131 wasn't a pass I don't think so much as preventing the atari at T8 being unrespondable to.

One thing to consider, especially after or schawipp's suggestion for it, is that black's lower left corner can still be invaded successfully, and he may be rather pressed for eyespace afterwards and die or just live with a couple points. This is why, incidentally, black's choice to kick on both sides is bad, in addition to the fact that it strengthens white.

I'd be a little skeptical of this advice on its face. He may have been referring to maintaining parity, in the sense of playing with fighting spirit. That is, responding to a 3-4 approach by approaching your opponents 3-4 stone, rather than playing a joseki where your opponent takes sente to make his enclosure, and so forth. Perhaps he thinks you are playing too defensively and need to tenuki more frequently once you are safe? Or maybe he just thinks you need to figure out when 'greedy' moves are actually greedy and punishable, and when they are severe.

A little clarification on this. In the first game we played at five handicap stones he was unable to kill any of my groups or even put too much pressure on them (until the very end when I got desperate), on the other hand he developed so much faster than me that I still lost. He was mentioning instead of extended two spaces, try three, or invade the opponent and don't sit back and let them take it. But I tend to be a little literal and took greed to heart as the advice.

He did also say that I'm likely to lose a lot if I follow the advice but it should eventually work out better. Perhaps overcompensating to learn quicker then working my way back to a happy medium is what he intended?

It's a common theme in my games that I make solid territory but if the opponent doesn't present weak groups to me I just don't get enough of it. Main reason why I started trying to learn to invade a couple of weeks back.

PeterN

I generally make solid groups to start with, but with the definite aim of taking territory. Although I have learnt from experience I need some degree of influence or I'm going to lose horribly. In these two specific games this week I can nigh on guarantee my opponent had a much thinner position than me simply because I started with five handicap stones! Despite this I did not try to pressure or attack any of his weak groups until I felt secure with my own, and by that point he was secure (enough) with his own, and also well on his way to having more territory. How much of the defence was due to facing a 1 or 2 dan I can't say.