Thanks S2W, that's very encouraging. So I recorded a new loss yesterday. I felt so ashamed by the end of it that I did not want to show it, but after a good night's sleep and a new look at the game, I feel it is quite interesting.

It is the kind of game where I never felt under pressure or threatened or anything, but still, my opponent plays in such a way that, if I had not blundered as I have, he would still have lead by a few points I think. So in that sense I find it very intriguing because I wonder how it is that he was able to outplay me so "softly" as if to say.

I have put some of my ideas in the sgf, and I might have spotted some possible improvements in my game. I have also spotted THE losing move I think - it is very very clear (and comes way before the blunder - the blunder is only the incarnation of the losing move, quite nice really ).

So as usual I am very interested in your hints, but in particular on this aspect of being outplayed without suffering, which happened in this game.

Some comments (hidden below)

Main points -
1. Making your opponent live small and building thickness is good - just make sure you make some points too

2. Lone stones are "light" they can be sacrificed easily and often have lots if aji - keep an eye in them to make sure they don't come back to bite

3. Bamboo joints are often very good - but take a second look to see if there is a better option

Hi S2W, thanks for your input, enlightening as always! I think you have deserved my official sensei badge of honor already

In particular, your variation to save the black group at the very end rubs a bit more salt in the wound...I had missed that one even when reviewing my game

Thanks a lot for your continued input.

One comment:
At white just played a move to try and reduce black a bit, because black has a huge moyo. Black does want to capture the one stone that black goes after in the game, but capturing it like this is small. It'd be better to play something like K8, threatening to make a huge amount of territory on the bottom, challenging white's stone on tengen, and also building influence to kill off G3 naturally. If white tries to run with G3 after, the stone at K8 helps cut it off from a lot of its possible support, and black should be able to consolidate the rest of the moyo by attacking it.

In addition, the top left group doesn't need strengthening yet at . Black can always play the 1-2 point to live, and it feels very passive, as white shouldn't care about that one stone.

Thank you for your input Skydyr. Your first remark is actually a real eye-opener. In this game, for some reason, I never even realized I had build a huge moyo, and never tried to actually make anything of it or defend it. Which means that I played without any plan really. Reading your remark, I can see that moyo on the bottom half, it is indeed large and should allow me to play on a larger scale than I did: I just attacked his lone stones in a small way, as you point out.

Your second remark is quite correct as well. In the game, I never thought seriously about making life in the corner for my upper left group, which led me to play small and mostly useless defensive moves aimed at defending this group, one of which is 66 indeed. Now that you point it out, I realize I should not have been so worried about that group.

Thanks!

s14 and f2 are both the same strange shape mistake, better at r14 and f3 to actually defend the cut (and take a liberty from the white stone). White could actually cut at e3 as d3 stones don't have many liberties.

Uberdude, you are correct: I was afraid of W playing at E1 and further down the lower side, but F3 indeed protects against both E1 and the cut. I missed that in the game, will try to remember it because I guess it is a pretty common pattern. S14 - same story indeed. Thanks for taking a look at this game.

An update without any game today - Even though I did suffer a tough defeat yesterday, I think the roots of my undoing are crystal clear even to me, and it is actually quite interesting in retrospect: My study has been focused a lot on life and death tsumego in the past weeks. I think I can feel the impact of this: and my fighting skills are usually at least on par with my equally ranked opponents, and most of the time I feel I can outread them in close contact play.

But the flip side of this is, that I have neither played a lot, not have I studied a lot the fuseki and related concepts. This appeared in broad daylight in yesterday's KGS game, with an incredibly peaceful game, in which I played the only josekis I know without thinking, and by move 28 the game was more or less over. Not only did I let my opponent build a huge moyo, but I actively helped him do it by playing the "joseki I know" Wrong, because as it happens, this joseki let black choose the way he wanted to play it out, and it was in a particularly favorable situation for him. As soon as the sequence was played out, I saw the board and realized I was seriously trailing. This, combined with my lack of invasion skills, made me go for a desperate reduction, which was not enough to catch up. A very enlightening loss indeed...Maybe for once the answer is not "do more problems" but probably "play more, get experience in applying the concepts you read about in your books", in particular opening theory made easy.

