looks strong, taking away a liberty of 
, but. . . .
strengthens the stone, and now Black has a cutting point at "a". here strengthens Black, connecting the 
stones, and weakens the stone, as well. can strengthen the stone and stake out the bottom left corner, but Black can continue with, for instance, 
with no worries about his stones. 
Well played.Bill Spight wrote:You need to have some sort of territory, not just influence.
)
R4 is quite big.
Bad. The lower right corner is already W's -- ?
The game move extend D17 is good;
You need to reply to 
. W is happy to extend to D13.
No. B hanes at D13, the local shared vital point..
Connect. Back in post 1:When we play a move, we want to have a reason for itThe most difficult concepts for me were Ko and Ko fights
? ?, a "fuzzy feeling" is not good enough here ; ?
In your variation for , you stopped short:
This time you connected (correct). Re: 
E11.
, and stopped -- Re: posts 4 & 5. The situation I was concerned about was unfounded. I thought if Black cut, they'd be able to take the left side of that group, but now working through the variations this is unlikely. I should have tried to read out the situation instead of just reacting by instinct (since my Go instincts are still in their infancy and cannot be trusted)!
I remember thinking I needed to protect the corner, but looking at it again, I can see that
...
protected both the corner and the sides. Black would have had a hard time trying to crawl around that.Looking back, this seems silly now. My original thinking was that if I can set up a stone underneath the ko, likeWhat's the specific reason ( tactically ) for
, that if he takes the stone, I can take back and break the ko from underneath. I had a game where there was a sort of ko cascade in several connected diamonds where I was able to flip a corner I was trying to repeat my success. I remember thinking something like this... without really thinking about how it would play out.I actually didn't see this until you mentioned it. Another lesson in slowing down and actually reading the situation.
I've started tracking my progress and game results in a spreadsheet (I'm very visual) and sadly my games completed chart has plateaued recently. I have 5 concurrent correspondence games going across different servers but this is another good reminder to prioritize just playing over tsumegos, reading, or lectures.Re: posts 4 & 5.
Yea, this takes time. One step at a time. For example,since my Go instincts are still in their infancy and cannot be trusted!
variation 1:
is not a cut; it's a clamp.
is incorrect; can you find the correct local sequence ?
is incorrect, and 
is also incorrect. ) var 2 next. ) variations puts itself into atari, which would be foolish. would have captured ... and Black could have gone on to start a ko on the bottom? ( I shaved off two horizontal lines on top;Also in my original variations
from P6 to Q6. clamp. ) and ( but still incorrect ).We're getting a bit off course; we can discuss this later. But first:and Black could have gone on to start a ko on the bottom?
Both of these vars are still incorrect. The correct
is still tricky for you. Yes, I often struggle with how my opponent will reply to my move when I try to visualize a sequence. Thank you for your patience.The correct
variation. is just bad. at b in your last diagram(right?),which is even better, because this threatens the cut follow up. But even without that cut, black 1 would be just bad, as most of the moves you provided show(descent and either atari seem all fine to me in that respect). was faulty, but this is a good puzzle for me. Where is the path to MAXIMUM PUNISHMENT!?(which gives up 1 stones). That might be even better, but this was about showing that is not to be feared, so I wouldnt show that with tenuki. Thank you for the patience; I was looking for thisIn my original variation I atari from underneath, allowing Black to run in. If I atari from the right, even if Black tries to save at A, there's nowhere to go.
atari in take 4, but because of other local properties (say, (x)), this wasn't so clear.