Technically I won this game, but only because there was no komi. In many losses there is at least specific place where my strategy fails (group dies or gets captured, important bit of territory disappears). Here I think I got 75% of what I wanted, and still came up slightly short.

I would appreciate any sort of advice. Normally reviews don't go into the endgame, but if you see anywhere where I could have picked up 3 pts, I'd love to have it pointed out!

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Some notes on the 25% of the game I was less satisfied with:

jts, just a few ideas:
double-hane. You're strong there.
.. in general, if you're not going to cut (at N6), you'd better not do it.
, , etc. bad wedge; you reduce your own libs for no good reason.
good spirit; did you consider and read whether N12 instead could've killed?

Thanks, Ed. On - no, I hadn't... I guess I thought that I should either connect directly, or treat the two groups as independently alive. I mean, if he had played q10, would I respond with o11?

You keep clamping instead of playing the first line hane-connect. Although the clamp is 1 point better, it is also gote rather than sente and leaves you with no further threats when white gets a change to tenuki.

It is generally more interesting to keep sente at the cost of 1 point.

Thanks, amnal. Your post reminded me that he needs to pull back if I hane... the clamps look awful now.

Not only that, but in the bottom example, you can then push again in sente, and then connect in sente, earning more points than the clamp anyway

225 at K19. Letting White get B19 in sente (for demonstrative purposes), I copy-pasted the endgame after that to show you the difference:

Ah, damn. I think I can actually push twice and connect in sente on the top andthe bottom.



Wow. That's a lot of points. I had thought about that K19 as a way to save J18, but I didn't see the semedori aspect.

Thanks for the help, everyone.

B81@m2 exploits the aji of B17 even better, as far as I see. B walks in.

@araban: your sgf's never work with me. The only way I can enjoy them is to get the sgf code. Copy it in notebook save it as .sgf and open it with drago. It then only shows the mainvariant. It is a pity because I trust it to be interesting.

Cyclops, could you say more about what you mean? I was trying to read something out, but I was having trouble seeing what sequence you had in mind (partly, maybe, because you got one of the coordinates and the move number wrong?)

jts, Sure! Should have done it immediately. Don't trust me too much though as topasz is so much stronger. But I like to be refuted.

Yes, you are quite right, I was wondering if someone was going to point that out I figured if I'm trying to explain the principle that the hane is better than the clamp, better not to make it sound like it only works because of crazy tesuji aji. Having said that, it's a tesuji well worth learning, so very good spot.

In this case, White should of course play M2 instead of N2, as with L3 in place Black can only pick up a couple of extra points locally in gote.

In response to Black getting that M2 tesuji, I think White's best response is L2.

So for two weeks you thought you got away with it, you naughty
I wonder; if you dig deep enough you might find such hidden "pearls" in every game?

Ah, very good. I especially like the option to live inside