Hello folks,

this is my inaugural post on the forums, though I've been reading through others for quite a while now

To give a little background, I've been playing for a few years with varying degrees of seriousness. I've hit a major block in improving my game; I can't seem to integrate all areas of my play and also I can't really self-critique effectively anymore. Thus, I'm joining the forums to get more help.

I played this game last night. The two major mistakes I see in play was defending the 3-3 invasion in the lower left the wrong way and failing my own invasion in the lower right (if it was even possible). I also am beginning to have trouble with when to leave things alone (sente/gote) while I did not when I was a weaker player (which I think is odd).

Any feedback is appreciated! Thanks in advance for the help.

I'm too busy to spare the time to read it out, but what happens if white plays S1 to try to save his corner? My initial impression is that he gets a ko for the life of his group.

PS: Welcome to L19.

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Hi Cynosure,

I'm a weak player so I cannot really help you... but I'm a bit curious about the exchange for , especially if you want to invade at the the 3-3 point next with ...
Isn't it simplier to directly invade at 3-3 at move 74 ?

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oca: Yes that would. Thank you; I missed that.
Joaz: I did that to assure the ladder above it stayed intact. In retrospect, I should have played without contact, but my worry was he would take that free move to solidify his corner position. By playing that, I would assure a response that left the corner open, but again, I'm not sure how it would have played out otherwise. Thank you, though.

Welcome to the forum!

Congratulations on finding the tesuji of to capture the B group. W should be comfortably ahead now, particularly after B got carried away and completely wasted (Note for later reference that this does not even threaten to make an eye.)

In order to win, though, W must now make good use of his massive thickness. Moves which come to mind are H3 (threatening E2) and somewhere areound C13. The idea is to attack the baseless B groups, from a direction which forces B to run into your wall. Plays in these areas should make territory for W, while forcing B to scramble to live with a weak group, making almost no territory in the process. In contrast, if B gets to play first in these areas, he will settle these groups comfortably with territory, negating much of the value of the W thickness.

So , while not necessarily bad, seems to miss the mark. Besides, since you are leading, why pick a fight in a region of the board where you are at a disadvantage?

should capture the B stone, to remove the ladder aji. This aji effectively grants B a free move on the bottom side (although he soon helps W by crawling along the second line, destroying that aji).

The exchange for is extremely bad, helping B secure a large corner territory. Just look how much more effective would be without this exchange! (Since the B blocks here are so effective, W should try to find a better way to live. Maybe could hane and connect at S4. Then connecting with the clamp at S6 or living with the slide to P2 would be miai.)

was very good, finally getting the vital play here. This should have been the winning move! The attack was more severe than you realized. When B elected to take the corner, you should have been able to kill the side. Pretend the position after :b111: is a life-and-death problem, and see if you can find a way to kill. This kill remained an option for almost the next 100 moves.

S1 does not quite work, as B can simply descend to T2 to kill without ko. However, this means that W outside moves like blocking at S7 have an effect on the corner (setting up the ko).

Thank you very much, mitsun. Looking back at it, the group was quite easy to kill as you said. Very helpful advice; direction of play seems to be a recurring problem in my games.

Looking at this game and your initial comments I get a general feeling that you are focused on the tactical aspects of your Go - that composite wealth of tesuji knowledge, reading accuracy, and joseki play that factors into whether you "win" in a local fight. These are extremely valuable, but you main concern was stated that you "can't seem to integrate all areas" of your play. Integrating all areas of your play is going to require focusing on the -strategic- aspects of your Go.

Let's just get down to the super-granular level and focus on something that's 180 degrees away from your noted two major mistakes:

Why did you play W38?

How long did you think about the move?

What alternative plays did you consider?

- Marty Lund

I tend to have a lot of trouble with Sanrensei or Chinese openings. I find it plain difficult to reduce the massive moyo that's been built, and as such I play it quite often haha

As far as I was concerned, I couldn't let black get in another move in between star points. The moves I considered were there and between the lower right and middle. I also briefly considered an approach on the lower side, but didn't feel confident enough in the area as black already had some (albeit loose) support on the bottom, and I was afraid of strengthening his position on the right.

