Life In 19x19

Posted: **Mon Apr 29, 2013 9:38 pm**

Thank you very much for this review.
Now I clearly see why moves you marked as "pass" are wasted stones.

Last two days/games were very important for me because of your reviews. I learned:
1. Not to attach when I attack
2. To be careful not to be cut
3. Not to play 1 instead of 2 moves because I'm greedy
4. To leave dead stones to rest in peace
5. Generally, not to descend to 2. line in midgame
6. To ask myself before every stone placement "why do you want to put it there?"

@Skydyr, @Shaddy, guys, thank you for your invested effort. I'm trying to get every grain of knowledge from your advices and to get rid of bad habits. You're helping a lot.
I'll try not to make same mistakes today.

Cheers.

Posted: **Mon Apr 29, 2013 11:21 pm**

I'm a bit inexperienced with sgf tree reviews, so I have some formatting inconsistencies. I'd recommend going one move ahead of a branch to see if I made a comment and then used a branch to show it. I hope to get better at these in the future :-?

Chaot88-Vladimir_review.sgf: (9.08 KiB) Downloaded 638 times

Posted: **Tue Apr 30, 2013 3:59 am**

Thank you, mate.

Posted: **Tue Apr 30, 2013 4:06 am**

I'm sooooooooooooo ashamed of this game

Bottom right approach was a missclick but everything else was my lousy playing style.
Not to mention 26 points worth overplay.

Right now I feel only shame.

Posted: **Tue Apr 30, 2013 6:09 am**

One thing I'm always worried about when giving review is that I'm insinuating there's one correct way to play the game. Playing next to stones has their time and place, and advice to stop playing attachments should be taken with grain of salt. Later in your journey you may learn about sabaki techniques that make use of attachments.

Advice like "don't play next to stones" is just giving shortcut to relatively good playing. I strongly encourage you to experiment with different moves and shapes. Being shown how they work or don't work should make it so that you have fewer gaps in your understanding. Be wary of becoming bookish joseki slave who thinks their play is perfect and sees no room to improvise. I like your style of playing.

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2013 3:27 am**

Thank you, Toge, for this insightful review.
I had a couple of unforgivable mistakes in this game.
I just can hope that I learned something from them.

Thank you once again.

Cheers.

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2013 5:59 am**

I am so frustrated. I lose games I should win. I play moves without any firm plan. I don't see the whole picture. I rush in. I don't take time to read but play solely based on my instinct. I neglect basic principles in opening. I don't secure cuts. I play "pass" moves. I leave open skirts for counter attacks. I foolishly try to save dead groups. I don't take all chances to kill. I let my healthy groups be killed.
I know I shouldn't do all the staff mentioned, but I still do them.
There's a long road in front of me. Sometimes, after the game, I don't know if I feel more frustrated or ashamed for missing the obvious.

At least, I'm glad I started this thread, for 2 reasons:
1. I have a place to whine, like now.
2. It motivates me to proceed when everything about my go looks wrong.

I hope I'll give you some better reading material in my next post.

Cheers

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2013 6:13 am**

vpopovic wrote:I am so frustrated. I lose games I should win. I play moves without any firm plan. I don't see the whole picture. I rush in. I don't take time to read but play solely based on my instinct. I neglect basic principles in opening. I don't secure cuts. I play "pass" moves. I leave open skirts for counter attacks. I foolishly try to save dead groups. I don't take all chances to kill. I let my healthy groups be killed.
I know I shouldn't do all the staff mentioned, but I still do them.

This is fantastic! You have motivation and you know what you want to improve. The times when I have improved the most are similar to this. I've played an opponent and gotten trounced, but I know they are making mistakes and that I should punish them or ignore them instead of playing the moves I do. It sounds like all you need to do is play solidly in the beginning and then apply fundamentals.

Oddly enough, one of the keys that got me stronger in the past was simply not playing moves if I could see they didn't work. You'd think this would be obvious, but...

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2013 9:55 am**

vpopovic wrote:I lose games I should win.

There is no "should". Either you won or you lost. Every game you did lose, you could have won with better play; and conversely, every game you won, you could have lost with worse play. But don't feel entitled to win some game and not others.

I play moves without any firm plan.

Planning is hard. If you're thinking about how you would respond to each of your opponent's most obvious replies, you're already moving in the right direction.

I don't see the whole picture.

The whole picture has something like 10^60 branches. I don't see the whole picture either.

I rush in. I don't take time to read but play solely based on my instinct. I neglect basic principles in opening. I don't secure cuts. I play "pass" moves. I leave open skirts for counter attacks. I foolishly try to save dead groups. I don't take all chances to kill. I let my healthy groups be killed.

These are all excellent signs. I have made very little progress in Go other than by making the same painful mistake five or six times in an actual game.

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2013 11:44 am**

skydyr wrote:Oddly enough, one of the keys that got me stronger in the past was simply not playing moves if I could see they didn't work. You'd think this would be obvious, but...

I don't know, experimenting to see what happens is important too (unless you watch a lot of other people playing). Though I do agree with the advice of not trying to kill a group from the inside if you haven't read it out. A failed kill is rarely a good result, at best you remove some ko threats that you had, at worst you end up giving them points.

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2013 12:47 pm**

Boidhre wrote:
skydyr wrote:Oddly enough, one of the keys that got me stronger in the past was simply not playing moves if I could see they didn't work. You'd think this would be obvious, but...

I don't know, experimenting to see what happens is important too (unless you watch a lot of other people playing). Though I do agree with the advice of not trying to kill a group from the inside if you haven't read it out. A failed kill is rarely a good result, at best you remove some ko threats that you had, at worst you end up giving them points.

You misunderstand me. I would read a sequence, see that it doesn't work with proper play, and then play it anyways. Not to see what happens, but just out of ... I don't know. Fatigue or uncertainty about what to do instead or something.

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2013 1:45 pm**

skydyr wrote:You misunderstand me. I would read a sequence, see that it doesn't work with proper play, and then play it anyways. Not to see what happens, but just out of ... I don't know. Fatigue or uncertainty about what to do instead or something.

Ah, yes, I know that problem very well. Normally it's either time constraints or not being able to see another move. Or when I was weaker a hope that my opponent would mess up.

Posted: **Thu May 02, 2013 10:23 am**

@Boidhre, @skydry thanx, people
@jts this is probably one of three most motivational posts I read in this topic. Thank you very much.
@Togu It seems my PMs to you stay in my outbox and are never sent. I don't know what's wrong. However, I finished there our conversation from KGS today.

Posted: **Thu May 02, 2013 10:32 am**

In the end, he overplayed in top right. I pushed further and gained a seki, but I really need to learn to count in order to play calm and secure when I'm ahead.

Posted: **Thu May 02, 2013 3:05 pm**

Still, a huge frustration. I lose my big, fat, healthy groups like they grow on trees.
Sometimes, I'm just pure stupid.

Life In 19x19

Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir

Re: Project Shodan, KGS nick - Vladimir