Hi All,

I started to learn go about 2 months ago and have mostly been playing against my wife (also a beginner) and against SmartGo on the iPad. It seems lately that whenever I play against the iPad I consistently lose by 3-5 points. The games are close enough that I'm having trouble figuring out my mistakes, which makes it harder to correct them.

A somewhat representative game is attached, any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

From the game it seems clear that you have learned the most common capture methods already and understand the concept of 2 eyes.

The game seems a bit hard for me to analyse because white's play was rather confusing and often did not punish your mistakes. I think it's probably a MC bot, which stops trying to find better moves as soon as it realizes it is ahead. Therefore the end point result will not be reflective of the actual strength differences. I would advice starting to play against humans

Thank you for the feedback; I certainly need to start playing against humans more.

Welcome to go!

Yes, I would advise playing humans and playing on a 19x19 board. (The 19x19 board also makes it easier to talk about what's going on, since I need to count out every coordinate.) It's hard to give advice on a 13x13 board because a lot of the strategy is different. I'm working backwards because the 13x13 part doesn't matter at the end...

85: Doesn't accomplish anything. G7 and H8 are equally good. Better to play elsewhere.
77: W is fully connected everywhere: D10 and E9, H9 and J10, H8 and J7. For each pair, W can connect on either side. So you know that this group can never get out; so instead you should take the huge endgame move at A9.
75: Unnecessary. You're already alive.
69: E12 is better. Then D11 and D13 are equally good ways for B to connect.
63: Not really necessary... I think you're strong enough here to try to make points elsewhere.
53: I don't think this move is worth nearly as many points as a move around E5.
42: I would make myself more space for eyes first, with B9.
37: Push at C2 first. You'll need to come back here to capture, but you'll have more profit and W's shape will be more vulnerable.

- White has just played a hane on the second line. You have a significant amount of potential territory on the right side, which you wouldn't want white to destroy easily (which he could do by playing at the 4-2 point). So, what if you play at the 4-2 point yourself? Not only does this block off white from entering your area, it also threatens to capture the white stone he just played. Thus, white will have to defend, and then you can go off and invade white's area.

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Thank you jts and Dusk Eagle. Dusk Eagle, did you mean M5? Just trying to make sure I'm understanding your comment.

It can be instructive to try to find the game losing move. I may have found it. is a small gote which allows White to take a larger reverse sente.

Here is the game, with comments starting at .



Main focus:

Do not let your sente get away. When you do, you let your opponent gain points with reverse sente.

And welcome to go!

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Everything with love. Stay safe.

[admin]
I moved this to the proper forum.
-JB
[/admin]

And welcome to L19.

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Thank you, Bill. Very useful!