On the study front, I am focusing on opening theory made easy. I have read a few pages of lessons in the fundamentals, but even though it makes for an entertaining reading, I find it hard to synthesize and memorize its contents, and the examples are still a bit tough for me to grasp fully. I also have shape up! by matthews to work on, but I will try to finish opening theory first (even though "finish" is a bit menaningless in that instance...I have spent more time on the chapter on deploying the star stone as the rest of the other chapters I have read, because I felt it related to my games, so it is probably a never ending read).

Today, another KGS game, and my opponent was more of a fighter than yesterday's....so it ended well for me

I have been playing a few games on KGS, because it is sometimes difficult to get an automatch on IGS in the evening, because my anxiety is more and more under control I think, and because my KGS rank is stable now, which makes it easier to find opponents...so we'll see, I will probably continue mixing the two sites, which will make for more variety in the opposition and can only be good I guess.

Hi Mimano,

A few inline comments, for what they're worth (don't attach too much importance at other people's opinions and paradoxes)


Good! That gives confidence.



This is a bit of an illusion: even though playing standard corner patterns without thinking is a bad habit, it doesn't lose the game at our level, let alone that by move 28 the game would be over. It may make the game a bit difficult and a more healthy statement would be "I did not know how to continue".



This is an interesting concept: usually we speak of a desperate invasion, going "all out". A desperate reduction would be one that you know will not nearly reduce enough but will rather cement the opponent's victory. Could be. I'd leave the option open that the game was still not over, without having seen it of course.



I'm fully with you on the importance of playing, but tsumego can really never harm your game. It shouldn't consume too much time. However, your plan to read and apply "Opening theory made easy" is a very good one.



Ah! That online go anxiety got what it deserved. Well done.

Thanks for your comments Knotwilg. I live in a tiny village in the country side, I never have the slightest opportunity to discuss go with anyone except on this forum, so it is very motivating to have this conversation with you all.

Indeed, I feel fairly confident about my reading ability at this stage (i.e. against opponents of my rank - I know I am still very weak in relative terms ), but I would like to avoid falling into a pattern where going for the fight is my way of winning games, which might be detrimental to mastering fundamentals, and therefore to my future growth as a player. I'd rather take my time and build solid foundations. So I think I need to balance my studying slightly differently, and maybe spend that bit more time on fuseki and other strategic concepts, but it is only a matter of tweaking my regimen - I would not want to lose the momentum I have with tsumego, and the confidence it gives. Moreover, as I improve, my opponents will be better and better at reading, so I need to get ready for that as well.

I have to say that tsumego is probably my favorite activity in the game. I have always been keen on doing mathematical riddles and puzzles, and I feel the same when I face a tsumego: a small intellectual challenge, which I love to take on.

About the online game anxiety, I think I am getting a grip on it. I am really not that attached to ranking or anything. I think the origin of this fear is quite different from fear of losing the game, or a rank. There was a time when I used to play chess online, and I never felt anything like that. But then, I see chess as a short, violent battle, where you need to destroy your opponent. So really, the way you carry out the actual destruction does not matter much, all means are good! In go, I feel much differently, as if I was in the process of conceiving the game with my opponent, and somehow, I want us to create something worthy of the time we will spend on it. So I think my anxiety comes, more than anything else, from the fact that I might not be able to raise to the challenge, and may produce a disappointing, dull game - maybe the correct word is a "crude" game. Losing or winning is on another level (of course, all things being equal, I prefer winning to losing!), and this alone would not prevent me from playing, since I am fairly conscious that, ranks being what they are, you should win on average 50% of your games. My skill being on the increase, and my knowledge feeding my creativity (ever so slowly but still), this feeling is on the decline, because I get more confident that I will be able to produce at least a little something worthy of interest for me and my opponent, I think.

I might post the game later on in order to illustrate the "desperate reduction" - what you describe is exactly what was going on in my mind when I went for it !

