Life In 19x19

Extension.

He played the extension, so I get a free atari. Therefore now when he pushes up at 7-16 I can atari at 6-15 before turning on top at 7-15. This is the point of those probes, to protect the cut in advance. He could cut at 6-18, but I would get the tiger's mouth at 9-18 and good influence. Capturing the corner is too small for this stage of the game.

So now is a good time for him to tenuki. I expect an approach to my 4-4 in the upper right. We'll see what happens then.

Seems like I have to cut now. I remember when I first saw this pattern and the corner looked so good to me. Right now the outside looks pretty nice. I wonder if I was supposed to do something different so the shape is slightly worse on the outside? Tough to tell how much black can build and how easy it might be to reduce and/or invade. If my bottom side group can become 2 eyed in sente that might help my invasion prospects..

Tiger's mouth.

Aha! He's made the mistake I predicted like 6 moves ago

I mean, okay, he's still winning. But every positive exchange for me makes it a little harder for him later. After he turns at 2-2, I'm going to turn on top at 7-16, he's gonna capture, and then I'm going to enclose the upper right. It's going to be all his territory versus my huge upper right. Let me try to count. Disclaimer that you probably shouldn't use this count as a good example, blind counting is hard.

White:
The bottom right: 12ish points, and maybe he deserves a little more for the slight weakness of my bottom right group.
The bottom: He captured for 4 points and will grab another eye, call it 6 points total.
The bottom left: He's going to make a move either on the side or in the corner, so I can give him 12ish points again here.
The upper left: After the capture, he's going to have 8 points under my stones, and then another 8ish on the outside.
The left: Due to the ladder break aji in the center, I expect he'll get something good on the left. Call it another 6 points coming from nowhere in particular.
So that's a total of 12+6+12+8+8+6+komi = 60ish.

Black:
The bottom left: maybe 5 points since I'm assuming I'm answering a ladder breaker.
The bottom right: captured two stones and will make a second eye, I'll call it 7 points.
The upper right: Everything else.

So I need to make 50ish points at the upper right. Obviously, that's not very likely, but that's why he's ahead right now. It's not so out of the ballpark - I can see myself making around 40 in the upper right on a good day, doing better than expected on the left, and winning in endgame. People take positions like this that are obviously better for one side and get too wrapped up over territory counts. He's an amateur like me, he's definitely going to give me at least 20 points all over the board, I just need to spot the openings.

If I did get this pattern wrong then I have no choice now..

Making this one exchange is good while he's committing to the stones. It's very good for the outside - allowing me to get more strength out of the atari at 5-14, for example.

Many people confuse themselves about preserving ko threats - if you're getting something tangible, and you're not losing another option that could be better later, then make the forcing move. Ko threats are usually a minor concern - timing is already easily the hardest part of Go, and it's really silly to not always do your very best at it, unless you know that there's a ko on the board. I think a lot of people learned a misconception because it's much easier as a strong commentator/analyzer to mention ko threats rather than the intricacies of aji that are usually at play.

Still going to play the plan I mentioned last post.

Talked myself into this. I only just realised that the squeeze moves are pretty large but essentially endgame (in that both groups should be fine and healthy either way.) I was just about to answer anyway but caught myself thinking 'something like 17-17 is probably the better move really'. Hopefully I will learn more playing this way!

If you play 17-16, R16, then I play 17-14, R14.

Ah, he wants to play away now? It's much worse than tenuki earlier in the variation, since he has already give me the strength and I still have the option to take territory. I think it's actually bigger for him to capture once he's given me this strength, because now it has all the positive value of territory but none of the negative value of losing influence. But okay, the 3-3 is more important first, so time to make some exchanges. I ended up writing a stream of consciousness for this move.

I obviously want my influence facing the top. I think it's so important that my only option is to force it. So I should play Q17 first. He'll extend and I have several options.

If I play double hane and give him a ponnuki, his ponnuki is actually not in an awful spot, where he can follow up with a move on the side to take it all as territory. So not that.

If I hane and push a bunch he should get sente. But it's not that easy to use the sente, whether it's more important to play in the center or with the territory. It also makes the right side tiny, which is good. Playable, but maybe not perfect - it would be a hard game if continued with a jump from his center group.

