Hello. Im new to go and also in this forum. I will be glad if you tell me something about my recent game.

Im black
http://eidogo.com/#ILBpiqxP


I am not really sure what to do in this game to get better score. I loose for 10 points. In which things i have to focus? Attacking and cutting in the beggining feels dificult for me. My tactic was to seperate black bases at the start. The first attack was not bad for him, he make nice moyo there, but any ideas to elimnate this in the attack? I think white built there some nice bases and dont do any dumb moves.

Your basics.

Yea. I see that if i would play those two moves i could win, but what about other things?

What would've won the game for White was a living group in the bottom right corner; Black got a good part of his score from that. White 109 didn't do much there. IMO best thing to do would have been to let Black have that corner and instead invade Black's center territory, which was 1 or 2 moves away from consolidation. Playing this move at J8 would've been better; invading at J11 or H11 would require playing at L13 in advance to prevent the invading stones from being cut off. This Black center territory cannot be completely eliminated through an invasion, so reduction (keshi) would be better.

Black seems to have used the 3-stone handicap well, considering B+10½. Usually, a person playing at your level should win by 40-60 points. When playing White against Black on handicap, remember that White is at a disadvantage on a whole-board basis, so White must play at strategic spots to diminish Black's whole-board influence. Of course Black will attack any weak White groups, so it's best to stay out of a fight until your White groups are sufficiently strong enough to attack Black's groups; starting a fight with Black too early will only result in Black getting stronger and White getting into serious trouble. Even so, Black's influence is stronger, so if the player holding Black is more or less at your level of skill Black is more likely to win the game. So when White wants to have a good chance of winning she has to understand the meaning of "Get strong before attacking" and act accordingly.

This is a record of a yet unfinished game between me and a player about 5 grades (kyû) lower than myself. Here it appears flipped 180º from the original.



After Black 72, the White group in the center is still killable, so I cannot leave it alone for too long. As well, the K16 stone is vulnerable, so I will have to back it up ASAP.

EdLee is right. You will need to improve your knowledge and application of basic skills. So, do the following 2 things. One, do puzzles. Lots of puzzles, especially life & death and tesuji ones. These are basic for all Go players. As little as 15 minutes a day of puzzles will work, but of course the more puzzles you do, the better. As well, you will want to do some opening and middle game puzzles as well to help you think about how to play in the early stages of a game. Handicap games usually have Black's opening moves on the star points, so Black will be playing for influence and White's plan in such games should be to gradually reduce Black's whole-board influence.

Which reminds me of the other thing. Replay professional game records. Of course, the more of them you replay, the better, but just replaying 2 a day is good enough. The idea is to expose yourself to how a game of Go is played between two strong players. I do not guarantee that you'll play like Go Seigen (!), but you will learn some useful techniques and shape patterns that you can apply in your own games. As well, you'll develop mental stamina to help you keep your concentration even when playing long games. With more experience, you will learn why X move was played in Y game. A Chinese lady who plays Go for fun once told me that unless one knows the reason behind X move, it will be difficult to recall a played game from memory and one will continue to repeat particular mistakes time after time.

Play hard, study harder!

Thanks for many advice Tekesta. The tactic with handicap games is very important, i heard about this some time ago, but maybe a little forget about this. I will try to make some puzzles for sure, but to be honest im not really convince to them. Maybe im wrong? I will check them for sure anyway. For now im playing 1-3 games a day, im watching 1 dan game a day and planning to buy Toshiro Kageyama book, but dont know how is it called in english, know only title in my foreign language.

Today i got some nice play in go. I won two games, one with 5kyu. Its hard to imagine for me, that there even exist dan players. It seems to be some science fiction for me.

Okay im going to do some problems of go now and going to see a movie. Thanks for Your time.

It's called "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go".

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Poka King of the south east.

Or "Kage's Secret Chronicles of Handicap Go." But its probably the one you name.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

You're right, I forgot he wrote another book.

_________________
Poka King of the south east.

In my country this book have populist name "From amateur to professional".

The original Japanese title is 素人(アマ)と玄人(プロ), or ama to puro, or "Amateurs and Professionals."

Amazon Japan link --

http://www.amazon.co.jp/素人-アマ-と玄人-―徹底分析、これだけ違う両者の視点-日本棋院アーカイブ/dp/4818206113/