vpopovic wrote:GOOOOOONGGG!!!!!
Vladimir is [7k]
Congrats to Vladimir, but I can't let my newfound rival get ahead of me for too long.
(How's the studying going, though? 
)I've been keeping up with watching go lectures on YouTube, but I haven't been doing go problems. (He's getting spoon-fed information instead of working through stuff on his own.
)I know life and death is one of my weak points in go and I know I'll have to fix that if I want to get above my current rank. (He lost a game today because he couldn't read a basic life and death problem...) So, I have a new book on the way - Life and Death by Ishida and Davies - and I'm going to start looking at more life and death problems online. After I fix this sad aspect of my play, I should be a much stronger player. (As if life and death problems were the reason for all of your recent losses...) I've played some FlyOrDie games just for fun recently and their players are very aggressive, forcing many games to come down to life and death. The games I've lost on there have all been because of a misread in the life or death of a group. (Wait, this is really your key problem? 
)As an SDK player, I generally don't like to admit that I'm bad at life and death because it seems so fundamental to go, but my play elsewhere has always made up for it and my opponents never really take advantage of it. (Except the ones that beat you because of it...) Usually I make such large groups that the question of "is it alive" isn't really a factor and the small groups I make in corners are almost always the result of joseki, meaning the life and death of them is either easy or already guaranteed. (So you've been playing "fake it 'til you make it" with your playing ability up to 8k...
Not bad. )Davies' book on Tesuji has been good to me. Let's hope Life and Death will prove to be equally as helpful in improving my skills. (Still want to be spoon-fed success. Can I become the internal critic of someone who is willing to put in work?)
Bill Spight wrote:W205 at T-03 would prevent seki.
I'm pretty sure black's group is just dead. It has 1 eye and a false eye. All I have to do is fill in the last outside liberty, take the ko, and then I kill the whole group. (If you meant at that moment. Yes, black could have made it seki, but he never did. Instead he later killed his own group...)
EDIT: After a few games today, I barely hit 7k (for a couple hours until it went back to 8k), as with 8k I'm going to win at least a couple of games at that rank before stating it in the main post. Stating it before that would seem premature. I should get in some games tomorrow, so maybe... http://www.gokgs.com/graphPage.jsp?user=moyoaji
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) It looks like I'll easily make my goal of 5 months and then I can move on to (Please don't say it...) shodan! ( 
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actually. It's rather big and makes any approach towards your bottom 3-4 very painful for white. You don't mind losing the corner in the top right so much I think. 
I think this should definitely be a kick.
R16 is a better move. Even if white tries to jump away at R13 you can leave him with a very weak group.
at Q18 white isn't alive yet, I think he could have 
hane at Q18 first getting back to the normal invasion pattern of 3-3 instead of R18 which gives him smaller space and leaving his outside stone unused. In the game it seems he got way to much from his invasion although black got thick, but could have saved part of top too. Q14 is far from R8 so black is open if it was closer at R9 then there would be narrower space. And since R8 1 space closer than if it were the chinese opening, you could probably kick (or reverse kick/shoulder hit) Q5 
at R4 for 
. If white blocks, he becomes heavy and no base so he has to play light. And also 
P2 should definitely be at S2 since you have R8 very close so white doesn't get a base so easily. P2 is too easy for white and doesn't use much black's stone advantage at R8. In the end white made too many weak groups (idk why) so he lost.