In terms of time, I did take a while to think it up. As far as I was concerned, the lower left was settled (i.e. no more fighting left to be done) and I wanted to make a 'big' move and carefully select the place of the next series of bouts.

Was it the best move? Perhaps not. But I think I did a decent job with it in reducing blacks framework.

Capture with a net, not a ladder. If Black descends to Q9, play P8.

OK, what I'm coming away with here:

1.) You perceive black's area on the right as too big to tolerate.
2.) You perceive black's area on the bottom-left as settled.
3.) The highest-level goal you had in mind when you made W38 was to "break up" his San-Ren-Sei.

You have trouble with the concentrated, influential openings - San-Ren-Sei and the Chinese. I would recommend gaining better understanding of them. You might just be misunderstanding what they are actually designed to do and be unduly fearful of them. There are several different ways to do this depending on your study style. If you are a book learner you could try "Patterns of the San-Ren-Sei" by Michael Redmond. If you like pro-games you could look into GoGoD or SmartGo Kifu as there are a number of high-dan-pro games that have some straight-forward application of the san-ren-sei with more optimal lines of play. (If you want to get more generalized, look up some of Takemiya-sensei's most famous cosmic-go moyo games.)

If you're into learning from the school of hard-knocks, find a dan-level player who is willing to play a series of reverse-komi games with you starting from ni-ren-sei vs. your san-ren-sei. This one is always really eye-opening for me. They don't have to resort to any sort of crazy over-plays to show you how hard it is to convert san-ren-sei into points. The biggest lesson I came away with was to stop perceiving black to be aiming at territory (or even building moyo) inside of the san-ren-sei. All the stones are high. It claims no territory. It is completely aimed at influence along the top, bottom, and center. It is only when you try to deny the san-ren-sei the outside that you suddenly help black develop a full framework + solid points out of that side. If black has sente with a San-Ren-Sei he is not playing where W38 went. It's not his key point and it shouldn't be yours. If black plays R17 don't panic - he's not executing the strategy his fuseki is aimed at.

And that brings us to the issue of strategy. I think you've got a case of "Underpants Gnome Strategy" going in this game:

Step 1 - Break up his san-ren-sei
Step 2 - ?????
Step 3 - Profit

Say black doesn't change his mind at B41 and decide to try and reunite his right-center and right-top stones after already abandoning the san-ren-sei with B39. Say he plays on the bottom center (bottom-left is not as settled as you perceive it to be) to make or threaten real territory. Where is your profit? Can you afford to settle your stones on the right? How did the stones you added work with the stones that you already had on the board? If you have a strategy in mind then you should have the answers to those questions already in-hand before playing W38. "I will run around the board attempting to spoil whatever I perceive as potential territory for black through arbitrarily applied local fighting," may be a strategy that works at this level of play, but it is not a strategy that will help you resolve the larger goals you've outlined for improving your Go.

To this day my teacher reinforces one thing with me, over and over: "Get your half of the trade." What he means is all sequences in games are exchanges. It's not up to me alone as to what I get out of the exchange. I don't get to decide "I'll break his san-ren-sei" or "I'll get the outside here." Every exchange is a series of offers and counter-offers between the players. Winning is about recognizing the best offer - or at least not taking a bad one ("Sure, take the outside, Marty. I'll just have to settle for 6th line territory ..." - that's probably the sound of me not getting my half of the trade). If you don't have a solid strategy it'll be impossible for you to recognize when something that would be a local victory on an empty board is actually a strategic failure in the context of the whole board (ie - you didn't get your half of the trade). Sticking to a strategy can also provide you with a framework under which you pull together the tactical skills you mentioned. It's a hard thing to do and you'll experience frustrating losses because of it, but I think it would give you a worthwhile opportunity to advance your Go past you current block.

Now, I'm not at a teaching level, so take it all with a grain of salt. I just look at your game and can't help but see the same frustrations and obstacles that were driving me nuts a little while ago and I want to pass on some of the advice and guidance people gave to help me.

Best of luck!
- Marty Lund