Life In 19x19

Posted: **Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:51 pm**

White 12 is kind of weird, but in my mind, if he had extended 3 spaces I would've played something like

W R10
B R11
W P10
B F17
W C14 (Hopesuji)
B K16

Posted: **Wed Nov 26, 2014 1:13 pm**

A few quick comments:

H16/H17 is a key point, and it's painful when white gets it.

With R11, you are attacking white, not the other way around. The keima is pretty aggressive as a response, and you may be able to cause trouble.

D11 feels premature.

Once you build the central wall, you are the strong one, not white. Don't let him bully you around but look for ways to counterattack.

Posted: **Wed Nov 26, 2014 2:43 pm**

On black's move 131: Kill white group without ko and take around 30 points of cash ;-)

. This should be rather easy, but it's important to spot it during a game.

Posted: **Wed Nov 26, 2014 3:51 pm**

pak0, Schawipp beat me to it and I was going to offer it as a challenge for you, so let me phrase it the way I wanted to:

As usual I browsed through the game to find the major issues and find the highlight of the game. I kept browsing and browsing and ... browsing. I was really impressed. Only by move 83 I found something to say but then the situation restored itself and I kept browsing and browsing.

You played a very very good opening and middle game, playing calm moves, playing technically sound moves, resisting when it was appropriate, playing elsewhere when appropriate, playing carefully when appropriate and playing ambitiously when appropriate. It is this way, by playing normal, good moves, that one becomes a dan player fast and you can be very proud of it.

So I leave it to you to find that single highlight of the game, which is, as usual, a life & death issue, where you could have clinched the victory (well, schawipp gave the hint; still, find the better move).

Then I will add a full review. You should really take that review as comments on a more subtle level than the kind of comments I gave before. This is a reference game for you. Never mind the 4,5 point loss. Play this way (and take the odd chance to kill the opponent) and you will win many more games.

Congratulations.

Posted: **Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:10 pm**

schawipp wrote:On black's move 131: Kill white group without ko and take around 30 points of cash . This should be rather easy, but it's important to spot it during a game.

Now that you said it, it took me like 3 seconds over breakfast to figure out that S9 does it.

@Abyssinica:
I've never heard of that attachment. If I were to play a move there I think I would have gone for R12. Still, I'll keep it in mind.

@skydyr:
H16/17: I'll consider the hane next time. During the game I felt like I got a good result after D11 and I wasn't sure if I can hane safely because the push at E17 is still there for white. On the other hand there isn't a lot of potential on the top for him, so I was less scared of his hane there.

R11: Do you have a suggestion for a followup for black? I think at that stage of the game taking cash should have been the win for me(provided I don't fail to kill the invasion there^^) so I wasn't looking to hard, but even now I have trouble to find a satisfying move. Q9 looks natural, but it seems to go into a hard fight.

@Knotwilg: Thanks. I actually really liked the way I played during that game(doesn't happen too often) but that makes the loss sting a little bit more, even if the guy was a couple of stones stronger then me.

Posted: **Thu Nov 27, 2014 2:09 am**

The review as promised.

Posted: **Fri Nov 28, 2014 8:22 am**

Thanks, the variation at 83 looks really cool, I'll try to remember that, that has to come in handy sometimes.

Ok, another game today. This one I won, but only because my opponent blundered in the endgame. I think the top left went really poorly for me and a lot of the game was spent trying to not let white get a lot in the middle. Between this and the last game I played so much worse, but still won, go is strange sometimes. I wonder if I'll ever get more consistent...

Posted: **Fri Nov 28, 2014 9:23 am**

Knotwilg's squeeze for 83 is of course much better than your connect, but I don't like his 87. j10 looks much better shape. With his there is theoretically a cut: if white cuts at B and you atari then A is atari and cut above, and if black extends after B then B can escape (although only into a giant black wall below).

It's rather like this shape of 10:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$B $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . X . . . . 0 . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . 4 . . . . $$ | . . . X . . 6 2 3 O 8 a . $$ | . . . . . O . 1 5 7 . 9 . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ +--------------------------[/go]

I remember as a kyu thinking this alternative was so cool and clever because it meant you could net both sides so defending both cuts at once (the hanging connection doesn't locally defend the cut to the right, though if a is sente white can atari and net it, black 9 might be on the 2nd line to stop that):

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$B $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . X . . . . . 0 . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . 4 . . . . $$ | . . . X . . 6 2 3 O 8 . . $$ | . . . . . O . 1 5 7 . 9 . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ +--------------------------[/go]

However, this shape is rather bad, for example black has two vital point peeps (yes it's not quite this bad as we can resist):

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$Bm11 Ouch! $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . X . . . 1 . O . 3 . . $$ | . . . . . . . 2 O 4 . . . $$ | . . . X . . O O X O O . . $$ | . . . . . O . X X X . X . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ +--------------------------[/go]

Also the 2 basic nets don't actually work:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$Bm11 $$ | . . . . . . . 6 . . . . . $$ | . . X . . . 2 5 O 7 4 . . $$ | . . . . . . . 1 O 3 . . . $$ | . . . X . . O O X O O . . $$ | . . . . . O . X X X . X . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ +--------------------------[/go]

Though the knight's move net does:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$Bm11 $$ | . . . . . . 2 . 6 . . . . $$ | . . X . . . . 5 O . 4 . . $$ | . . . . . . . 1 O 3 . . . $$ | . . . X . . O O X O O . . $$ | . . . . . O . X X X . X . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . $$ +--------------------------[/go]

Anyway, the hanging connection is nearly always better (though black cutting the other side might be powerful later). The "it's better to do one job well than two jobs badly" idea. I don't think I've ever seen the "clever" nobi in a high-level game. I don't think your game will suffer if Knotwilg's k9 / the nobi here is not a part of your Go vocabulary.

