Laerthd study journal

[Laerthd]

Ed,
no, up to AQ thinks I am doing ok

dfan,
Indeed when I played it I didn't know where it would go but I thought I could try some kind of squeeze.

Knotwilg,
Thanks for the explanation, it makes sense why this is bad for white

[EdLee]

Hi Laerthd, Thanks. Good to know.

I wonder if DM's AG teaching tool has your exact position up to the choice of avalanche.

[Laerthd]

Indeed Ed, it's here.

At move 15
Surprisingly, it gives 40.3% to F16 while AQ judge it at 50.78%.
AlphaGo prefers to extend F17 at 45.1% while AQ thinks it is worst than F16 (but still overvalue this position) at 49,16%

At move 16, once again their opinion differ.
AlphaGo move is B16 with 39.1% of winning probability for black
AQ chooses F15 first and B16 as the second choice but B16 is rated 53.08% for black!

That is a bit of a shame that such variations exist.
I had hoped that a system similar to chess analysis would be possible. You would get a rating of your move from slightly non-optimal to game-ending mistake but with this much difference in the evaluation, it is probably not for tomorrow.

[Uberdude]

Laerthd, I actually studied this small avalanche a bit with AG, the position of bottom right stone is very important for a ladder: forum/viewtopic.php?p=227181#p227181. I didn't check what AQ says, but check it understands the ladder; also what AG thinks is "best of a bad job" is not the usual human thinking in the avalanche joseki, maybe AQ is still more following the human ideas.

[Laerthd]

I'll have a look, thanks uberdude.

In the meantime, I rose to 6k on foxgo and I am still about 50% win so I am quite happy about that.

Here are 2 games that I played today, one won, one lost.

The lost game was because of move 55 I think.
The won one I have no real question, I am just proud of how it went so I share it.

[EdLee]

Some ideas.

[Laerthd]

Time for a new post!
I played almost exclusively on fox now and on average less than 1 game per day and I climbed to 4K steadily. But I felt that even though some games were challenging I felt that it wasn't challenging enough to maximise the learning per game.
So I decided to make an account at 1D, get my ass kicked and hopefully adapt. After 11 games lost, I finally managed to win one!
At first, I wanted to post the game before that where I almost won. But waiting for leela to analyse the game, I manage to score my win. So here are the two games.
No analysis for the won game yet but I'll do that right now.

The lost game with winrate attached:


and the won game:


So after quick evaluation by Leela, I am clearly loosing
Nevermind, it gives me one more opportunity to win before demotion

[Laerthd]

Hi, I am back!

So it's been more than a year since I poster in this study journal but I didn't stop to play.
However I think I progressed faster when I was posting here so let's try to restart this journal.

My goal is just to post a game every week with first a review by me and next some insight with lizzie.

Here is the game for this week : 3k vs 3k on fox, I am white and lost by 11 points.

Not exactly sure why I lost. I misjudge the strength of the black group and the value of the my cutting stone.

[Laerthd]

So saturday I sit down with the idea to play a tournament level game. It started well with me being focused and using my opponent's time to think. Unfortunately, I forgot that to make a great game you need 2 players. The opponent quit after move 22.
Nevertheless, I decided that since I took the game seriously it was a good thing to analyse it.
I am trying to stick to analysis in 3 phases:
1) noting what my thoughts were during the game
2) exploring variations and deciding if they were any good or if I missed something
3) run lizzie to check my mistakes (<5%, the rest I think is not worth the time for now)

Here is the game:

[Laerthd]

After a long hiatus, I am back playing go.

I had to remake my fox account and started at 3kuy, the level I had when I stopped playing.
Fox changed and I cannot get 10min + 3*30s games anymore?
So I started with 20min main time but I guessed not a lot of people choose this setting because I was matched with people from 5k to 1k.
I managed to get promoted quite easily even winning against 1k so I am not sure what is happening here.
Am I weirdly stronger after a pause or has the level dropped?

Today I played a 5min + 3*30s game against what I thought was a 1D but it showed up as 2k in sabaki I think so I'm not sure about my opponent level.
It is the kind of game I have a hard time playing.
I remember that Uberdude mentionned that ddk players love to build a wall along the entire board with each opponent deciding to continue to play along the wall move after move but honestly I still don't know when to stop doing that.
I think the main difficulty I have is to estimate what I need to keep and what I can let my opponnent have.

