1) basic move for defence: one space jump; two possibilities here: up or down
2) leaning to become stronger
2a) lean against cap (above or below), White can
2a1) cut inside: fight or sacrifice
2a2) hane outside, White gets influence, longer lasting battle
2b) bump against inside stone and gain influence for territory- not my prefered move
3) jump out with keima or larger: probably sacrifice

Thanks you two, I think I gained some insight.

In this situation I like the kosumi best, but I'll keep the other suggestions in mind, I'm sure I will run into a situation eventually when they will be the best response.

So, I've actually been playing a bit more recently and gotten better.

Currently I am at 7k on foxy, but I couldn't find an opponent and so I went back to ogs for a game.

I already went over the game with LZ, so I have some insight into what I did wrong, I still have a question about the evaluation though:



After black connected at move 135, LZ has me at 97% winrate, even if I give black a free move to make is bottom right group alive. But why? At this point in the game I felt quite behind actually.

White does not have a lot of territory, I don't think the kill on the left black group is assured and black needs only one more move to get some nice cash on the top. Can anyone explain the evaluation to me?

On your question at 135:

Indeed,
- if Black makes its group alive in the bottom right
- and lives on the left side
- and makes territory at the top
then he may win

However, that's 3 things to do and it's your turn.

I haven't fed the game to LZ, but I suspect that her suggested moves will be either of these:

1) kill the bottom right
2) unsettle the left side by playing at the vital point
3) reducing the top and enclose the group on the left side on a big scale

1) is the easiest thing to do. Instead of reducing (3) you can probably even invade the top, thanks to the aji of your 3 stones in the top left.

Of course I have no way of confirming that you are at 97%
But if I could choose a color, I'd take White for sure

and now with LZ analysis (start at 135)

Thanks a lot, somehow I missed that after B8 black is not yet alive.

To be fair, the move that catches my eye is B8 as well, not D10. I would start my attack by playing the vital point and like you I would probably think that after D10, B8 can live.

These angle plays are a trademark of AI (though in this case I guess any professional would see them as well) and analyzing games with AI has the potential of bringing those moves higher up the list of my candidates. The preparatory move LZ advocates is also an angle play.

Ok, bragging time

After being stuck at 8k for a few years, I think I finally managed to rank up.

For the first time I reached 6k on foxy after a few weeks of taking the game more serious again. I'm not sure if I can hold the rank, but lets hope the upward trend continues.

Went 11-5 as a 6k and got my promotion to 5k.

This rank was overall pretty chill, most of the games I was ahead from the beginning, my opponents made a lot of joseki mistakes or slow moves in the opening.

Of the games I lost:
Once my opponents outfought me.
Once I missed a self atari.
Twice I threw games away in the early endgame.
One was a blitz game (I'm terrible at those).

Overall I'm very satisfied, it has been years since I had progress as steady as now.

Haven't posted a game in a while, so why not:


The game loosing move was , where I should have invaded the bottom or played a slide on the left side.

In the endgame I had a comeback chance with the peep at K3, but I didn't see that move (involves some reading though, so I don't mind missing that).

The main problem of this game was not the result, but that I though I was winning the whole game. This is a pretty permanent problem for me, I don't really count during the game and I tend to overestimate how much territory I get from the corners.

Also this was a relatively peaceful game, in which I tend to do worse. I currently play on foxy, so I'm pretty used to my opponents starting a fight sooner rather than later. I need to fix that somehow, either initiate more fights myself or play more of a moyo game, so they don't get a choice in the matter.

So life happened and after university I took a little sabbatical from go. But I recently started a new job and with a longer commute I now have no longer any excuse to not do tsumego every day.

I didn't get much weaker during my break, and in the last two weeks I actually powered up, both reading and game-sense wise. I just beat an ogs 6k for the first time in an even game and got a 5k promotion (I only reached 5k on asian servers before). The game was by no means a masterpiece, but I felt good nonetheless.



