Life In 19x19

I didn't like the idea of Black sliding there, and putting pressure on forcing me to live a tiny life in the corner while Black would get a bunch of territory on the other side. Plus, I thought I'd be able to play under the Black stones later, reducing them much more.

I thought it was much bigger. Not only do I kill the stone, I prevent Black from splitting me at the top.

I thought I had a strategic for my moves; it just turns out it was the wrong one.

This one showed up in TsumegoPro a couple of weeks ago, and I enjoyed it so much that I saved it to post here later. I know the answer now, but finding it originally was difficult. And some of the refutations of wrong moves aren't so easy, either.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Black to move
$$ -------------------
$$ | . X . . . . . . .
$$ | . X . O . . . . .
$$ | . . X O . . . . .
$$ | . X O . . . . . .
$$ | . X O . . . . . .
$$ | O O O . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

It should be fairly obvious which two points Black wants to make into eyes, but what's the right sequence of moves to do it? Just finding wasn't enough.

I found this set of problems recently

https://denisfeldmann.fr/bestiary.htm#p1

if you liked that, you might like the shrine problem there

Maybe Black can do better, but this is what I found:

This is a fairly well known shape for us problem solvers but indeed, when it comes up in a game, I'm not sure I can find it. Its presentation as a "solvable problem" is already changing the mindset.

For anyone who is not familiar with the under the stones concept, this may be almost unsolvable.

When that problem appeared, it was one of the hard problems. Amazingly, an almost identical problem appeared in today's set, only in the medium problems. This time I knew how to solve it.

I think it's time to post another game. I won, which was a pleasant surprise since every time I tried to count I got the impression I was behind. (Considering that I had White and won by less than komi, I probably did have less territory on the board every time I tried to count.)

More importantly, this looks to me like another of those games where my attempt to deal with my opponent's big moyo resulted in my getting weak groups, while my opponent had no difficulty finding the weak points in my moyo. Specifically, D7 was a problem even though the group lived, and I thought I got a bad result out of the O17 approach. After , I seemed to be particularly behind. But as we saw from the previous game I posted, if I don't do anything, Black is going to get a big moyo anyway.

Black probably should have been able to kill the center invasion, and probably should have been able to kill the big group at the top, either of which would have led to a big loss for me.

The result after the upper right approach is extremely good for you. I dream of getting results like that. But making the tiger's mouth after the joseki was really bad.

: You could consider something like L17. You have room to make an extension on either side, and Black won't get full use of his wall.

: Usually if you go into this it is because you have some support to your left, otherwise you jump into the 3-3.

: This is really unidiomatic. Black has a jump connection that you could conceivably cut far in the future, depending on how things develop. Instead you force him to make it rock-solid and give yourself a single 3-liberty stone attached to his 7-liberty proto-wall like a barnacle. D7 isn't going to be part of an eye or help capture anything. You'd almost rather pass.

Let's look at the points after , To be grossly generalistic, you have around 10 in the upper left and 57 at the bottom + komi = 73. Black has around 16 at the top, 36 on the right, and 25 on the left = 77. So you're quite close and you don't need to panic. Note also that you have a monkey jump on the left so it's not as big as it looks. A stronger player than me would have to tell you the best move but one that occurs to me is P6, one of those "boundary between two moyos" plays.

: Doesn't G16 give you a second eye too?

Why is it bad? I'm keeping all of my stones connected. If I don't play there, Black will and won't I have to sacrifice something?

Cutting there and invading the corner are miai. If black cuts, you take the 3-3. If Black defends 3-3, the cut is no longer large, so you will let him take a stone or two.

edit. I guess miai is the wrong word. Basically, the original approach stone is light.

Thinking about dfan's comments, one of the things I know I have trouble with is understanding joseki. I know you're not just supposed to memorize joseki, you're supposed to know why the moves are good. And that's where I struggle. Figuring out which joseki to choose to go well with the other corners of the board is one of those things that feels like an utter mystery to me most of the time.

Fedya wrote:Thinking about dfan's comments, one of the things I know I have trouble with is understanding joseki. I know you're not just supposed to memorize joseki, you're supposed to know why the moves are good. And that's where I struggle. Figuring out which joseki to choose to go well with the other corners of the board is one of those things that feels like an utter mystery to me most of the time.

It's mostly a mystery to me, too. I know very few joseki by heart, so there are often situations where I just have to guess at appropriate corner moves. It was freeing when I realized that I could just guess at the right moves. Sure, sometimes it ends in utter failure, but I learn a lot each time.

While I don't think that Robert Jasiek's book Easy Learning: Joseki actually makes learning joseki easy, it is a good way to start thinking about the purpose behind joseki moves. If you take a look at that book, I would focus on the content more than the problems; I found their difficulty very uneven.

Fedya wrote:I think it's time to post another game. I won, which was a pleasant surprise since every time I tried to count I got the impression I was behind. (Considering that I had White and won by less than komi, I probably did have less territory on the board every time I tried to count.)

More importantly, this looks to me like another of those games where my attempt to deal with my opponent's big moyo resulted in my getting weak groups, while my opponent had no difficulty finding the weak points in my moyo. Specifically, D7 was a problem even though the group lived, and I thought I got a bad result out of the O17 approach.

The O-17 approach was questionable. You should have played a wedge instead.

Congratulations on your win, BTW.