Your requested theme is "walls". Here are some comments about your "building walls" and "using walls".

1) Building walls
Good: 63
Can do better: 41, 67-75, 79, 115


2) Using walls

good playing away from walls: 55, 77, 87, 107, 127
can do better in playin away from walls/strength: 57, 59, 79, 99, 131

In detail:

@Knotwilg: Thanks for all the comments/variations.

I have also been going over some of my lost games with Leela.

I think my problems with walls is less a problem and more of a symptom of the cause: I'm too scared of fights.

I watched some of Bats "Back to Basics" and he almost never seems to fight, but I guess that approach only works when you are playing people 5-10 ranks weaker in even games.

So all in all this is ok, I now know what I have to work on.

I don't think you can avoid to fight at all costs: if the opponent takes small territory, then jumps into your sphere of influence like a madman, he needs some punishment.

But Bats surely has it right there often no need to fight.

Sometimes I really hate this game...

I think if you answer you win by 1,5

Yeah, it's dreadful. So, lessons learnt:

"At the end of the game, count your liberties again and again"
"When the opponent plays a move that doesn't seem to work, look again"
"When you feel tired and want the game to be over, close your eyes for 5 seconds and concentrate again"

The main problem with these is that by now I really should know them by heart, but after 150~200 moves my brain seems to go into energy saving mode.

The 80% rule may help. People praise going all out, even doing "110%". But when endurance is a factor, keeping something in reserve, like 80% effort instead of 100%, is a good rule of thumb.

_________________
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At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
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Everything with love. Stay safe.

Mh, that sounds interesting, but also really hard. Limiting physical activity is really easy, but for my brain it feels like its all or nothing. Still, I'll give it a try, maybe something like no reading during my opponents turn.

I'd be grateful for some comments on this game.

I won by 0.5 but it was with reverse komi and after he messed up in the endgame, which mean he must have been crushing me quite badly during the rest of the time

I definitely messed up on the right side, I think R10 was too far and I should no have extended towards his wall with and instead jumped.

101 was clearly an overplay

The top left I'm not sure, I think overall that went pretty well for me.

The main problem was that his bottom got incredibly big, I somehow missed my chance to get in there cleanly.

my 50cents

47 not quite a peep and very close to the wall (either peep q14) or perhaps E2 before it gets enclosed
52 so annoying this move!
59 tempted to atari q8 before defending, the ladder doesnt work for black though
61 mybe try p11 to get out ahead, making light shape

a healthy dose of good shape study would probably help your game lots.
try play nice shapes and good things will happen. dumpings are so ugly, uggghhh

My story of this game:

After 42, the lower side is the biggest area.
At 73 you reduce it, which is fine, but the subsequent moves lead to the ponnuki of 80, which secures a big corner for White. Next, the lost ladder at 115 and the squeeze up to 126 secure the lower side. Here, the game is virtually lost. You should look for opportunities to invade that big area while it is still open, instead of helping White to close it off.

Fortunately, White did not manage your overdue invasion of his corner at 207 very well. You live in ko and pay a small price to win that ko. Well done! However, 207 was very late to invade that area and White should have been able to kill the invasion (see variations) because all the surrounding aji was already gone

Now for the ladder. 111, 113 and 115 are nonsensical moves. I see two possibilities here:
1) you were in denial about the ladder not working and persisted against your better judgment
2) or you didn't read it at all

In either case, this is something to fix if you want to play serious games at your level.

Thanks both of you.



This I still have a lot of trouble with. On one hand I can clearly see that space wise the bottom is bigger. But then he has a giant wall at top and I figured anything that he may make there will be harder to reduce in the future. Seems like I should have worried about the present problems rather than future ones.




Actually neither of those. I read that the ladder didn't work, I just hoped the atari below would compensate for it and maybe give me a way in. Hope is the right word here, I knew I was behind, so I was just trying things.

OK! That's much better - since there's a technical fix.

When you see a ladder doesn't work, you are right to expect at least some compensation for it. We usually call it a ladder breaker. In close encounters like yours, that ladder breaker was the cut at N5.

You can do two things:
1) play the ladder breaker right away (here N5) and take your compensation. In this case, N5 may just be a good move regardless of whether it breaks the ladder
2) wait for the ladder aji to become more severe: for example, invade at K3 and try to stir up things

Forcing the compensation by giving up 3 extra stones (and then not get substantial compensation anyway) is the worst choice.

Bottom line, don't play out ladders that don't work.