I played three terrible sequences during the game:
: I am still kicking myself for that. I actually read out that I was ok there, but played a move anyway because I was scared. Adding a move was not terrible, but it should have been in the corner on the 2-2 point, my move lost 35%
+ : I decided that connection with a knight's move was too weak (would have been the right play) so instead I made my opponent stronger and then went with an elephant jump
Overplay. That being said, I played this invasion quite a bit, and it almost always ends up working out for me, the peep at B15 is just so good. The right move would have been the attach at F12.

Also I should take another look at the joseki in the lower left, I didn't mess up too bad, but since this is just memorization there is really no excuse for it.

I want to highlight one of my moves though: : It might not seem like a big deal for better players, but to me finding moves like this is one of the best feelings ever, I was so proud during the game and after i played it I never let go of the lead again.

I think I could gain another rank easily if I trust my reading more and play less scared.

So in case anyone thought for just one second that 6ks have even the slightest idea what they are doing, I present you this game(the win was on time, unfortunately we didn't get to finish normally):




Overall reviewing games with LZ has been incredibly helpful, but on thing I still cannot wrap my head around is its tendency to fight. LZ always wants to start fights, which is strange, because in theory it should like fighting in a specific area only for one player. But I don't think I'm good enough at settling groups yet to adopt that playstyle. Maybe once my reading gets a bit better (it has been improving, but as the bottom right shows it's still not at a level where I need it to be).

A good sequence to know at is the following:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ +----------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . 5 4 7 a . .
$$ | . . . . W 6 3 O . . .
$$ | . . X , . . 1 2 . X .
$$ | . . . . . 8 . O . . .
$$ | . . . X . . . . . X .
$$ | . . . . . . . Q . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

You have to be mindful of cuts coming out of it (esp without the triangled stone) but it can often save the circled stone and give you decent shape on the outside.

Also could be played at but the sequence reverts with the push at followed by the hane at (instead of the other way around in the sequence shown)

This way there's still some chance for eyeshape in the corner and to run out to the centre, as well as the atari at 'a' to look forward to, possibly killing the black group outright if all of your cuts can be fixed beforehand

Interesting, I have never seen this.

I didn't even know that pushing down there was a real move, the only legit followup I was aware of was the knight's move.

But I'll keep the sequence in mind =).

So I think I'll shift my priorities training wise a bit for the month of July.

During June I put a focus on games. My goal was to play on average a game a day and while I could not play every day I usually hit ~10 games a week, so overall this was pretty successful.

I did fall back to 6k on foxy, so I guess this is my "real" rank for now. I think I hit a point of diminishing returns (for now) on playing. During a lot of my losses I was >90% at some point and threw it away. The most common way I lost was letting a group live that had no business living. Right now the thing that is holding me back more than anything else is my reading and killing groups in general, which feels like a constant throughout my whole career. My accuracy and speed did improve, but my depth still leaves much to be desired.

So here are my plans for July:
- Limit games to the days where my local group meets and the odd game on weekends
- In addition to my morning commute, spend some time each evening to do some problems. These ones should be harder than normal, the goal is to build depth more than anything.
- Go through "Life and Death" and memorize the common shapes. I have glimpsed over the book a couple of times already and it does not have a ton of content, so adding it all to my repertoire within the span of a month should be more than possible.

Time to get to it

Nice public transport ?

Yes, 20 min train ride. I's usually not super crowded, so I can sit and get some problems done.

July is not completely over, but since I hit a nice milestone I thought I'll make a post.

I did hit 4k on foxy just now, which marks a new highest rank reached for me.
In terms of tsumego/L&D I did not do as well as I had hoped. I upped my volume a bit during July, but this area is still by far my worst pain point.

I did learn of a condition called "aphantasia" which I may or may not have. Weather or not is not actually relevant, because one way or the other I still need to find a way to get better at reading.

During August my goals will be fairly modest: Don't get worse. I will be at a festival and then spend some time at my parents place. I'll see how much go I can fit in, but overall I will consider the month a success if my skills don't deteriorate. I can focus on getting better again in September.