Anyway, here is the game:



With a bit of luck, reading this in the future, I'll be able to clearly see the problem with this wall building.

[gennan]

I remember that Uberdude mentionned that ddk players love to build a wall along the entire board with each opponent deciding to continue to play along the wall move after move but honestly I still don't know when to stop doing that.
I think the main difficulty I have is to estimate what I need to keep and what I can let my opponnent have.

I suppose you're talking about the pushing contest around N4 in this game? I think white should not have pushed at N4 on move 24 (knight move was better shape and the ataris helped black) and I think black should not have pushed on move 33. I think black (or perhaps both players) should have played on the right side instead.

[Bill Spight]

I remember that Uberdude mentionned that ddk players love to build a wall along the entire board with each opponent deciding to continue to play along the wall move after move but honestly I still don't know when to stop doing that.
I think the main difficulty I have is to estimate what I need to keep and what I can let my opponnent have.

I suppose you're talking about the pushing contest around N4 in this game? I think white should not have pushed at N4 on move 24 (knight move was better shape and the ataris helped black)

To back up what gennan says, when you are in a pushing battle you generally want to get in front. Often the best way of doing that is to play on a point that is a keima for both players. That play is called a double keima. There is a go proverb, Don't let the double keima get away.

[Laerthd]

I suppose you're talking about the pushing contest around N4 in this game? I think white should not have pushed at N4 on move 24 (knight move was better shape and the ataris helped black) and I think black should not have pushed on move 33. I think black (or perhaps both players) should have played on the right side instead.

Yes, that was what I was talking about.
I'll trust you with shape because I've never really understood it. To me it often look like an overly blurry argument to say that a move is better. I kind of see that M5 allowed to develop the right while allowing to play at the bottom later.

To back up what gennan says, when you are in a pushing battle you generally want to get in front. Often the best way of doing that is to play on a point that is a keima for both players. That play is called a double keima. There is a go proverb, Don't let the double keima get away.

I was actually thinking about proverb while playing this. I thought "Don't let your opponent hane at the head of 2 stones" will allow me to get 7th line with a sure response from black. I guess "don"t push the cart from behind" should have been a warning that the secured 3rd line was better than the dreamy 7th line. I've never hear the double keima proverb. Does it mean "take every opportunity to play double keima" (I suppose one for you one for the opponent) or should I interpret it as "when you opponent uses double keima to get ahead, don't let him get away with it"?

edit: fixed name in quote

[gennan]

The double keima (M5) is a common "intersection" point between two moyos. In that case it is an important point that expands your own moyo while flattening your opponent's moyo. So it's a big double purpose move. But it may be a bit slow when it's not clearly sente.

In this case, M5 doesn't look clearly sente to me (for either color) and it leaves white's right side wide open for an easy invasion. So perhaps white would be building an empty shell and it would be better for white to inhibit an invasion on the right side first. But then black would probably take the double keima (in gote).

[Bill Spight]

To back up what gennan says, when you are in a pushing battle you generally want to get in front. Often the best way of doing that is to play on a point that is a keima for both players. That play is called a double keima. There is a go proverb, Don't let the double keima get away.

I was actually thinking about proverb while playing this. I thought "Don't let your opponent hane at the head of 2 stones" will allow me to get 7th line with a sure response from black. I guess "don"t push the cart from behind" should have been a warning that the secured 3rd line was better than the dreamy 7th line. I've never hear the double keima proverb. Does it mean "take every opportunity to play double keima" (I suppose one for you one for the opponent) or should I interpret it as "when you opponent uses double keima to get ahead, don't let him get away with it"?

You need to exercise judgement. Again, to back up gennan, I think M-05 is better than the push from behind, but both Black and White groups in the bottom right are fine, and do not need bolstering. Furthermore, the bottom side is not developed. Even if Black plays at M-05, White has the shoulder hit at H-04.

FWIW, my inclination now would be to play in the bottom left quadrant. I don't like the 3-3 invasion, but maybe the 4th line attachment at G-04, or C-04 or C-06 or C-08, or even the submarine approach at B-05, looking at C-03 or C-08.