Hello everyone; I have started practicing this very interesting game not so long ago, and yesterday I played my very first "real" game in 19x19 (I played twice before but my opponents didn't seem to be familiar with the "litle-more-than-basic" whole board strategies). Of course, I was utterly crushed, so I would appreciate a lot if I could get some analysis of the things I did wrong and why.

(Unrelated question: Was it ok for me to open this thread here? I didn't know whether to do it here or in the beginners subforum. I know this might not be a very interesting game to analyze, but since the other subforum just says that it is for questions and I saw some other "first time games" here, I decided this might be the best option.)

I have read some books about the game (around 7-8, both introductory like Janice Kim series, and one or two of problems) and I have played nearly a hundred games in 9x9 against the AI of my ipad. I do recognize that the things that will help me the most now are to keep playing and keep reading (books/problems), but I felt like I needed something to try to pay attention to while playing in order to take better advantage of the experience (specially because of the way in which I lost).

So, here is the game. I played it in the online-go page. I resigned the game because I was out of time and I only had a few of the 30-second blocks which didn't gave me enough time to make a passable read (reminder: while learning the basics of reading, don't go with the Byo-Yomi timer; you are left with little time the moments you need it the most), so there was no point in keep embarrassing myself. The first thing I did after losing was checking in EidoGo the right josekis, which I obviously missed, so I know I made mistakes there (though, if someone wants to tell me where lies the weakness of my "variations", I would appreciate that. I tried my best to make decent shapes).

The most important thing that bothered me was that I felt completely unable to defend myself; I don't know exactly why, but apparently either my shapes where awfully flawed, or I didn't know how to properly defend my groups, or I was giving up on them too easily, or something, because my opponent just kept on penetrating and capturing them. At stones 63, 115 and 147 I thought to myself: "Ok, I think I have a decent framework to make and protect some territory around here"; I knew I might not get all the territory, but I thought I would be able to keep a decent amount of it. I thought I saw influence and a little (/the possibility of) thickness. But every time, I was pushed and capture almost effortlessly. Some advice on what I did wrong there would be extremely helpful, because that is something I feel like I need to look out for urgently.

Thank you all in advance; without further ado, here is the game (I was black):

You actually did a great job of developing a giant moyo! Around move 60, this looks great for black! Unfortunately white was able to completely reduce you moyo.

So my biggest piece of advice is: when white starts pushing into your area play further away from her stones. In this game you play almost all contact moves (moves touching you opponent) which actually makes white stronger. If you played further away you could fence him in more effectively and keep most of the territory.

Also, when your moyo is so big, feel free to give some of it up, by letting your opponent take some territory, you can strengthen the rest.

Welcome to the forums, and to the game! This is a perfectly fine place to post your first game. And, in terms of first 19x19 games, this one looks much better than mine did, as I recall.

I don't have time right now to offer detailed comments (but will try if you identify any specific moves...though someone will likely beat me to it). Generally, though, I'm confident that your "whole board thinking" and big-picture strategy are most certainly not holding you back. I think you will see the most benefit from (1) playing a bunch of games; and (2) working on go problems. You didn't lose because you mis-played a joseki or approached a stone from the wrong side--you lost because you didn't read local sequences.

Otherwise, I think you have a decent grasp of general concepts for someone at your level. I think you'll see some rapid improvement if you just practice reading (problems) and play a bunch of games.

Hi Nordico, Welcome!

For your cross-cut, W has at least EIGHT local contact replies alone. (Globally W has many more.) Let's think about what this means for a moment. How many, if any, of those 8 replies did you consider before you played ? That's merely a 1-move read-ahead of merely one of your candidate moves for . I'm not saying anything good or bad about the cross-cut. Just to give you an idea how much knowledge (work) is hidden behind "just" one move. (Turns out, cross cuts are notoriously tricky. )

Probably others will post more feedback. I'll return later.

Welcome, again.

Thank you all for the responses and kind words! I guess all that book reading (oh, I also tried to "study" a fairly good number of games) really paid off: my strategy is based in trying to apply the intuition inherited from that, rather than actual thorough conscience of what I am doing (I guess that will come from further study and practice). It is good to know I have an acceptable intuitive base of that .



Ok, that is good advice. I see this now that you mention it, but while I was playing I think my thoughts were along the line of "OK, he is trying to come into my territory, so now I guess I should be defending => proverb: make contact when defending, not when attacking" (BTW: yes, I am still in that stage where I panic after every action that comes towards me and feel the immediate need to respond directly to it. I am trying my best to control the urge ). Is it that this is one case in which the proverb didn't apply that well, or is it that I should have seen it as attacking him? (I know that when invading I should probably attack, and when reducing I should probably defend, but he was doing more of a..."filtering through the gaps"...)