Posted: **Mon Dec 01, 2014 7:32 am**

paK0 wrote:@skydyr:
H16/17: I'll consider the hane next time. During the game I felt like I got a good result after D11 and I wasn't sure if I can hane safely because the push at E17 is still there for white. On the other hand there isn't a lot of potential on the top for him, so I was less scared of his hane there.

R11: Do you have a suggestion for a followup for black? I think at that stage of the game taking cash should have been the win for me(provided I don't fail to kill the invasion there^^) so I wasn't looking to hard, but even now I have trouble to find a satisfying move. Q9 looks natural, but it seems to go into a hard fight.

For H16/H17 I didn't necessarily mean that it should be played immediately in the joseki, just that by the time white gets it, black should have been able to get to it first, and that it's quite large at that time.

I don't have a specific followup for R11, and your move seems decent enough. Cutting is definitely worth considering, but that doesn't mean it's right and I don't think it works directly here. I wrote the comments quite quickly, and got a sense from the late middle-game that white was pushing black around with white's weak stones, when it should have been the other way around. Apologies if it wasn't clear.

Posted: **Mon Dec 01, 2014 10:14 am**

Uberdude wrote:Knotwilg's squeeze for 83 is of course much better than your connect, but I don't like his 87. j10 looks much better shape. With his there is theoretically a cut: if white cuts at B and you atari then A is atari and cut above, and if black extends after B then B can escape (although only into a giant black wall below).

Thanks Uberdude.

I wasn't too sure of the clever move myself. I found both hanging connections too slow given the extent of Black's wall but indeed J10 is probably "honte".

Posted: **Mon Dec 01, 2014 10:58 am**

Highlights:

:w28:

After this move, both ignored the key point for influence
:b53:

-

We've seen this anti-pattern in your games
:b79:

&

cut on a large scale
125-127: you got caught up in the motions on the right side while it had become small, so lost the initiative in the endgame twice
167-185: on the other hand you win a lot in the later endgame and here it is White who is following you around
234: White makes a losing move; it was not necessary at all to lose these stones

I think the quality of your game was not bad at all. The major takeaway here I think is :b79:

(and the more daring :b85:

): when you are strong, cut the opponent on a large scale.

Posted: **Tue Dec 02, 2014 10:43 am**

@Uberdude: Thanks, the more you know...

@Knotwilg: As always, thanks for the review, one question though. You called J14 a key point for influence. I see what it does locally, but influcence there seems to be kinda wasted, since I can't make a huge mojo with R13 in place and I'm not sure if an attack on the right side might be feasible.

Posted: **Thu Dec 04, 2014 6:17 am**

Ok, so usually I use my study journal mostly to get game reviews, so instead today a little update on my study plans. Christmas is coming up, so after one more test I will be free from university(for two weeks at least), so I got some more time to spend on go. I already tried my new schedule the last few days and it seems to be doable.

- Play three Blitz games every day. I used to play with slower time settings, but in blitz I make more obvious mistakes, meaning its easier for me to review my own games. I upped the handicap range to maximum, I guess its the best way to get to play stronger players on a regular basis. And finally 3 games are more then one, even if they are shorter.

- Work through Cho's elementary problems. So I finally decided to get anki and try it like this, I already use spaced repetition for language learning, maybe it works with go as well.

- Some Joseki study. I've been going through 38 basic joseki for the last few days to finally shore that area up. I try to work through them and not just memorize it, so each chapter takes quite a bit of time, but the book is written well enough for it not to get boring.

I might still throw in a slow game every now and then and get it reviewed, but lets see how this will turn out for the moment.

Posted: **Thu Dec 04, 2014 7:43 am**

paK0 wrote:Play three Blitz games every day. I used to play with slower time settings, but in blitz I make more obvious mistakes, meaning its easier for me to review my own games. I upped the handicap range to maximum, I guess its the best way to get to play stronger players on a regular basis. And finally 3 games are more then one, even if they are shorter.

Just adding in my experience and everyone's different, but ...

What I've learned from playing blitz is not to play blitz. All sorts of things happen in blitz, like network connection timing out but more importantly you giving yourself too much of a break and drift into mindless, careless playing that doesn't reflect your real playing ability and ultimately even degrades your game. It can reveal some hard baked bad habits or wrong intuition though - in any case I wouldn't review blitz games beyond the early middle game.

I've seen too many game reviews that vary on the theme "what a moron I am when I stop thinking". Well yeah.

Have fun though!

Edit: oh and you left a question for me. Looking back at it it indeed may not look like an all important point but I really think it is. If Black plays it, then White's group is still in bad shape. If White plays it and Black responds, then White's shape is better than before and Black is a bit stronger than before but overall the balance is restored more for White. If Black does not respond, the ponnuki turns White in to a strong group and Black's top is prone to invasion.

The only drawback of playing there for White is to lose the option of cutting a stone. In that situation such prospect would be too ambitious.
For Black the drawback of playing there would be loss of tempo. I think keeping White weak there is good enough a result, even if it is not absolute sente.

Posted: **Thu Dec 04, 2014 8:00 am**

As for blitz play, I have never played blitz myself. But Bruce Wilcox, who had great success helping kyu players to advance rapidly, recommended it, at a pace of one 19x19 game in 15 min.

Life In 19x19

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