A beginner's journal of little interest

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:42 am

Perfect, thanks EdLee! Exactly the kind of analysis that I was looking for.

EdLee · Post by **EdLee** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:28 pm

Hi Boidhre, you're welcome -- I added a few more notes, especially pay attention to why :b92:

was very bad. All basics.

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 12:16 am

Another close game versus mus. Tried to spot errors here as best I could and included them as comments. Overall, I think I played too passively and missed opportunities to invade and disrupt territory.

Edit: Oh and I should say what I've been reading/studying: I'm reading concurrently "Opening Theory Made Easy" and "In the Beginning." I'm finding both fascinating, I'm not sure how much strength I can gain from them at my current level but I'm enjoying reading them which is what mostly matters to me. Keeping the game interesting >> being absolutely as efficient as possible with my time. I'm also working through tsumego at the moment trying for a half hour per day but not disappointed with 15 minutes. I find solving them enjoyable so this isn't a chore for me thankfully. Almost all my games except for custom ones are 10 minutes a side at the moment. It allows me to get more games done and less time spent. My games with mus have very long time limits but that's due to his internet connection not being the best at times.

EdLee · Post by **EdLee** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 4:01 am

Hi Boidhre,

Bill Spight · Post by **Bill Spight** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:13 am

This opponent is not letting you get so many big plays.

Points of focus:

1) Note the different nets.

2) Keep your opponent's weak groups separated.

3) Avoid tunnel vision. You missed some big plays because of that.

4) Take care at the end of the game. You still leave plays unplayed. Also, there can be big plays lurking then because of lack of liberties.

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:49 am

Bill Spight wrote:This opponent is not letting you get so many big plays.

Yeah, he's a good training partner for me and indulges me in this!

EdLee · Post by **EdLee** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 7:28 pm

Bill, thanks for the ideas in the opening.

Bill Spight · Post by **Bill Spight** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 9:24 pm

De nada.

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 10:48 pm

Nearly finished reading "In the Beginning." I'm finding it fascinating. I'm going to finish "Opening Theory made Easy" next and start on the theory parts of "Tesuji." All will need a lot of rereading, but I'm going to order a few more books anyway to keep things varied, because, well I enjoy reading them and implementing ideas from them makes the game more interesting for me. So I need to throw in a good few books to make the shipping worth it, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I've a few ideas for problem books: "1001 Life and Death Problems" definitely. Some areas that interest me at the moment: shape, invasion and thickness.

My current routine is:

30 minutes of tsumego a day using Go Grinder (I've been swayed by Bill and oren on this one!).
30 minutes of reading something go related (be it book, Sensei's Library or whatever).
Fitting in turns on DGS into whatever free time I have. Occasionally playing games on KGS but I'm not hugely pressed about doing that at the moment, it's hard to find an hour free at a good time for finding opponents my level with two young kids while I can fit in turns while I'm minding the kids with DGS. My son will even sit down and discuss the game with me which is fun.

I'm enjoying doing all three things at the moment.

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 3:18 pm

My sleep's been very messed up so my play here was quite uneven and my level of analysis with each move was uneven too but I think I'm improving some bit, or at least not getting any worse, even though there were at least three large blunders and several bad moves that I can spot here and have noted. I'm enjoying the turn based format which meshes well with how busy I am at the moment. This game was played pretty quickly over two and a bit days. My opening was dire but I managed to disrupt enough territory to make it a fairly close enough game up until the last 20 moves where I strung together a couple of blunders and that was that. The main thing I'm curious about is how to reduce the right, the way I went about it left me in a poor position. I think it would have been a very close game had I not played the ko in the centre.

For reference: Aids used in the game were simple joseki references (i.e. Sensei's Library) and an analysis board (i.e. Smartgo used only as a sgf editor) for working out variations when things got complicated and playing around with potential variations, ideas and similar which I found fun.

Overall, a very enjoyable game and I'm playing another one with the same opponent again as we seem to play at a similar pace to one another.

Since I'm being upfront about this not being me at my best so I understand completely if people don't want to review this one.

oren · Post by **oren** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:28 pm

Why did you resign?

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:41 pm

oren wrote:Why did you resign?

I had him a lot further ahead than he actually was after I blocked the ko threat. Another blunder.

I think he's 6 points ahead when I played it out there.

oren · Post by **oren** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:44 pm

Boidhre wrote:I think he's 6 points ahead when I played it out there.

At 6 points, just play it out to the end. You may find something to pull it back. It's way too early in a kyu game to resign.

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:48 pm

oren wrote:
Boidhre wrote:I think he's 6 points ahead when I played it out there.

At 6 points, just play it out to the end. You may find something to pull it back. It's way too early in a kyu game to resign.

You're right, I'm being too negative.

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 10:17 pm

Another day, another resignation. I feel this one was more justifiable, I had him around 15 points ahead after I played it out with me having serious weakness on the left and no big moves left as far as I could see or traps/tricks. There were two big blunders by me that leapt out at me, the first was not spotting a threatened atari allowing for a connection underneath to a dead group, the second was an empty triangle in the top left that allowed a threatened capture which forced me to give up around 10 points of territory. I'm unhappy with the blunders but I learnt something from both of them.

In reading, I was loaned "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go" and "The Second Book of Go" by one of the guys in the club, so I have them to read.

Life In 19x19

A beginner's journal of little interest

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