Life In 19x19

psk31 wrote:SinK and I will be playing our Round 1 match this Saturday (4th) at 14:00 UTC.

Side note - Now I realize what a challenge it can be to schedule matches when you can have 6+ hours of time difference.

Aye, Stefany and I were 8 hours apart. Thankfully we were able to make it work with me being up late and her waking up early to play.

My match vs Noodley will occur this Monday at 1:00pm(GMT+1), drop by if you are interested

iambadatgo wrote:

psk31 wrote:SinK and I will be playing our Round 1 match this Saturday (4th) at 14:00 UTC.

Side note - Now I realize what a challenge it can be to schedule matches when you can have 6+ hours of time difference.

Aye, Stefany and I were 8 hours apart. Thankfully we were able to make it work with me being up late and her waking up early to play.

Yeah but waking up early is easy while staying up late is difficult. iambadatgo is a hero.

Three words: Threeve thrashed thoroughly. 2-0 to Threeve.

I watched the first game You made some critical mistakes.

My comments on this (as usual: I'm only a DDK, feel free to correct any nonsense, etc.):

Move 29: if you'd played it at R3 your group was safe.
Move 37: I think that's too close. You strengthen white too much on the left side.
Next white is crawling rather high (5th line). If he manages to make territory from all this, this is very hard to catch up. But because the stones are so high there's a lot of space to play around underneath. I think I would have tried to invade at that point instead of building a wall that doesn't seem to help black's position much.
Move 93: a simple atari would have spared black a lot of headache.This would allow you to connect solidly.
Move 145: white is threatening to cut you. Your black group in the middle is eyeless. You should play J4. After white played J4, M11 is the only move.
Move 152-153: The black group looks dead to me. I can't find any sequence that would work for black. So atari and connecting seem pointless. Maybe there's something I can't see. I would be interested to hear Threeve's thoughts on that move.

Maere wrote:I watched the first game You made some critical mistakes.

My comments on this (as usual: I'm only a DDK, feel free to correct any nonsense, etc.):

Move 29: if you'd played it at R3 your group was safe.
Move 37: I think that's too close. You strengthen white too much on the left side.
Next white is crawling rather high (5th line). If he manages to make territory from all this, this is very hard to catch up. But because the stones are so high there's a lot of space to play around underneath. I think I would have tried to invade at that point instead of building a wall that doesn't seem to help black's position much.
Move 93: a simple atari would have spared black a lot of headache.This would allow you to connect solidly.
Move 145: white is threatening to cut you. Your black group in the middle is eyeless. You should play J4. After white played J4, M11 is the only move.
Move 152-153: The black group looks dead to me. I can't find any sequence that would work for black. So atari and connecting seem pointless. Maybe there's something I can't see. I would be interested to hear Threeve's thoughts on that move.

Thanks, I appreciate the comments. Clicking M12 instead of M11 was actually due to a misclick. I'm not quite that blind. However, it is a tournament game so I did not ask for an undo.

I'm struggling really hard to figure out why I didn't atari at move 93. There had to have been a reason. Obviously it was a very poor reason, but I tend to atari too eagerly so something must have kept me from doing so.

I connected at 153 because I knew if I didn't the stones below were dead anyway. I just tried to give it a little more time to see if I could complicate things. A more solid play elsewhere would have been a much better use of the move.

Monadology wrote:Thanks, I appreciate the comments. Clicking M12 instead of M11 was actually due to a misclick. I'm not quite that blind. However, it is a tournament game so I did not ask for an undo.

It's always frustrating, but although this increased the point margin, I believe it wouldn't have changed the outcome, so there's no need to feel too sorry about it

About the atari: well, I guess that's how we're all learning. First you learn to atari and do it every time you can. Then you learn it's not always good, and you try to avoid it. From your experience you begin to get a feeling when to play it and when not. You must have felt that the move you made gave your stones good shape. No need to dwelve over it.
Anyway, with some chance there's a much better move than the atari and I just didn't find it out

Maere wrote:Move 152-153: The black group looks dead to me. I can't find any sequence that would work for black. So atari and connecting seem pointless. Maybe there's something I can't see. I would be interested to hear Threeve's thoughts on that move.