If I extend and he slides, I could take sente to go take the stones. They're worth about 20 points. Looks playable, but it's so obvious that his next move would be strengthening his new group that I think I would play on top of it instead. Then I expect hane, I would tiger's mouth, and he extends. Normally you use the aji of cuts on the side to get something, but what I get would be on the right side, which is nearly worthless. Looks a little bit worse than what I deserve.

If I play knight's move, he would extend. If he plays into the flying knife when I have huge influence nearby there's no way he's gonna get a good result. So he extends, I cover, and he takes the hane. I have options then, particularly to tenuki. But I'm a little afraid that he would atari and then descend under the skirt of the top, which looks absolutely ideal for him. So I would want to continue, and I can't really switch directions with the hane on the three stones. So I guess I might double hane. If he plays atari and capture, then I can take the corner with the hane. I like the look of that, actually. I don't really see a great response - if he connects then I connect and it's a dream variation. So I'll go for it.

I also considered trying to force the flying knife in the other direction. Block the other way, let him push, knights move, and then if he pushes stand up. I don't think it's really necessary, though. I might play that way if I was down 50 points instead of 25.

He seems to be going for maximum early territory. I guess it's a viable strategy, but he's going to have to be very careful with my influence later. I'm planning on eventually capping his center group, and if he has to cede 10th line territory to that, then taking 10 points in the corner might look a little silly.

I was slightly apprehensive about black blocking the other way and double hane to give me a ponnuki in blacks sphere of influence. I don't think that would have been good for black, but it seemed tough to accurately judge the health of the ponnuki so it seemed like there was room for error.
Comfortable-ish this way. Heading towards invasion/reduction difficult decisions.

I play 18-13, S13.

Continuing my plan.

I'm out of practice with go but especially out of practice with the knights move that black played (17-14). I'm quite unsure but I'm seeing this double hane as a special case joseki and I'm surprised that my opponent thinks this is the case for it. The result looks reasonable to me though. It seems to me that black is focusing on building the top side and that seems very reasonable.

Just came back from an awesome hockey game. It ended with a penalty shot, where the guy took it really slow and simple to throw off the goalie's timing (he said after the game). It struck me as somewhat applicable to this game - I can throw him off by getting into an offbeat game and playing simple.

Anyway this is the last easy move. I have to take advantage of the weakness of the three stones, and I want to preserve the atari over top on the side. So hane is the proper local move. Now the ball is in his court - the upper left corner, upper right corner, and general center area are all very interesting. My moves are going to slow down from here on, as I'll try my best to outplay his middlegame.

Maybe I played the special case joseki move here actually? Should be okay.
I expected black to atari on top first.

18-17, S17.

Atari.

So he decided that the upper left was the largest of each possible move - I think I agree. It ended up being that the whole 3-3 sequence was an exchange before coming back. Was it a good exchange? Well, I now have a much firmer grasp on the upper side than I would have originally, but I have to play another move in the corner to take it. It looks like it might be slightly good for him - I get completely clean aji, he gets a ponnuki.

This is the first time that I looked at an empty real board - it's harder to keep track when separate local positions start clashing. I really wanted to make a tenuki that could give me some initiative in this game. I was giving the most consideration to 12-10 cap, 12-11 two-space cap, and atari over at 16-13. The problem with the atari is that it will be answered by a capture that eliminates too much of my aji in the corner - a ko might follow, but he can lose the ko to simplify the position too much. The problem with my one-space cap is that his group doesn't really have to respond to me. If he pushes up on the side, then I'll have to respond to that. My capping move starts to look like an overextension, too far up the board compared to where he's reducing me.

So the move that I really want to play in my heart is the two-space cap at 12-11. It prevents a simple jump into the center, and when he pushes up from the side, it lets me get a sweet double hane where my shape is already helped. The problem is that it's not very ambitious. He can poke a little bit and then come back to the corner - and if I count, he's going to be up by a couple dozen with gentle reductions. I can't completely relax until I die of heart failure, I have to go for more, make him scared of his weaknesses.

So, since I need more points, I'm taking the corner territory. The problem with this is that his next move of pushing up from the side is distressing. I'm going to have to double hane that, pushing him onto the fifth line. The key will be whether I can get in a well timed move from my bottom right group to push him back down, or get him to overextend into a losing fight in the center.

Offering the same position if he plays 3-19, I guess. He probably should, because it's huge. If he saves the 3 stones, thinking he's found an improvement, then life will be getting rough. The problem for me is that I can't really allow him to play 18-18 and get away with no weaknesses, even though the center is getting big.