In this position around 111 I think black can actually play very powerfully. Some ideas, working backwards from the failure of the game:

1. Don't connect for 109, but play L6 hane. If white saves the 2 stones then you can connect, the ladder no longer works, so white is going to die on the right side (white could cut L7 but can't capture the important 3 stones; you don't need to save l6, its purpose was simply to prevent the ladder in sente). So white ought to capture at n10, and then you can capture the 2 stones (which saves your 3 and sets up further destruction of white's lower side. You do have a problem that your right side group isn't clearly alive, but with s13 I think you can be ok.
2. Don't connect for 109, but play L9 atari. If white extends then you connect and there's no ladder. If white captures (better) then you atari m10 and probably connect l10. There's some bad aji on the outside, but my feeling is white is in deeper doo-doo than you. He doesn't have many libs, and p10 atari doesn't break through.
3. Think about l6 for 107. If white m8 ataris out he's still not safe and your right side group isn't in trouble like before. But white L7 looks like a good tesuji.
4. Rewinding even more, at move 101 it is good that you noticed white is not connected and you can cut at o6. However the problem is if you go to cut immediately and play the natural moves as in the game you get laddered. Reading this sequence is 10 moves long, but no branching, so you should be able to do this with a bit of time. So you want to make the cutting sequence work and not end up with you getting laddered. So think about l6 now. If white blocks at l5 then the ladder is still white's, which is sad. However, if you then play the game sequence then when white pushes at n8 you can simply capture at m5, or block and do the l9 outside atari and m5 is a nice get out of jail free card if your outside group gets in trouble. So maybe white wouldn't block at l5 but connect at o6 and then you can poke in at l5. You still have a cut at l7 though so maybe this isn't so amazing.

So 2 my favourite.

Thanks both of you.

I know about ladder breakers, but for some reason I always think of whole board situations with them, no idea why this didn't occur to me during the game.

@Uberdude: Those variations look nice. I think it comes down to me being bad at fighting again, so stuff like this is often off my radar.


I think after I finish my current L&D collection it might be time for some tesuji tsumego.

So, a few weeks ago I started going to a local go meetup that formed. Its been a lot of fun, and playing in person on a real board is great. The downside is that I kinda have to force myself to play online now, as those experiences feel lackluster in comparison.

Today I played a game on goquest, the platform itself is bad, but the game I played was a ton of fun. I lost on time(timekeeping is definitely messed up, my opponent got more time after every move while mine was diminishing). Also my opponent was a 3d, which I didn't know until after the match, anyway, here it is:



Some comments:
I should have pushed at N5 once, joseki mistake....
I think I can push here
Game loosing move? This should have been at j17
Well, seems like he knows how its done
Next big blunder? I couldn't find a good move to take my cash, O9 seems normal, but I wasn't sure about leaving an elephant jump behind

Afterwards he just goes through the motions. During the game I felt fine, but after finishing I counted and I was behind by quite a lot, maybe 15-20 points plus komi, which was kind of a bummer. Obviously I can't expect to play an even game with a 3D, but I always felt like direction of play is the least bad of my areas, so being behind this much in a fightless game doesn't feel too great.

But yeah, I enjoy games like these, with no nonsense moves, a lot more than the crazy things the other 8ks are doing

Strange game I had, I still have no clue what actually happened. The whole game felt like a mess.



The bottom left was terrible, I realized too late that my group on the bottom was weak, so I had to live small and made another weak group in the process.

On the left I should have responded one more time to his hane, I had some prospective territory there, but nothing came of it.

Bottom right was forced to live, I should have extended towards the top at some point.

I found no good way to pressure his top group, at that point I was already on tilt, since the game was such a mess, though I'm not sure I was actually behind by a lot.

The main thing is that I feel he played a lot of weird/bad moves as well, this game looks like something two 25kyus would play.

I really need to periodically update the status of groups weather they are weak/strong and I need to get better at taking advantage of my opponents weak groups.

A little life and death problem at move 110, white play and kill a black group

Hi, a short, more conceptual question regarding this game, I'm black:



I already looked at it with leela, at the point in the game I'm at ~46% so slightly behind, but probably not lost yet. I'm looking for some human input for the situation.

How do I handle white's capping move? It doesn't have to be for this specific situation, more in general.

H10 hits the sector line, so K10 felt like an overplay, but I had no good response. Should I have played one line further out or did I simply miss the appropriate response?

(In the game I played, J12, he cut and the fight went about as well as you would imagine when your opponent has walls on both sides).

Thanks in advance

Just because your opponent caps doesn't mean your reduction was bad/overplay, nor that his was bad/overplay. They could both be good moves. Obviously if you run with a knight move he can cut and with all those walls it's going to be tough but maybe Cho Chikun would then make a magic life. So I would suggest running with a kosumi (j11/j9 you need to choose which direction you want to escape, look if you have friendly forces or gaps to go to and consider what leaning moves white has e.g. is j5 sente) or a one point jump like h12 (though you may worry about j11 peep and j13 surround. Other, more fancy ideas, would be attachments like e10 or c10, the idea of e10 would be to get some helping stones to make shape or allow you to run faster at j12 without the cut being such a pain.