I understand life and death (although I can't always see it until it's too late), I understand sente and counting liberties, but I continue to lose when I have less than 2 handicap stones. I know I should be playing on a larger board, but I'm overwhelmed by the prospect of being beaten on a 19x19 board when I can't play well on a 9x9 board. I can do better against Many Faces Of Go on the computer than SmartGo Kifu on my iPad.

Any advice? I must be making the same mistakes over and over. What should I be studying? I feel overwhelmed by how to respond to attacks which invade my territory, and I usually end up attacking and losing. I can post some games up if you guys want, but I'm embarassed.

Thanks.
Jeff

Posting some games will give the guys something to work with.

Welcome by the way!

Yeah, it's most likely that you make the same mistakes over and over again and you don't realise it yet. Posting some games will definitely be helpful.

9*9 is by the way totally different to 19*19. I don't think it's really comparable because on 19*19 you have a whole lot more strategy and choices.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Playing only bots for 2 years?! Play humans! 9x9 is fine. You will encounter more ideas and not reinforce the same old bad bot-habits.

Here are a few games.

Here they are inline...



and the second

Websteria, would you mind posting a self-review of one, or both, of those games? It would be useful to distinguish between bad moves that you understand (but were perhaps not really thinking) and moves that even on mature reflection you actually think are quite good. (just because we don't want to pedantically harp on things you already know are wrong...)

First things first: Go is hard, don't sweat it too much. You will get better.

Second things second: read ahead! A few easy reading things:

Game 1:
If you descend on the other side you can kill these two stones outright.
Looks like you missed the atari maybe? black gives up a stone without gaining anything.
This stones will die in a ladder.

Game 2:
this is a bit harder to see, but it's better just to capture solidly (the 3-3 point). By pushing down, you hurt your stone on the other side.

I actually think you won the second game by area scoring, I could be miscounting though.

I do think it will help you quite a bit to play against humans.

Play against humans (other beginners), on 9x9 preferably (use KGS if you don't have any friend who play). When possible review the game with your opponent and find out what move lost the game. In general, look over your games and try to find your mistakes. Try to make new mistakes every game instead of repeating the old ones.

a few comments on game 1:
Move 10: did you miss that your stone is in atari? Connecting is better. Spotting ataris is a must-have skill.

Move 14: leaves many cutting points behind. Make a solid or diagonal connection instead.

Move 20: this is ineffective because White's stones have a lot of liberties. Simply blocking him would leave you much better off. Don't play moves inside your opponent's territory unless you know that they will work.

Move 24: before this move, your stones had 2 liberties. After, they have 2 liberties. This doesn't help. Adding stones to a dead group is worthless.

game 2:

Move 10-16: play the atari immediately to capture the cutting stone solidly. Don't be greedy when you have an isolated stone White can attack. This sequence hurt your upper right stone and gave White sente. In the end the capture was enough that White won the game.

Don't feel bad, you are not alone. Everybody sucks at Go. If you still enjoy the game, keep at it. Study life and death and play as many games as you can. Also, keep in mind that computers are strongest on small boards, so play some humans on 9x9 and 13x13.

Game 2. A couple of comments

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.