Ok, I suspected this could be the biggest problem. Perhaps the greatest bumps came at the end when I was on the 30 second limit per play that didn't allow me to even start my reading trials (after which I came to the conclusion I wasn't learning anything playing that fast and decided to ). Thanks; I'll be waiting for the review .




Ok, good question. Actually, to tell you the truth, I didn't make a lot of effort trying to read the followups of that move because I thought there weren't enough stones in the region for making a reliable read (I was thinking about those many more global responses you mention, but now that I think of it, it makes sense that a crosscut would probably be followed up by an extension or atari). Most likely, I should have done that . What I did instead was to consider that my other stones at the starpoints gave me some strength in the area, so I was "playing aggressive where I was strong" (as you see, as my first steps I plan on relying heavily on go proverbs as I learn the actual meaning of them =P), leaving the reading for after some follow up move: which, now that I review it, I also did wrong, didn't I? Perhaps a diagonal for would have been a better move than that doomed extension...

"Make contact when defending" refers to defending a weak group, rather than protecting a moyo or the like. When you make a contact move, it's often sente, but it strengthens your opponent in the process. As per the proverb, the idea is that when you have a weak group, you make contact moves as forcing moves, and hopefully because the opponent is already strong there, so getting stronger isn't helpful to them.

Honestly, in terms of go, attacking and defending generally refer to the attack and defense of weak groups.

In this case, a more apt proverb is "don't let the snake into your moyo".

Before I go any further, let me just mention that I'm only 8k, so quite a bit weaker than most people posting here. Some of my advice may be wrong or odd, but I hope I can help a bit. If anyone wants to correct me, please feel welcome.



In this situation White is reducing you, she's pushing back the edge of your territory from her safe outside.

I can't comment to much about these proverbs, but I'll mention a little of intuition I use in these situations:

1) Playing contact moves gives your opponent forcing moves against you (and you against them).
2) Those forcing moves will make your opponent stronger.
3) Those forcing moves will make it easier for your opponent to squeeze around your stone.

One description I've heard about contact play is that each side get's stronger equally, so it sort of evens out the local power. In this situation, you are already quite strong with all the walls facing this area, so if both sides equalize, that means that you lost relative power.

I think this is the basis of the no contact in attacks/yes contact in defense proverb. If you are attacking a group, you are the one in power, you don't want the defender to get free moves or to equalize the local power. However if your are a defending a weak group, you do want to get forcing moves and you do want to equalize power.

Anyway, there's a lot of nuance to this sort of thing, but there's a simple idea I want to convey, which is don't play contact plays if you are trying to stop your opponents stones from pushing deeper (unless you can completely cut them off, etc.).

Also, honestly the best way to improve is just to play a lot more games. If you have read 8 books and only played only 1 19x19 game there's no way you are understanding the books (I don't mean to offend you, I have read a similar number of books and feel like there's a ton I don't understand in them) Every game you play will teach you something new. Take a little time to review your game, see what you were trying to accomplish and why it did or did not work and keep playing.

Lose your first 50 games as soon as you can I don't completely agree with that philosophy, but it sounds like you could use a lot more playing to balance out your studying. That builds a ton of intuition and is IMHO the best way for a beginner to improve.

W was a sandbagger the best I can tell. He seemed to understand basic shapes well enough to be around 15k or so. You played pretty well, now it's just practice practice on a big board, and after a week or two you should be able to take a rematch against this W. I don't really have any other sort of advice. You're still obviously familiarizing yourself with all the shapes that may occur on the board, and it takes a while. Take your time. After that phase, reviews are much more useful.

Here are some of my ideas about your game, it's 1st time I review a game, so it's far from perfect, but I hope it will help you a bit

It's not sandbagging specifically, so much as that on OGS, ranks are very very strong. Internally, the 30k rating is probably close to correct. You can't extrapolate well from an OGS rating to one on a server that's primarily not correspondence based, though. For example, I play at perhaps an AGA 2k level, but on OGS, I tend to fluctuate between 9k and 10k. I do think, also, that there is an issue with weaker players improving faster than their correspondence games are played, but that's a feature of month-long games.

Viator: Thanks for the review! I'm reposting it here embedded in the post for easier reference.

Move 42: When you say "If black wants to play C10 he should play it now" you mean that my play at B43 was well timed? or that I should have played it as an answer to W38 instead? or something else?

Move 46: I did consider connecting, but as it seemed to me that white was trying to make me heavy in order to attack and he had a very strong position upwards, so I wasn't sure I was going to be able to save them. Perhaps I gave up too easily on them?

Moves 64 and 127: Awesome; this helps me see more clearly what everyone said about playing too close. Thanks!

Move 106 (alt): Oh gawd I totally and completely missed that , haha.

Hi Nordico,

And, indeed, forcing your opponent to play a stone in an area where they've already got all the stones they want can often make them overconcentrated.

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Poka King of the south east.