Hi, I'm happy to be joining you all in the forums. I am a 10 kyu beginner who has just recently began to do problems and study go, not just play. Here's a game I was hoping that y'all would review against a player of a similar skill level that I lost too:

You're playing very passively. Do your best to attack your opponent's weak stones; don't just play connection, extension all the time.

I don't usually play this passively, but I tried to give up a little bit to gain and other places an keep the lead. I wasnt sure whether to attack or just strengthen. other than the obvious move than lost me the game, I felt like I did an ok job keeping the lead. What I need to work on is using thickness because I got some in this game that I wasn't quite sure what to do with

What do you think is the obvious move that lost you the game?

In general, whether you are a beginner or a pro, the point of asking for outside input is not to explain it away but to use it to gain new insight into your game. It would be interesting to know what your thoughts were on the moves you chose, for example: Black 15, 39, 43, 59, 81, and 115.

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Ok I'm sorry I didn't realize how unclear I was being. I'll post the questions I have in a few minutes.

15: Hane is a better all-purpose response to a contact move: the solid extension is a special strategy.
29: This isn't a bad move, but try not to follow your opponent all over the board. If you always let him get the best move on every part of the board and take the second-best move for yourself, you'll keep falling further and further behind. It's painful for W to get both and
39: L5 is still under attack. I wouldn't ignore it (and I wouldn't sacrifice k6 so easily, either).
59: Good! You can even reach out all the way to c14 or d14.
77: This is a pretty lukewarm move. I would try to attack G13 instead.
81: I would cut at J8.
115: This is a good point to cut at G16.
119: Pretty small. Locally, I think you want to jump out to B14.
129: Smaller than S17, N18, or a move around B3, I think.
167: Unnecessary
171: Loses points. After connecting at M8, you would have had the follow-up of capturing L9.
177: Unnecessary. At the very least you can fight the ko with normal moves (like N18, B14). Getting two such moves in a row would be nice. This is a pass.
181: I think you figured out the problem with this. Too bad.

7: This kind of surprised me a little bit and threw me off. If he had approached in another way I would have taken the corner, but I didn't in this case. Ed Lee's variation looks a lot better for me.

29: jts- you say that I should have taken his when he played . I was worried about the hane at n16, but should I have allowed him to do that and take more territory in the lower board?

39: I gave up this fight way to easily over the next couple moves. I've played a little aggressive recently and I was trying to back off from that.

43: I think I should have atari'd from the top here.

59: I wasn't sure how far to extend here, but my group was strong enough that I should have went far and allowed him to try to invade, correct?

77: I didn't event think about how weak his g14 group was. I could have gained a lot of territory attacking it.

99: Here, should I have lived in the corner or tried to connect like I did?

115: I saw the cut at g16 before but didn't read it right and thought I had to stop him at k15 first.

167: Again from rushing and not reading well.

181:

Your opening is vastly stronger than your middle game and end game. You lost over 20 points through blunders and very small moves near the end of the game. To improve, you need to work on reading more than anything else. As others have said, you should try to take sente more often, particularly in the endgame. Once your opponent has made a profitable move, think of where you can make an equal or larger profit, not how you can prevent further smaller losses.

However, it is more interesting to comment on the earlier parts of the game, even though you need less help there, so that's what I am going to do. Sorry

7: Your move is fine. Going for outside thickness is just as good as going for corner territory. Your extension at move 13 builds a nice framework.

13: Study problem -- blocking at O17 to enclose the W corner stones would be very large. Is it sente? If W fails to answer, could you kill the group?

29: Your move is good. Keeping ahead of W in the upper right is at least as important as getting in the extension around K3.

43: You did play atari from the wrong direction. But in this sort of fight, your first thought should be extension rather than atari. Simply extend to K7, without taking either atari. This would lead to a difficult fight, since both sides would have two weak groups, but the surrounding B strength should make the fight advantageous. The sequence up through move 49 gave a good result in the lower left corner, but a bad result in the rest of the board. Once W lives in the middle, most of the surrounding B thickness is wasted, with nothing to attack. The eight B stones in the lower right have lost all purpose.

59: This extension was fine. You could also first approach the upper left corner at C14. If W responds around F17, you can then come back to make your extension.

77: Your move looks reasonable, but there are lots of other possibilities. Stealing the corner with C17 would be very large. Attacking around E15 could be very powerful and is probably objectively best, but of course it would lead to a difficult fight. Still, you should welcome a difficult fight where you have a local strength advantage.

79: Very submissive. Why not hane at C12? The increase in territory is quite large. Or you could ignore W (since he has no very damaging followup) and take C17.

81-87: Again very submissive. W cannot cause much additional damage here, so make his sequence gote and take bigger profit of your own elsewhere.

99: Excellent.

Just some things about the endgame.

Try to estimate how large the moves are. A move that destroys some center territory is only as big as that territory, a move on the side of the board often makes territory and destroys territory at the same time -> bigger. E.g. in the game B4, N17 etc. were much larger than many of the center moves that kept you occupied.

Both of you play this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Your endgame
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . . . 3 4 . . .
$$ | . . . 5 1 2 . . .
$$ | . . X X O O . . .
$$ | . . . , . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Better
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . 3 1 2 . . .
$$ | . . X X O O . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Better, because later Black can play
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . . . 7 5 6 . .
$$ | . . . X X O 8 . .
$$ | . . X X O O . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

The difference here is "only" 2 points, but in this game it happened several times.

The same thing more general is called 1-2-3 principle, if you play a sequence that ends in you playing the final move 3, often you could play that move right away without exchanging 1 for 2 with a better result. See: http://senseis.xmp.net/?OneTwoThree (This endgame is indeed the first example on the page.)

