you to make territory on the right side, solidify the left side and invade the bottom, I'd say this move was perfect Playing p11 was just something to came to my mind and I thought it could provide a nice alternative. I kind of had the same position in a game recently where I had to decide between confining a group (with good chances of killing it) or attack it on a large scale, make it run and using that to gain some advantage elsewhere. Not an easy decision. Since the group was no that big, I thought that even if I killed it, it may not be enough to win, so I threatened to swallow it on a large scale, my opponent ran out and I used the weak group to do things all over the board. In the end, it was a close game, so maybe not such a good decision

[Majordomo]

So with Christmas creeping up on me I thought I'd post an update here.

TL;DR: I'm still playing, would love some comments on the last of the three games!

Still playing! Just not posting so regularly - I've not had many losses recently where I've been unable to find the big "Losing moves" heh (typically it's the sudden realisation that, oh, I just died).

As for what I'm doing, well I'm still keeping my rank at 2k so there's that

• - I still go over every game with CS, and I think my games are coloured a bit by what it prefers
  
  - I'm still playing weekly teaching games with my teacher, and I feel I'm getting stronger so that's good (to see that it helps heh)
  
  - I've also downloaded Tsumego Pro for my phone and bought all the sets to grind through (solving tsumego on a phone is a bit eehh, I got to keep away from the harder problems because I don't have the patience to sit and read it out unlike on paper, but it's great for drilling the easier problems and I've been doing like 50 a day at least)
  
  - I finally started reading "The Endgame" but I'm still on the intro-game there.

Aaaand I'm reading here on this forum, which is inspiring and educational heh, since you lot post a ton of useful stuff that I absorb and then try to apply to my own games (just recently found the Malkovich section and been reading through a few of the games there). My near-future optimistic goal is to be able to post in the 1 dan in a year thread in the general topic with an "I did it", but I think that will be difficult based on what I've heard on the gap for 1d - 1k on KGS.

Anyway, I thought I'd post the three games I played yesterday. One was a short resignation by my opponent, and the other was a long game where counting would have made me a lot less worried (I ended up winning but thought I was short since no komi), and the last was a loss where I did what I just mentioned (died).

First game (vs 3k, 0 komi, a quick win by resign, no real question here - I saw the variation for him to live but even with that I feel comfortable with my position since he messed up a bit on the top and let me seal him in)


Second game (vs 3k, 0 komi, a long game, I thought I didn't have enough without komi after I failed my attack on his weak group but it was alright, one big question though - I've looked at pro games and wondered why the 1 space low pincer I played is never played in this position? Couldn't find it in Waltheri anyway)


Third game (vs 2k, I lose by dying horribly - so I'm curious since I didn't really see it coming until it was too late, when did I need to protect myself here? I know move 123 was a mistake but is that the critical one or did I mess up earlier in trying to connect my groups?)


Comments are always welcome!