I don't get to play too often

spamthachb · Post by **spamthachb** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:53 pm

Hello everyone. I've actually been a member of this forum for quite sometime but I guess I'm more of a lurker than a poster.

I don't actually get to play real games that often because I'm in my third year of medical school and so my life consists of being in the hospital for ridiculous hours and then studying when I get back home. As a result, I don't really know what my ranking or level of strength would be. I try to make up for this by doing tsumego from SmartGo on my iPhone (finished up the 20k-18k problems a number of times now). I've also done a couple of Guo Juan's Internet Go School lectures.

Anyway I wanted to post a game I played recently with a friend of mine and get some feedback since I don't get to play often. He also doesn't get to play too much... so we both don't really know our ranking.

I'm black in this game.

So what I thought I noticed from my game was that:
1) My fuseki is pretty questionable. His was much better than mine and I felt pretty behind from the start. This is something I need to work on. But how? And should I even be looking at joseki? (I don't intend to memorize joseki... just perhaps study it a bit when I can)
2) My poor opening led me to try to invade. And judging from the score at the end, it seemed to have worked on him. However, I felt like my actual invasion skills were quite weak and that the only reason it worked was because he did not know how to defend very well against it.
3) I get the feeling that I respond a lot to moves that don't need to be responded to and later I don't respond to moves that need to be responded to. Only problem is I still don't know which is which.
4) Losing a lot of the upper left corner was quite embarrassing. Unfortunately, we were playing a timed game and I think I was running out of time so I was rushing a lot of my moves by this point without thinking very much.

So that's what I noticed with my level of observation. I'd appreciate if anyone else could make some other observations about my game that I missed or point me in a direction so I can focus my limited study time. Thanks a bunch!

EdLee · Post by **EdLee** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:08 am

jts · Post by **jts** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:11 am

Responding directly to your observations:

Mnemonic · Post by **Mnemonic** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 6:06 am

I' not strong enough to comment on any of your moves, so I'm going to comment on your strength.

(It is easier to evaluate someone’s strength if they are close to your strength)

I think you are way stronger than 20-18k, probably more like 12k. You didn't make a huge blunder which is common in games of our strength :-?

Your opening and endgame had some flaws (to my eyes), but that has probably something to do with your tight schedule. Your reading was surprisingly good for your level and I think that you could reach sdk in a couple of weeks if you found the necessary time :tmbup:

spamthachb · Post by **spamthachb** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:21 pm

Thanks everyone for your feedback :bow:

! It was quite helpful to hear all of your viewpoints on my game. Since I know that a lot of my weaknesses can be improved just by playing more games and getting more experience, I'm looking forward to April when I should have much more free time to play :twisted:

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