+

Always check what happens with cutting points, before you cut, before you defend against a cut, before you leave a cutting point, and even if you don't want to cut any time soon - in other words always.

White 6 was quite a surprise. Which side to answer on is not clear. Either one should give Black a good result. Strangely enough the corner position has occurred a few times in pro games (usually in the midst of ko fights). There are examples of Black playing both on the outside and the inside. Personally I like your choice to play solidly on the outside. Even at this early stage it seems pretty obvious that White is the type of player who likes a fight - to the point of starting fights on unfavorable ground. Confining White in the corner and looking to the outside for compensation looked good here.

With White 14 though, the answer at 15 seems clearly too soft. White 16 is quite painful as it hurts your earlier play at 13. Should 15 be the hane at the 3-3 point instead? In any case White gets a bigger corner than usual and Black ends up connecting at 27 in gote. Nevertheless, Black has played consistently for the outside.

White pushes at 28 and Black answers at 29. Despite other comments, this was a good play. It never hurts too much to be pushed from behind and it would be very painful indeed to play elsewhere and have White come back later and hane at 29 instead.

White plays too close to Black's thickness with 30 and Black invades behind this stone with 31. Excellent! Use your thickness to attack. White compounds the error by jumping in the direction of Black's wall with 32. Does White imagine there is some threat here? Black calmly jumps to 33, another good idea. White 'forces' Black to create an eyeless White group with 34-38 and so we come to 39.

I would connect at J6 without thinking. White is in terrible shape here (excuse the pun). would sandwich the White stones between two thick Black positions. More than that, consider what direction you would like to play from if White runs with below. I would want to play something like . The reason is that you actually never want to make territory in front of all your thickness on the right. You want to make it in the center left. In the game you played at 'a'. That was a mistake in direction. You want to approach the lower left from the direction of 'b' rather than 'a'. The left side is much wider than the bottom. After something like and below, the left starts to look huge if Black comes back to 'b'. But meanwhile there would still be the center White stones to torment!

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Connecting to make thickness
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O O O . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . X X X O X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . X O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . 1 X . . . . . . X O . |
$$ | . . . b . . . . X O O O . . . X O . . |
$$ | . . . , a . . . . X O . . . X X O . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . X . O . . . X O . O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Ignoring the above, consider your 39 in the game. It as a high, 3-space extension from an existing Black group. Imagine the issue of the lower-side group were already resolved. How would the position be if White simply answered 39 at D5? Wouldn't White have gotten the better of things?

Anyway, so White cuts at 42 and Black fixes up White's lower-side stones for free. Consider if Black had simply stood at K7 with 43. This threatens to capture the cutting stone in a ladder. It also threatens to cap the lower side stones at M7. White's problems have multiplied. Probably White will put the cutting stone in motion. But Black outnumbers White in the center. Black should be the aggressor here.

At 59 did you consider playing the hane at J9? It threatens L8 next and wrapping around White's position. When White played H9 at 60, I think your side became over-concentrated.

Whatever your reasoning was for 81, it can not have been correct. Just H16, continuing to let yourself be pushed down, would have been much better. 81 was essentially a pass.

99 was an excellent move, reviewing the board as a whole and seizing the main chance. Whether to live in the corner or connect is not the point. In different situations you will find that either may be the better way. Of course you should have captured White's stones at 115

It's a relatively minor point but note that D19 was a bad move. There is aji for Black to extend at B17. This is affected by what happens on the left side. Instead of just turning at C12, Black could consider jumping in at B14 if the C17 stones are still there.

Note that 164 at J15 paralyzes Black due to shortage of liberties. White will capture either three or seven of your stones. The whole idea starting with 152 does not work.

Despite what happens with 181, Black has a sure win if he plays B14 before White gets to it. Black 233 seems to be the losing move (but I am guessing not the one you called the "obvious" losing move, right? ) If Black had captured at 1 below and both sides had connected, SE and I think Black would have won by half a point.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Black + 0.5?
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . O . O X 3 X X X X O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O O . O X X O X X O . O . . . O . |
$$ | . O . . O . O O O X . X O O O O O . . |
$$ | . . O O O O O O X X . . X X X O X O O |
$$ | . . . . . . O X X . X . X . . X X X X |
$$ | O O O . . . O X . O X O X O X . . . . |
$$ | O X X O . . O X . O X X O X X O X . . |
$$ | X . X O O O O X X X O O O O O X X . . |
$$ | . . X X O X O X O O O . O X X O . . . |
$$ | . . X , X X X O X , . O X . . X X . . |
$$ | . . . X . . X O O . O X X X X . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . O X O O . O O X O X X X X |
$$ | . . . . . . . X O . O . . O 1 . X O O |
$$ | . . . . . . . X O X . O O 2 O X X O . |
$$ | . X X X X . X . X O O O . O X X O O . |
$$ | X X O O X O . . X X O . O X X X O . . |
$$ | O O O . O X X X X O O O X . X O . O . |
$$ | . . . O . O O X O . . O X . X O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . O . O O . . O . X X X X O . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

The reason I highlighted wasn't because it was bad, but because o17 had a large follow-up for both sides. I think T7 is the mostly likely move for you to ignore in the sequence leading up to W getting both o17 and the move on the bottom.



99 was definitely good. Are you asking about 105? The sequence from 99 had the potential to big a big gain for B whether you lived in the corner or took the ponnuki on the top side. Ultimately I think that 105 was a bit of a mistake and (even if you had you followed 105 with the g15 cut) living in the corner was bigger. This is just a guess, though.

As you noticed, reading mistakes make up a lot of the back and forth of Go. That's perfectly natural. Stronger reading comes slowly. Note that you had plenty of time on the clock in this game, though.