Life In 19x19

You're surprised at black move 9 but I'm watching a game between Gu Li and Xie He and Gu Li does play a very similar move. (B31)

http://gokifu.com/s/10rf-gokifu-20120719-Gu_Li(9p)-Xie_He(9p).html

However it's a game commented by Nie Weiping who says the move is useless.
The position is different but the condition similar imho

There must be some kind of idea behind it though if Gu Li plays it.

Hm, you mentioned you play on tygem, and I know KGS is a bit weaker, but even in the KTL there are some stronger players. Although they might not be as strong as you or many stones stronger, I think they can at least review with you? And maybe throw out helpful ideas? (I'm lucky because I'm so weak that everyone in the KTL helps me. ^^)

I'd also like to add that it's really cool to see how someone much stronger studies. Did you do similar things to get to 4d?

@128: why connect? Just seal him in, that cut doesn't do anything.

yithril wrote:So I did ze problems today and have cracked open "After Jungsuk" by Sungrae Kim. It's a pretty decent book and goes over some joseki variations that really actually do come up in games. It's a short book though and it's really for those of us that just need to learn new shapes. My slow game for today went well. I was losing though, because my opponent went full force after losing a lot of points in the beginning. I have to stop making my opponent desperate and causing them to give it their all to win I won by 8.5 in the end, though, because I made mutual life in the corner and he just didn't believe that I could

I don't see how that made a difference. You took gote twice to reduce the corner from 8 points to 3. Saving the three stones at the top of the board seems vastly bigger to me (and I arrive at a White win if that's played instead of the descent to A4).

Wow, keeping up with 20 tsumego problems a day is proving harder than I thought it would. I need a routine in the morning to help out. I've got a lot of projects and don't want to burn out, but it's so easy to think "I'll just stick them in later in day" and then day becomes evening

I'm back to learning joseki. After Joseki was really too short for me and I only got to learn a few new shapes, some of which I don't think I've ever played in one of my games. I also have this other book, in Korean, called "Son e Japhineun jeongseok." It has a lot of basic joseki and variations which I'm going over to make sure I've got them down.

I didn't study joseki much until I got to be a dan level player because I never understood them. The basic ones I knew, like some 3,3 invasion joseki, but a lot of them I just never learned because the whole idea of memorization went against my own basic style. Even when I tried to do joseki in context, it still took some of the thrill of the game out of it.

Now I'm trying to learn all of the kicks and punches to the game so I can string them together. A lot of these josekis are actually pretty easy to figure out because the reading makes sense to me now. I'm also learning a lot of the reasons why we don't play certain moves.

yithril wrote:I'm also learning a lot of the reasons why we don't play certain moves.

Nice.