Life In 19x19

Let me say that I agree with Knotwilg, as well. Fedya's secures his group and prevents Black from making a base with sente, and threatens the Black stones on the right side, as well. Pretty much double sente. (And Black did respond. )

The debate over whether whether was necessary or not is also part of the reason I don't review weaker players' games much. I can see the stronger players here excoriating me for bad advice

I guess it was the tenuki at where things started to go wrong?

The general recommendation I hear is to review games 5 stones weaker than yours. (That advice changes once in the dan levels). Less than 5 stones, and it becomes more of a conversation than a teaching experience (such as "what if you played here instead?" vs "this is bad shape" and "strengthen here first").

A 6 kyu teaching an 11 kyu will typically give new thoughts and ideas to the 11k. I don't have time much anymore to review games online, but I do help review games for my brothers often (~12k and 15k). Am I giving the best advice? Probably not. But they don't need the best advice, they need "good enough" advice to help them strengthen their game and explore new ideas.

So don't fear teaching others. If you're wrong, and someone points it out, now what was once a teaching experience becomes a learning experience. It's a win-win. And it helps solidify your own fundamentals.

So I downloaded the Tsumego Pro app and do the free daily problems among other things.

Today's two "hard" problems both flummoxed me:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Black to kill
$$ --------------------
$$ | . . X . O . O . . .
$$ | X O X O . O . X . .
$$ | . X O X X O X . X .
$$ | . X O X . O X . . .
$$ | . X O . O O X . . .
$$ | . X O O O X X . . .
$$ | . . X X X . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Black to kill
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . O . . . . . .
$$ | . O X X . . . . .
$$ | . . O X . . . . .
$$ | . . O X . . . . .
$$ | . . O X . . . . .
$$ | O O X X . . . . .
$$ | . X . . . . . . .
$$ | . . X . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

The first one was particularly humorous in that I'm playing out a sequence, and realize halfway through, "Crap! This is leading to seki! I'm supposed to be killing the group!" Try again. The second time, I wound up with a ko, which isn't right since you're able to kill unconditionally.

(I should add at this point I really dislike problems where the solution is either ko-to-kill or ko-for-life. They seem like cheating to me.)

The second one at least looks reasonably like something you'd see in a real game, but I still couldn't figure out how to kill. No wonder.

My suggestion (though I am just 14k in OGS):
1. Play even game with someone stronger, maybe 2k stronger, most go server allow rank restrictions when creating a new game.
2. Play handicap games with someone your level. To catch up in a lost(handicap) game needs a lot of thinking, and generally do not tolerate mistake. You will be able to train yourself to spot and strike when the opponent made a mistake.
3. Review you games, not just the move you played, but your opponent's as well. Why did he/she play this? Was this a mistake or was he up to sth?
4. In correspondences game, try to record what you were thinking about when you played that move. Why did you play that, why you chose this over that, also what was your worries.
5. Read some books, get a mentor, meet some friends, play more games.
6. This one is truly personal. In most go server/software, the last move will be automatically marked. A weaker player, like me, will tend to respond to the only marked last move. The truth is, most of the time there are bigger or more urgent move to play. I disable this feature whenever I can, so that I will be able to open my eyes to look at the whole board instead of simply respond to the "last move".

I think it does just say "black to play". (Or white to play; the app can be set to mix up the colors.) It's just that since these are life and death problems, it seems to me you should be trying to save your group or kill your opponent. In that regard I should have just put "black to play" on the second problem.

It's just that since these are life and death problems, it seems to me you should be trying to save your group or kill your opponent.

Ah... they're understood to include all the statuses: life, death, seki, ko.

EdLee wrote:

It's just that since these are life and death problems, it seems to me you should be trying to save your group or kill your opponent.

Ah... they're understood to include all the statuses: life, death, seki, ko.

Or sometimes finding solutions that are better endgame, finishing in sente rather than gote, leave fewer ko threats etc. In my experience.

It's been a while since I've posted here, since I've been spending some time trying to count out an endgame in the DGS tournament. I had mentioned at the start of this thread that I thought I was trailing by a bit, which I think is true since at the start of the thread, the game was around move 150. But thanks to a lot of calculating on my part, I was able to pull out a victory by 2.5!

I'll be interested in the endgame analysis from the people who get a kick out of posting devilish endgame problems. I have a feeling the way we played, the result could have been anything from W+10 to B+10.

seems like you are just about there at 5kyu strength from the looks of that game congratz

Fedya wrote:I'll be interested in the endgame analysis ... [...]

I am not one of these endgame experts, however it is pretty obvious that already has a negative impact on your later endgame --> why?

You are further criticizing yourself on your moves and - what do the moves , , and have in common?!

My earlier comment in this thread was not meant as a joke. Each of such moves is like donating your opponent one handicap stone, i. e. if you manage to omit one of such moves per game in average it is (by definition of the ranking / handicap system in Go) equivalent of climbing one stone in strength .

Are you sure you meant ? I think I have to play there or O17. Don't want to let White clamp or play at P17. After all, I lost a couple of points when White clamped on the right side.

Sure, the other two form empty triangles (I'd point out that since this was a turn-based game, I played these moves before I started the study journal!). But I think I have to play someplace at the top for .

Is there a good way to figure out which move -- the direct connection vs. the tiger mouth -- is better in that situation? Similar shapes show up all the time in my games, and probably a lot of other players' games, too. Kageyama has something in this connecting vs. cutting chapter of Lesons in the Fundamentals of Go. Davies translates, "If you thoughtlessly choose the wrong way, your connection may even turn out to be bad", but Kageyama doesn't tell us how to figure out the right way.

Well, he just says it depends on the stones to the left, but that's a bit too vague to help.

Fedya wrote:Are you sure you meant ? I think I have to play there or O17. Don't want to let White clamp or play at P17. After all, I lost a couple of points when White clamped on the right side.

Yep, because of you later had to respond in move 109 in gote. If you played O17 instead (joseki move and better shape) you would have had sente after white 108. Thus, on P17 effectively wasted one of your moves.

Edit: It shall be mentioned that , too, forms an empty triangle (see below). Of course you cannot predict exactly how the endgame situation after move 100 will have developed. In the diagram below it is just more likely that a white endgame move on the cross point in situation A is sente while it is mostly gote in situation B. Of course empty triangles are not per se bad moves, sometimes they are the only move in complicated contact fights etc.; however they are bad in maybe ~80% of the cases. Therefore, they can be seen as alarm bells; while there are much more subtle ways of wasting a move in Go, in the case of empty triangles it is at least easy to spot...

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]Bcm
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . a . . . . b . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , Y O . . . O X . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . Y Y O . . . O X . X . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X O O . . . O O X . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . M . . . . . . . M . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

This showed up in Tsumego Pro today, and it's not quite the normal problem, but one that I found interesting if difficult. No kos or sekis here:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Black to, well, you figure it out
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O O O . . O , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . X X O O X . O . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . X X O . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]