Some comments on the last posted game, which I have not seen in the other reviews:

Your opening bamboo joint (P6) is a nice local shape move -- I would call it a good move at your level -- but you will make big progress in your overall game if you stop to think whether a move here is needed or not. Your move defends two stones, but what strategic significance do those stones have? W is so strong to the right that these stones do not affect his group at all. If you do not defend, what will W do? He can push through Q5, but you can just let him capture two stones, making only a few points of additional territory in gote. Meanwhile, you can play a really big strategically important move like G17, or perhaps a simple safe territorial extension around K4.

Carrying on with this theme, after your bamboo joint connection, suppose W played atari at Q5 sometime soon. Quick, where would you play? I suspect your knee-jerk reaction would be to connect, and to be happy that W failed to cut your bamboo joint, while losing a liberty in the process. But much much better would be to tenuki, and to be exceedingly happy if W wasted yet another move capturing two worthless stones.

D18 is sometimes a tesuji, allowing you to play B18 in sente. Good job spotting it, rather than just passively playing B17. But more often, it is even better to play B18 (double-hane) directly. Do you see that W cannot really take you up on the offer to cut and capture this stone? So you get the same nice B shape as in the game, without giving W such a nice capture. Not a big difference, but worth learning.

You seem happy with the exchange E12 for C11 (and similar exchanges elsewhere). But the B stone strengthens a group which was already strong, while the W stone nearly secures a group which was very weak, and makes more additional territory than the B move. Not all forcing moves are good; here W is the one who should be pleased with the exchange.

Thanks a lot for your comments Mitsun, they actually resonate a lot with the book I am studying now, opening theory made easy, in particular principle 20, "do not cling to stones that have served their purpose". The author mentions that it's a quite difficult principle to follow for beginners, and indeed it is hard for me to say goodbye to my beloved stones once they are on the board But your remarks about my bamboo joint, are right on the spot, and would deserve to figure in the book as examples of application of this principle. And you are right, if W played Q5, I would very proudly connect !

Concerning the E12 C11 exchange, I see what you mean now - But in the actual game, my assessment of the strength/weakness of the groups was wrong. I did not see that the B group could easily make life, and considered W to be quite strong already.

Finally, I am not sure I understang exactly why I can safely play B18 directly. Maybe because I can defend appropriately as in the diagram below?

I continue to work on my OGA, and I think the more I play, the better it gets. I guess, the best cure against OGA is to actually play Yesterday two games - my first one as an 18K on tygem, using the android client, which means all in Korean . I eventually found a way to request automatch, but am not sure at all what all the options mean. If anyone with a knowledge of korean could tell us what the few options mean in the settings menu for instance, that would be much appreciated, because with some settings I could not do automatch, and others I could. Strange...

Then, an IGS game, on more familiar territory. It was a win, but a very close one (I won by the reverse komi only!), and I am not too happy with the way I handled the game. I felt my fuseki was more or less OK, and at the beginning of the middle game I felt comfortable, but I once more had to give up a lot of territory to easy corner invasions, and that makes me unhappy. I wonder how to cure that. Is it a question of timing of the corner defense play, or of keeping sente, or both? I posted the game in the game review section of the forum, I thought maybe it was better suited to the forum's organisation: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11127. As always, comments very welcome.

I attach a screenshot of the intriguing settings screen from the Tygem android client:

EDIT: for anyone interested, I found the translations in this thread: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=9365

I have not posted in a while here, but I am keeping up to date with the forum, and keeping up with my enjoying the game. With 4 children though, and the fact that playing at night is not ideal for my sleeping pattern, it is just very challenging to find a decent chunk of peaceful time to fit a game in. As a result, 5 rated IGS games since my last post, where I went 2-3 (so still 17k? there), and 5 rated games on KGS, where I went 1-4 (unfortunately including 2 sandbaggers - I feel entitled to qualify them so, since the KGS admins seemed to agree with me when they deranked them the same day - one of them was particularly unpleasant, calling me a sandbagger and talking nonsense in the game; KGS does not seem like the best place to play in the afternoon GMT), and am now playing as a 11k there.

