Life In 19x19

Winning has been a lot more common for me now... but this game that I just played was not particularly satisfying. Despite winning due to a large win in the corner, I felt like I was getting outsmarted just about everywhere. The game should not have been this close...

Requesting recommendations on key moves, but also the overall concepts that I'm weak at and what I should work on. It's my 4th week playing Go now and I feel my progress slowing down, which is not good. I think this is because I'm not working on my weak areas and only relying on parts where I'm decent at in order to win games.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Oops! I'm black and won by 7.5 points! We are both DDK, going into SDK

You don't say which color you are and it is not obvious at all who won the game. Nor do you say the strength of the opponent. Both sides play inconsistently. As far as slowing down in your progress, that should be expected. Normal progress is likely to be more of a logarithmic growth than linear.

EDIT: I did not see the branch that leads to moves others are referring to. Perhaps it would have been better to edit it out first.

Hi n,

Very bad. Very bad shape.
You force W to happily turn at Q10.
See Toothpaste and related pages.

Q10.

Q10.

No. Find the move to kill the N18 stone.

that I'm weak at and what I should work on.

All the basics. Basic shapes (like the above mistakes). Basic life-and-death. Basic fighting skills (like the above mistakes). Basic contact fights (like the above mistakes). Basic vital points. Basic capturing race. There are numerous threads with very long discussions on these topics.

In addition to what Ed says:

may be a bit small.
definitely small. Maybe play k2? I'm not great at finding the biggest move at times like this.

In general, the reasons to expand from a live group include:

1. Rare cases of a calm game where it's much bigger than anything else on the board.
2. To prevent future bullying (moves that won't kill you, but will force you to live small, give up territory, etc).
3. To put pressure on a nearby group that isn't yet alive.