I had been hoping to make it to SDK by the new year - I couldn't quite manage it due to not finding enough opponents when I wanted to play last night, but finally got there today. So now I'm probably the weakest 9k on KGS

I'm not going to give you the game that got me there, as it was a 3-stone handicap game against a friend of mine who is somewhat stronger than me - I don't think he'd appreciate me sharing the game, as the chat contains a lot of silly comments from both of us, and he didn't play at his best.

But here is the one game I managed to play (and win) last night, which I'd be interested in comments on. It was a strange one, because it contained no large-scale fighting - virtually nothing died in the whole game! As I don't get to play that many "quiet" games like this, I think it would be good to offer this for review to see where my strategy needs work. Indeed, for most of the game I felt that I was comfortably ahead, but may have counted it wrong, as I only won by 15.5 even after making some gains I didn't expect in the endgame.

Anyway, here's the game - make of it what you will. Many thanks in advance, and happy new year to all

White eight is precisely what you don't want to do against the kobayashi formation on the bottom. Black should play something like a two space high pincer. Then, no matter what white does, black will take big profit on the bottom.

A more usual idea would be to distant low approach the corner.

Happy New Year. A few ideas:

congratulations on SDK.