I also got a few teaching games on KGS, and I feel two of them were actually useful. A bit of book reading (I will have to come back to opening theory made easy in a while, there is still so much more I need to get from it, but I am reading Life and death and tesufi by Davies now), and probably 1 hour per day on average spent on tsumego. I can feel my reading is improving, in precision I would say. I cannot read sequences much further than I used to, but I think that I get a better feel for the strongest resistance in a problem, and also that the reading is more precise in that I "imagine better" the presence of the stones in the sequence I am reading, and miss less things like e.g. snapback, and shortage of liberties, which are triggered in the sequence. This better reading is a pleasant feeling, and makes me feel much more comfortable in games, actually making them more fun because I suffer less of feeling like a blind person looking for their way, but sometimes know a bit better where I want to go, much less hindered by a total reading inability. Moreover, I find doing tsumego is really a lot of fun.

I do not have a recent loss to post so will skip that, but will hopefully have some material to post soon (not hoping to lose, but hoping to have time for play! )

Have you tried correspondence games on either ogs or dgs? I have young kids also and finding free time to play a whole game is often difficult. Correspondence games let me play a few moves when I can (I usually have around 20 games going at a time to ensure a steady stream) - then get back to the kids when they need me. I also find that I play much better with more time, and by playing tougher opponents in correspondence games my live games seem to improve also.

Yes, I am on DGS, and have played a handful of games, but for some reason I do not like it much. If I have a lot of games going, I find it hard to keep track of what's going on on each of them, and if I have only a few, I find it really too slow a pace for my liking. I also end up analyzing each move for ever, without the time pressure of a live game. So all in all, I don't know, it is just a very different experience than a live game, and one that I unfortunately do not find very exciting. It's a pity because as you suggest, I feel it could be a great way of making up for the lack of freedom in my time management.

Hi everyone, it's been a while, but I am still alive, and still playing. I needed to take a break for a litle while: I had to admit that I was not having the fun a game is supposed to bring in your life. It had all become too serious and even tense. I guess I was just too focused on improving. I switched to other hobbies, felt again what it was like to spend time doing something for the fun of it, and when I felt I could do it with go too, I gave it another try. Here I am now back, after one month and some 20 games with this new approach. For the time being it's going well. I will dare say my main focus is on having fun more than on winning. Improvement will come with play, and play will come with pleasure and fun, so that's what I'm aiming at for now.

Tsumegos are still there, but lees intensively than before, I guess in more reasonable amount. I have also switched to Tygem, for a few reasons. Its ranking system is similar to IGS, in that is it easy to understand and predict, but even better in that respect. But most of all, there are so many players that it is easy to find even games with same rank opponents. I have to admit I really do not like handicaps.

Of course, there are quite a few sandbaggers at my level, but I don't feel that's a problem. I got an encounter with a sandbagger who actually offered me the game then it was over for me, and we played three nice games in a row. He was quite polite and kind. I would say this turned out to be implicit teaching games, even though we could not communicate. All in all, sandbaggers are not an obstacle to having fun, so they don't bother me at all over there.

I just made my way up to 17k (Hurray ), and my second game at this level was with a former 16K who gave me a great fight. I dare this is the most exciting game I had ever played, and I think that is really easier to reach in even games. To sum it up, We had a reasonable opening, he started invading all my frameworks, with good reason, I had a chance to make up by attacking one of his groups, and the game was rather even. Then he overplayed, I cut him and ended up in a position to capture a large group in the center after a capturing race. We played on, and then my capturing stones were taken in another capturing race, and my initial capture ended up not being one, the game was back even. We were playing the last dame when I panicked, did not find the pass button, did not find a ko threat (a 0.5 point ko...), and lost on time! After counting, it looks like I was winning the game by 0.5 points

So anyway, the game is attached with my comments - I missed a saving move in the second capturing race, but not enough time to think and/or not enough tsumegos I guess. I hope some of you find it entertaining

Welcome back!

Some comments - take them with a grain of salt as usual.

Thanks S2, quite a few interestings ideas in your comments. In particular, the attack on the left Black group would have been quite interesting to try out, but I never saw the weakness