Life In 19x19

This game seems to have a little of everything that I've commented on going wrong in my game: My opponents always seem to get good positions out of the Chinese fuseki and I don't; my opponents can invade my moyos and whatever I try to deal with their moyos only strengthens them; pincer attacks work to my opponent's advantage whichever side is doing the pincering; thickness goes badly wrong as soon as I get it; and my estimation of the score is way off. I thought after White 154 that the game was actually close. I was very surprised to lose as badly as I did.

You first comment in the games says it all: "If I play O17, my opponent gets a big territory in the top right."

Why dwell so much on territory? After all, you have the chance to make your own territory if B defends. it does not matter whether the final score is 151-150 or 21-20, you still win by one point. Just try to make moves which take points at least as big as those of your opponent.

Fedya wrote:If I play O17, my opponent gets a big territory in the top right.

Except, he doesn't.

Overall, your tactics are weak - you pick the wrong move in local situations a lot. From dealing with similar frustrations when I was weaker, I think that learning strategy is not useful before you have the tactical strength to back it up. I'll focus on that kind of mistakes here.

18 should be k16; there is a cut, but even if B cuts, W has the 3-3 invasion. M16 allows B to hane at the head of two stones, which should be painful for you
22: (not tactics, but addressing your comment) Chinese fuseki isn't good when your opponent has strength facing the 3-4 stone, as B does here. I would invade the top right 3-3 here
24: it's a slow way to defend the cut. M14 for example is faster
30: your comment is right
36: unnecessary; W should aim at the aji of e16 cut
44: c4 or c5 deprive B of a base. If he plays close to the c11 wall, w can launch a counterattack starting with a cap, which will make B miserable
50: c5 is better; W thickness is weakened by the d5 wedge.
52: good move
54 can be a bit more severe, k5 or k4 maybe. B cannot connect to o3, which is too far away.
60 should attempt to seal Black in. B will have a hard time living both here and in the corner.
62 is slow, as you note. There's actually no ladder; if Black cuts, w will atari him all the way to e9. He can't capture anything.
66 is like a pass move
92: W can capture the black stones starting with k8; read it out
120: despite the atari, W cut at q2 is working: read it out. I think w should probably be able to live here.
There are a few more scattered things, like 159 is not sente and 161 is not sente.

Cheer Up!

It seems to me your chief weakness is nothing to do with Go skills but a pervasive pessimism and despondency. If you expect to lose you will. Try to relax, get a more cheerful avatar and have fun!

I agree with all the comments above, particularly Uberdude's

I thought I'd just focus on a small part of the game which I thought summarized a few issues. And they're strategic ones! (So not just tactics to worry about)

Move 40 - I would say you are playing too close to black's thickness, and stones here are at best passes, but more likely to become problems for you later.

41-42 - black made a mistake and helps you

43 - black makes a mistake now and invades your area of influence

44 - you know it's wrong, but you still played it. Too close to your strength. Play towards it. Any of b4, b5, c5 (and possibly others) are good. The D11 stones are strong. They cannot suddenly become weak. Black will have to play many unanswered moves before they are weak. Black cannot initiate attacks on it while he is locally weak.

49 - black makes a very weak move and gives you a nice sente

50 - you really don't need to play this move. Why not take a moyo move at K4? If black hane's at D7 you can pull back to E6. My more general point is that you can't always have everything you want - the fantastic wall AND the perfect extension. You have to give a little here and there so long as you get a bit more than your opponent.

A few comments to supplement Shaddy's commentary.



Main focus: Avoid unnecessary moves and tiny moves. Often these moves are defensive.

Edit: Added a correction.

I think the key point of your "weakness" is move 44.
You must play around C4 there.
If you learn how to use your walls and thickness, that will put you to 6k.
That is not easy to learn because it feels (at least for me) like jumping from a cliff and hoping that somehow it will be alright. But you need to trust, it will be alright! (Most of the time )

Shaddy wrote: 120: despite the atari, W cut at q2 is working: read it out. I think w should probably be able to live here.

What if black connects at O2? White can take a bit of corner right? Connect under or make a small living group in the corner.

