Life In 19x19

Hi,

I have been looking to post a warts-and-all game for review, so I decided I would post whatever happened this morning.

I'm black. If I'm honest, this game is at about the current strategic limits of my play and is about average for me tactically, blunders and all. This was a 10-minute game, so a couple of the blunders are from time pressure at the end, but making basic oversights like that are, sadly, part of my game too.



After move 25 or so, I have no idea how to proceed. Should I keep attacking his O7 group? 26 seems to be the obvious wrong idea, as I end up losing a few points that could've won the game had I made them with the stones I send over there to die. Maybe just invade the 3-3 here, as he is reinforced on both sides?

30 is the beginning of the "I have no idea what to do here" moves though it seems obvious now (to me at least) that taking the LR and UL corners is better.

59 I just didn't see coming. 60 is an attempt to complicate things to see if I can get my group out somehow if he makes a mistake. There's no reading here other than it doesn't look like that stone is going to obviously die and I might help my territory along the bottom if nothing else.

155 is a pretty common way for me to lose stones--having a sort of imaginary connection that turns out to not be connected.

At the end I was rather shocked to see that W only won by 3.5 as I was considering resigning near move 155.

Anyway, thanks for any help that you can offer.

I'm going to play in the London tournament (my first tournament) at the end of the month and am a bit nervous about it. My rank has quickly improved and I'm having trouble getting comfortable playing people around the 8-11 kyu range because the "just play along until they make a horrible obvious blunder and kill their group" plan that I've used thus far in my Go career doesn't work anymore.

#3-7 to easy for white, its a handycap game, make use of it

#8 to slow, an approach on the upper left corner would have been better

#9-13 same as #3-7

#14 same as #8

#30 don't leave d14 alone unless you want to trade it, look at how much you have to give your opponent later to save those two stones

Some ideas on your questions. I'm not going to go into too much tactical detail, since it was blitz...

Hi, hope you don't mind my comments - feel free to ignore if I'm not a strong enough player for you.

I don't think there's anything really wrong with 3-7 exactly, you're letting White start to build up territory which he gets with an ideal double wing moyo a few moves later. Like p2501 says though, #8 is a bit slow. In fact a move like R11 and R18 are miai http://senseis.xmp.net/?44PointLowApproachLowExtensionSlide33 so there is no need to play here right now. If you wanted to build a moyo on the upper right I would have chosen #4 at Q14. An immediate white follow up at R12 is supposed to be an overplay and you can in theory split the groups and menace white. And if you were planning to play black 8 around Q10 it seems ok. .. but pincering white is another idea. Your extra two space extension gives away sente.

24 doesn't threaten White just expands your territory so White can ignore it and defend his territory.

25 get into trouble since white doesn't need to extend to F16. Still, after you might be able to invade at the 3-3 point. I haven't studied the theory properly but 25 at C16 seems like a better reducing move, or you can still invade the 3-3 point comfortably with the large knight enclosure. http://senseis.xmp.net/?4473Enclosure33Invasion

up to 48 - you've gained nothing by trying to save those two stones and white has made a large amount of territory above.

50 - doesn't do much - the white group has plenty of eye space anyway (but apparently 49 is white playing it safe) and 50 can't seal it in anyway.

59 - Cutting one space jumps is discussed in the Elementary Go book Tesuji chapter 7.

After moves 70 ish you have a large moyo at the bottom and a medium sized one upper right, white has a massive one and a live group in the bottom right (or consider the board divided diagonally with a small white group in the bottom right). Just about everything after 70 is endgame pushing.

#106 okay so you did invade the corner - probably better to do this when originally capped.

#155 unfortunate. btw I probably would have played 140 at N13 but this is basically like you said.

#182 I don't think this is necessary but under time pressure and to be safe not bad (sorry I haven't read it out I should probably be working right now ).

#184 b6 would be better, by around 9 points. (b6, c7, b7, b8 etc).

Thanks very much for these replies! The comments have definitely shown me a couple of things to work on!

p2501 wrote:#8 to slow, an approach on the upper left corner would have been better

I'm just going to comment on this, your first strategic mistake.

At the moment you have sente. You didn't have to defend the upper right since the move you played (R11) and R18 are miai (if attacked from the side you play into the corner and vice versa.

So you want to look for the biggest move on the board. The point isn't whether you should now approach the upper left or take the center of the bottom (with that approach as follow up). The point is that the move you played is both small and gote. You should instead be looking for a move that is big or retains sente (or has a good follow up) or ideally both.

Mike Novack wrote:

p2501 wrote:#8 to slow, an approach on the upper left corner would have been better

I'm just going to comment on this, your first strategic mistake.

Stuff like this always makes me actually go look at the game-- and in this case, everyone is totally correct, 8 is clearly inferior to many moves on the left or by the bottom star point. A heuristic that gets this position right is, "find the biggest open area and play in it." Count the lines between corner stones to see how "open" a side is; in case of a tie, higher stones (4th line) make a side more open than lower stones (3rd line).

Not to be overly critical about -- we may be over-emphasizing the fuseki -- but another way to think about this is, if you want to develop a side, which side is biggest? Things that make a side big: (i) it is (or prevents) an extension from a corner enclosure, (ii) it is (or prevents) an extension from a high stone, or (iii) it is (or prevents) an extension from from two sides at the same time, and (iv) it is (or prevents) the widest extension available on the board.

So the strikes against developing the right side before the other sides: (i) it extends from a low stone above, while the bottom and left extend from high stones in both directions, and (ii) there are 9 empty spaces on the right, but 11 on the bottom and left.

Ultimately, that those 2 points are miai is what I'm going to end up taking from this game. After I hit about 14 kyu, every single player plays this corner approach. I wasn't aware that I have sente here.

Weirdly, after I play R11 here, sooner or later my opponent will eventually get around to playing R18 (and then I would misplay by playing S18, which is another thing I learned from the link CnP put up and for which I should pay by losing the entire corner), but I never put together that I could just omit R11 and play R18 (or vice versa) if need be and that my group would be fine.