I played Bonobo at the Kido Cup today I only found out who he was after he made a mistake while recording the game and gave me his email so I could send him my SGF. It was a nice surprise!

Basically, what happened was this: I messed up an invasion and he took the lead early on. But then he messed up an invasion and it was his time to get behind. Then I made some endgame mistakes, and in the end I had 1,5 points left.

Here is the game record. I got confused towards the end so unfortunately, the last moves are missing. Please review for both players. I'm white, Bonobo is black.

A few ideas from a 6k without much practice..

EDIT: I mis-read. Move 120 was correct.

_________________
Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

(this was in Hamburg, Germany)

Amelia, it was such a pleasure to meet and play you, after having enjoyed so many of your posts here (I’m a fan ), I’ll never forget this nice surprise and how we both smiled and laughed when we realized that we’d already read each other.

And, playing with you, I even enjoyed losing this game. (And no: I have no masochistic tendencies.)


Thank you


Looking forward to meeting you again, and I dearly hope we’ll get a chance to play again some day!

————————

First it felt odd to see the game record—since it's rotated 180° I took me some time to recognise it as the game we played


Karaklis and JB: THANKS for your comments, food for thought muchly appreciated, though I fear I may need a few iterations of those mistakes until the lessons really stick. Anyway, in hindsight and with your comments, I sometimes felt like an 1D10T when I looked at those diagrams.

@JB, re: Your comment on move 17: “Althoug it does take the last oba” … what’s “oba”?


Now off to bed (#02:33 here I have to get up at 07:00 for the last tournament day)


Thanks again, and greetings,

Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

_________________
Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

Ah, “big point” (as opposed to urgent point), thanks

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Thank you all for the reviews. Yeah, Joaz our endgame was crappy . On Tom's behalf, though: he was in byoyomi at that point, so stones on the board were worth time if not points.

Now I think I'm going to go and sleep for 12 hours or something before I do anything else related to go.

So, now that I've slept, I can look back at this game again
Thank you again for the reviews. Here I my own thoughts about the game. If Tom could share his as well, I would appreciate it

1-20: Black's opening made that game difficult for me early on. Black's potential areas were so huge that invasion was the only option and I'm more the calm territorial player myself. But black was full of holes so I had to make something out of it.

20-36: I hated that invasion a few moves after I made it and that shows on the board. Basically running with those stones meant that black could just close up a huge area on the top while I would be chasing him along my own bottom territory. I hated the idea so I tried to live with minimum number of moves inside black's territory. It felt painful to get surrounded though.
@Joaz: Yeah I completely failed to identify those black's stones as a target, which is why I did not play E4. It's a recurring failing of mine that I'm so busy worrying about my own groups that I overlook the opponent's weaknesses.

36-56: Basically just feeling depressed with my position. At that point I'm more or less convinced that the D8 group can live but I'm unsure what to do next. I have to deal with the top left, which is huge. I can get the corner at 3-3, but black will build a wall that will help secure the rest of the top left area, which isn't small. If I invade or reduce somewhere else first, there is the risk that I will help black protect the corner and not take away enough territory. Moreover, I also have an invasion point at 3-3. If I don't end in sente, black can reciprocate the invasion. Caught in this dilemna, I'm trying to somehow expand my own moyo on the lower right without helping black to defend his territory, hoping to find a brilliant idea.

56-65: As it turns out, black solves my dilemna for me. I get to defend my corner and secure my area all while killing his stones, so I can happily go and invade. After taking away the corner, I feel confident that I can reduce the rest enough to win the game.

65-end: My endgame is sooo crappy, but luckily Tom makes mistakes too, so somehow with komi the day is saved


By the way, this was longest game I played, ever. It went on for 2:30 hours (That's not going to impress you dan players but hey, I'm just a DDK!)

Did Black get a chance to use the moves at L18 and M8? You speak as though B resigned a few moves later but it should have been a close and exciting endgame!

It was! That's a bit why I lost track of the moves in my record.
As I said, I ended up winning by 1,5 points with komi. And unless my memories fail me, he got M8 but not L18. Ah... Tom, do you remember?

Hello Amelia, folks,


I’ve been following your comments closely but, sadly, my job is eating all my time, so it’s hard for me to invest time in writing here. Also, since I often place my moves somewhat intuitively (probably often bad i.e. uneducated intuition), it’s hard for me to explain why exactly I placed that stone there.

One thing I try to adhere to is the strategy rules of thumb I learnt from Gerald Westhoff (6d, NL, now DK; really nice guy, BTW) a few weeks ago.

Other things that influenced me is my sporadic reading in several books with Go Proverbs as well as “Opening Theory Made Easy” by Hideo Otake (though for sure I haven’t thoroughly digested it) and Robert Jasiek’s “First Fundamentals” (ditto).

Anyway, without wanting to say that I’m good at tactics, I think I’m a better tactician than strategist, and this leads to me spending a LOT of time in the first third of the game while I play relatively fast (and sometimes sucessfully) when it comes to fighting. But with semeai on the other hand … counting is NOT my strength since I’m probably slightly dyscalculic—I need to take off my shoes to count to twenty (stolen from Mickey Mouse’s answer to what arithmetics is: “Arithmetics is when you don’t have to take off your shoes to count to 20.” I realized a long time later that he must've cheated cause it should be 16 ).

IF I find the time I will skim through the SGF again and try to comment a little bit, but I cannot promise, pls forgive me. But I really appreciate all of your comments.


Greetings, and thanks again,

Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?