Krama wrote:

Shaddy wrote: 120: despite the atari, W cut at q2 is working: read it out. I think w should probably be able to live here.

What if black connects at O2? White can take a bit of corner right? Connect under or make a small living group in the corner.

Then the four black stones in the corner lose the capturing race after wR2. As far as I can see anyway.

There are a lot of cooments here to digest, so I'm likely going to be posting multiple replies here and coming back to some of the comments farther down the thread later in the day.

DrStraw asked:

Why dwell so much on territory?

I thought the point of the game was to get more territory than your opponent. And there's no way to tell at the beginning of the game whether it's going to be a 151-150 game or a 21-20 game.

Ed Lee wrote:

this connect makes your group very heavy.

I specifically played this connect instead of the tiger mouth because in a previously game I posted here, I played the tiger mouth, and was told I should just connect directly. So now I have to learn when one should play the direct connect and when one should play the tiger mouth. This goes with something you said later in your comment:

Please see Post 6 (part 2), Another opening, trapped .

which leads to:

As mentioned many times, other nice people here
will try to be helpful and show you diagrams after diagrams,
and these are all well-meaning and good,
but what actually happens in your next game
is, say, you reduce a wrong liberty and lose a big group.

One of the things that I've hoped I can get out of a review is something that will enable me to figure out what to do in that next game, when the principles are more or less the same, but the position is different enough that you can't just follow the principles by rote. One of the things I think about when I'm playing and I'm in a position where I don't know what to do, is to ask myself what strong players would suggest I should do. Unsurprisingly, the answers aren't as good as what strong players actually play themselves.

I specifically played this connect instead of the tiger mouth because in a previously game I posted here, I played the tiger mouth, and was told I should just connect directly. So now I have to learn when one should play the direct connect and when one should play the tiger mouth.

Hi Fedya, do you still have access to the other thread and post, about your solid connect ?

If I play O17, my opponent gets a big territory in the top right.
...
I thought the point of the game was to get more territory than your opponent

Two finer points.

• To end up with more points than your opponent, at the end of the game. How to get there is why humans are still studying Go after a few thousand years.
• As mentioned, part of the issue here is the evaluation. Black does not necessarily get a big territory top right.

For 10, tiger's mouth vs connect isn't a large difference - it's the same general idea, and both are heavy. To give an example of a different idea, I like p8 or n6, but I'm not convinced White should play locally.

Fedya wrote: DrStraw asked:

Why dwell so much on territory?

I thought the point of the game was to get more territory than your opponent. And there's no way to tell at the beginning of the game whether it's going to be a 151-150 game or a 21-20 game.

Well, as for the first point you are correct. So giving the opponent a 50 point corner (not that I saying you would in this game) is just fine if you get 51 points on the outside.

And for the second point, I disagree. Based on the first ten or so moves it is often possible to tell whether it will be a moyo game (large territories) or a scrappy, fighting game (small territories).

DrStraw wrote:And for the second point, I disagree. Based on the first ten or so moves it is often possible to tell whether it will be a moyo game (large territories) or a scrappy, fighting game (small territories).

I was going to make a point along the lines of "I'm not so sure, at least at kyu levels generally, where all sorts of things can happen that at least one of the two players didn't expect", but then I've seen 9p vs 9p games where it was clearly an influential moyo game, then two ko fights, three sacrifice exchanges and a couple of running dragons later the board was a mess of captured groups and few point territories where previously it looked impossible. I guess sometimes cookies crumble in unexpected ways

Fedya wrote:I specifically played this connect instead of the tiger mouth because in a previously game I posted here, I played the tiger mouth, and was told I should just connect directly. So now I have to learn when one should play the direct connect and when one should play the tiger mouth....

The problem is having a good feel of "why" one is better in some situations and the other is better in different ones. This is (yes Bill, I'm being one of "those" adults again ) one of the reasons I'm always a bit frustrated when X posts a review, Y says "ah, you shouldn't do this here, you should do that" and doesn't offer a "because" that makes sense to X. X then misapplies said knowledge and instead of having a potential bad habit adjusted, just replaces it with a new one.