Life In 19x19

This journal is full of self hatred. Give yourself some positive feedback. A few measures you van take:

1 play when you feel ok; don't stick to some self imposed rhythm
2 never resign
3 get yourself Into the endgame
4 think about 3 alternatives for Every move

...

Give yourself some reachable goals in order to get positive feedback.

Love yourself. Love go.

Love.

Dieter

I tracked my ranks before I made the current goal, but I actually don't really care about those. My goal is just to play a good game(for my level), Even if my rank doesn't go up anymore I could still achieve it. Its just that I haven't played a lot of games lately that I found satisfying, but I haven't given up hope .

Oh and the hatred(although that's a strong word) is pretty much only directed at my go playing, not my personality and that's a good thing. Once I'm too satisfied with something I start slacking.

University has been kicking my ass lately, so it was kinda hard to get some go related stuff done but I somehow managed to do a bit.

Did about 50 problems per day, since I got time for that on the bus, but I noticed that I make a lot more mistakes as if I were doing them at home, still, I'm gonna count that as progress^^. Also read a good chunk of Attack and Defense, I feel like I finally got something out of the book, I'm gonna finish it this time for sure.

And finally I played a game. I really wasn't feeling like playing much the last few days, but tonight I fired up tygem and a 2D challenged me. I haven't had this much fun with a go game in a long time, so that felt really nice. He even gave me a few pointers after the game. Even though I blundered hard on 98 otherwise I'm actually happy with a game of mine for once.

did you consider D8 ? After , you make a kind of broken shape for yourself here.
is possible ( depends on your plan ); did you also consider Q18 ?
After you connect, W has 2 cuts, and W cannot fix both; this is one meaning of your --
so if W fixes one of them ( ), you take advantage of the other cut...
...which you didn't -- did you consider o18 ?
So W gets both !! Compare if you blocked Q18 on .
Good for you to study the standard sequences here.

• your atari gives W the outside; you don't want this here.
• what if you atari 4th line P3 ? Study this variation.
• what if you just connect R4 ? Study this variation.

If you gain some understanding of this , it's already worth this game.

Go is strange, lately I enjoy tsumego a lot more than the actual game (maybe its the instant gratification of the right moves?).

Anyways, still doing 50 tsumego a day, mostly life and death, but once I'm better at those I'll throw in some more tesuji practice.

Also played a game, but made a horrible missplay (22) that put me on tilt and I pretty much threw it after that.

In a few weeks my assignments and exams are mostly done, I plan to put myself on a stricter playing schedule for summer.

I wouldn't call a misplay at all. White got a huge corner and black got 4 floaty stones that you can attack. At white should perhaps atari the stone instead of capturing right away, to split black further, and similarly, actually capturing at or so was too slow, and white should have descended straight away at K17.

The other big issue is that white let black get away with the weakness at N6 for far too long. Cutting there much earlier would have been quite advantageous for white, splitting black into 3 groups. So long as white killed the bottom group or built up massive strength in the center, white would have been able to neutralize black's left side significantly better.

Thanks skydyr.

Well, guess I screwed up on the followup and not the move itself, good thing you pointed that out, gotta burn those followups into my memory =)

How is it even possible that I get worse every game? If this **** continues I'll soon be 30k again...

I don't feel very confortable making comments as I'm very not a strong player but... seems to me that you followed to much your opponenent... I think I would have taken the corner first... maybe on hoshi ? so that you can take another corner if white approach...

Also 31 looks on the wrong orientation to me, I would have played it on C16 as by move 33, you extend toward white thickness is it ?

At move 79 you fall into a cutting trap. Your big group is now disconnected. There is an opportunity to live with it a few moves later but the major point is that when facing a choice between giving up some territory or giving up a connection between two heavy groups, then you should always sacrifice the territory. At the beginner level, those who keep their groups connected will usually win.

- stay connected (and cut the opponent)
- count your liberties (and those of the opponent)
- read 3 moves deep for almost every move

Look again at 79. Think about what you may have been thinking at that moment. And think again how to preserve connection with minimal loss.

Don't be too harsh on yourself either. Take the bare minimum of good play into account. Put it into practice. Develop some mental toughness. See http://senseis.xmp.net/?DieterVerhofsta ... mesmanship

Cheers!

Well, I managed to create another abomination



The only positive thing I have to say is that I knew the last sequence would fail, but I was pretty far behind, so I just played it out for the lulz^^

I dont really need a review, but I have one question:

W22: I feel like at some time during the game I should have attacked that stone, but I never found a good way, any ideas?

About , why did you think you should've attacked it ?

If you want to attack something, you must have at least one
good reason for it (and the more good reasons, the better.)
So, what are your reasons ?

Even if your reason is you just want to practice fighting
and attacking, (and not concerned at all whether
the attack was good for Black or not),
all you care about is learning how to attack,
that's OK — as long as you are aware that
your attack may turn out to be misguided.

EdLee wrote:About , why did you think you should've attacked it ?

After 27 I really didn't know what to do. Most of the groups were at least somewhat safe, I coudn't find a good way to build a huge moyo and white didn't have more potential, so no reason for a reckless invasion(this changed shortly afterwards....). The only thing that seemed out of place was that one lone white stone, so I felt like it would be the point to look at.

Hi Pak, is gote. Too early. You didn't have to reply.
You had sente and could do whatever you wanted.

Ok, time for some journal updates =)

- Revisited Attack and Defense, specifically the Attacking part, gonna focus on Invasions next
- Still doing my Tsumego, 50 every day is hard because of university, but I manage most of the time
- Playing a little more, I try for 2-3 games a day and make it more often than not .

And here the latest game, I didn't feel terrible about the game as a whole, though I lost because of a stupid endgame blunder....

Main question: How should I have dealt with the invasion on the right side? I feel like I should have gotten more out of my wall.