Life In 19x19

Congratulations on your win.

A couple of questions on the endgame.

1) Does White have a better play for move 212? If so, how much difference does it make in the final score?

2) What is White's best line of play at move 206? Hint: It's tricky.

At 212 I could have played J19.

Still trying to figure out what you have in mind for White 206.

Fedya wrote:At 212 I could have played J19.

Good. How many points difference would that have made?

Still trying to figure out what you have in mind for White 206.

It's also in the top left. Tricky, as I said.

I've been thinking about what you have in mind for White 206. Since Black 207 was at E19, my first thought was that you had E19 in mind, but I don't see how White gets anything out of that. J18 doesn't work, as far as I can tell, and the only other aji I can find on the other side is the peep at B15, but I can't find any way to make that work, either.

Fedya wrote:I've been thinking about what you have in mind for White 206. Since Black 207 was at E19, my first thought was that you had E19 in mind, but I don't see how White gets anything out of that. J18 doesn't work, as far as I can tell.

Close on both counts.

Actually, my thinking is for White to play at H-18 for starters. To create a ko threat. Presumably Black will reply at J-18. Next?

Here is my thinking for White 206.

Hidden for courtesy.

A 1/3 point ko. No wonder I couldn't find it.

More seriously, when I posted the previous game I said there was good news and bad news. The bad news is that I got up to 5k KGS for all of one game. I promptly started losing game after game, to the point that I've been demoted to 7k again. I feel like I have to start all over from the beginning again. It's tough not to get frustrated when I don't see what I'm doing differently in all the games I'm losing as opposed to all the games that I was winning to get to 5k.

And sometimes for all the work I've done I wonder how much I've really learned. I feel like I'm having the same problems in my game that I did when I started this thread months ago: my opponents get lots of territory from their moyos and I don't; pincer attacks work for them but not for me; and don't get me started on thickness. If I make frivolous comments about 1/3 point kos, it's because almost all of my games are decided well before the endgame, so there are more important things to focus on if I want to improve.

Fedya wrote: More seriously, when I posted the previous game I said there was good news and bad news. The bad news is that I got up to 5k KGS for all of one game. I promptly started losing game after game, to the point that I've been demoted to 7k again. I feel like I have to start all over from the beginning again. It's tough not to get frustrated when I don't see what I'm doing differently in all the games I'm losing as opposed to all the games that I was winning to get to 5k.

I have taken a quick look at your rating graph. Sure, there are ups and downs, but overall you are about 1/2 stone stronger than you were 6 months ago. That's a quite respectable rate of advancement of about 1 stone per year. And you just beat a 3 kyu! Keep on studying the basics and you could well make a solid 5 kyu rating in another year. Courage, mon vieux, courage!

... and fast forward to 2019, it looks like Fedya has indeed achieved a solid 5k on KGS, with some excursions into 4k territory! Was there a decisive breakthrough at some point, or has this just been steady incremental improvement with lots of persistence and hard work? Either way, an inspiring story!

I think part of the answer is in this thread (trying to play more aggressively): viewtopic.php?p=242940#p242940