I was fairly certain the black group was dead at this point, but I believe I was worried about black cutting at k5 and possibly saving the k17 group at the top, or that I would make a mistake and lose my whole group. I thought I had a decent enough lead in territory by then so playing it safe seemed like a good choice.

Thanks to Monadology for the games. I think it was much closer than the score lets on and we both had good opportunities to swing the game in our favor. I'm looking forward to playing again in the future!

Maere wrote:It's always frustrating, but although this increased the point margin, I believe it wouldn't have changed the outcome, so there's no need to feel too sorry about it

Definitely. I did some calculating and even had I kept the entire moyo in one piece instead of two he would have still won by something around 50 points. Maybe a bit less since that might have given me more chances to reduce some of his territory. I've always felt that taking sides and corners felt small and unnatural. The lesson here as that they are much larger than I think. Underestimating them will hurt my game a lot.

Thanks to Monadology for the games. I think it was much closer than the score lets on and we both had good opportunities to swing the game in our favor. I'm looking forward to playing again in the future!

You're a very gracious opponent. I definitely enjoyed playing against a stronger opponent without a handicap, so thanks for the excellent learning experience.

Me and Noodley played today, the score was 1-1.
Here´s the SGFs of the game

Game 1


Game 2


I hope you enjoy, if you want to review its fine by me (Thanks)

Looks like kiethlard and me are the only ones left. We're having scheduling trouble

Edit: we agreed on Thursday 1300 GMT. Sorry we're late, but we had schedule conflicts and the fact that I switched time zones this week didn't make things easier.

Regarding the first Rafa vs. Noodley: A few thoughts, with a grain of salt.

6: I don't like this direction. The right side seems biggest, since black's enclosure faces it. Because of that, I would recommend splitting the right side somewhere around R10.
12: For what it's worth, I think O2 is normal here. It threatens things like escaping westward, later, while preserving connection to live.
18: There is plenty of room to get a base here, so I recommend starting on the third line instead of the fourth. Also, since black has more strength below, I recommend one space closer to the top, so R11.
26: Perhaps pull back to F17, as black has threatened an invasion. J15 threatened the invasion, by 'leaning over' your position.
42: I think you need to wall black off at E10.
47: White peeped at your shape. Your first thought and priority should always be simply connecting if you can.
61: Reduces your liberties without buying you a lot. Consider alternatives like threatening white's stones severely with something like C12. I just noticed that you ended up doing that next (well done) but I see no benefit to forcing with the atari now.
84: 82 and 84 were miai (interchangable alternatives) to live. Taking one means you don't need to take the second, so 84 doesn't help you.

Maere wrote:Looks like kiethlard and me are the only ones left. We're having scheduling trouble

Edit: we agreed on Thursday 1300 GMT. Sorry we're late, but we had schedule conflicts and the fact that I switched time zones this week didn't make things easier.

No problem but I can't do next match round ups till you guys are done. So everyone keep an eye out friday for your next matches.

kiethlard didn't show to Maere vs. kiethlard so for this round we will declare it a draw. If kiethlard fails to make another round he'll be removed from the line up. That applies to everyone (not that anyone else has given signs of being slow).

This is for the smooth running of this thing obviously it's not really a reprimand but ti does make sense to have some sort of penalty just to give ppl that bit of a push to make their games.

Current scores and round 2 match-ups to follow shortly.

Standings (ranks have been upgraded wherever I noticed they were changed):

threeve (15k) - 1.0
SinK (16k) - 1.0
nnk (18k) - 1.0
Stephany93 (12k)- 0.5
kiethlard (15k) - 0.5
noodley (15k) - 0.5
Maere (16k) - 0.5
Rafa (16k) - 0.5
iambadatgo (18k)- 0.5
Monadology (18k)- 0.0
kukula (22k) - 0.0
psk31 (26k) - 0.0

Standard Swiss pairings (I actually adjusted it so nnk to monadology were counted as one score group to make my life easier and the pairings a bit fairer) were used match-ups for round 2 are.
threeve vs SinK
nnk vs Maere
Stephany93 vs Rafa
kiethlard vs iambadatgo
noodley vs Monadology
kukula vs psk31