Good morning forum,

I played this game on Tygem this morning. I have been watching high D games on KGS recently, and the constant battle for sente is what seem to be catching my eye. I dismally failed in this game to find the right moves, and was just slowly overwhelmed by what seemed an underwhelming force.

Any advice or suggestions are welcomed, I have put some notes in the SGF. The time settings may be a little weird, it is a result of saving through formats and editing the times so that when I review I have some time to think!

Just fixing sgf tags for you. You have to put the URL of the uploaded file (which you can get from right-clicking on the link), not the filename itself.

_________________
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

The thing a lot of people misunderstand about KGS high dan players is that they are not that strong in a global sense of things.
They surely kick my ass, that's for sure. But if you stop and think to yourself... WHY do they kick my ass?

I asked myself that question and came to the conclusion that they are just really strong fighters. They have a lot of experience playing complex situations and starting fights all across the board. Hence the "constant fighting for sente" and stuff.
However, you must keep in mind that this is not good play just because the high dan players are doing it.

Yilun Yang (7p) once said that the high dan amateurs can beat other "weaker" players is because they're strong fighters, but they fight from a bad position. They make a lot of overplays every game and get away with it because their experience and their opponent's inability to read deep enough. A KGS 8d player would make a mistake every 8 moves on average according to him.

Don't get me wrong, it'll be a long time before I get to that kind of level myself and it requires some serious skill to be that good. But they're amateurs, just like us.

Moral of the story: if a game looks dull and uninspiring, you might not be appreciating the basics of the game enough. This overwhelming loss by a seemingly underwhelming force is just a solid gap in strength of play. Let the "weaker" player destroy himself with overplay and inefficient shapes.

The way I like to look at the game is: "The first player to make a mistake is at a disadvantage if his opponent is strong enough to capitalize on it"

If you feel that you need to make a crazy invasion or a super aggressive attack because your opponent got too much territory, you probably made a mistake that your opponent was able to capitalize on. It can even be as small as playing a move that was worth 25 points when your opponent played a move worth 30 points. It may feel underwhelming, but it's quite impressive in my opinion.

Thanks DE, I didn't realise there was a problem

foeZ, what you say is probably true. What I am after though, and what is clearly lacking in my play, is an element of what you see in those high D games, where at least I am pressing the game forward, and not being pressed upon all the time. Responding to my opponents moves is driving me mad, yet I battle to see my way around it.

If I don't respond, it seems to me that the guy just walks into whatever I may have built.

You have to learn about correct direction of play, attacking and defending and how to make shapes that are difficult to attack. If your opponent cant attack your shape you will neber have to respond to him... ever

Here are a few comments.

The interesting comments by you are at and

You say your group is weak at the bottom but it is actually pretty strong.
If you post a game where you made that same group and it was weak we can examine the differences between this position and that one.

What foeZ said may be true in general, but looking at the game, I did feel it was kind of uninspired. The problem in my opinion is that white kept making small settled shapes and then trying to expand from them. See for example and . If you have a low settled shape, the correct strategy is to play away from it and rely on it's settledness to keep it from getting in immediate trouble. Instead, white never really challenged black (nor did black challenge white), and by move 50 I felt the game was already over and might as well have ended right there, with black winning because he did a slightly better job of developing. Jumping ahead 200 moves to the end of the game it appears my feelings at move 50 were correct - nothing really changed in the 200 moves between move 50 and the end of the game, and black won.

_________________
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

Some comments about the opening from my point of view. Since I'm only around 5-6k, they may be misleading, though...

- Move 14 you found out for yourself.
- On move 16, I would ask if B5 is really that urgent. I would tend to play K4 in order to limit the extension of blacks group
- Moves 17-21: After this standard joseki, the black stones really harmonize well with the strong b stones on lower left side. During the game, black becomes very big at this side which is one of the reasons for your loss. Therefore, I would consider a pincer in move 18 instead of playing the calm R6.
- On move 22 you are commenting that you rather play a bit slow to prevent your opponent to invade. On the other hand, black played wider moves on the lower side, but you didn't take the chance to invade. Thus, by avoiding fights your opponent gets too much and you get too few.
- After blacks move 23 it looks already a bit difficult for w. Instead of calmly playing along the third line, I would try to enter the open space around E16. This has also the advantage that the black upper right shape is a bit open towards left side and can potentially be undermined.

I agree with DuskEagle's comments - he posted them faster

Yes, I feel white playing quite submissively here too. Since you asked for it, some ideas on where you could have tried to control the game, instead of responding to you opponent. These may not be the absolute best ideas at pro level, but at our level good enough

7: you don't have to take 33. Tenuki, or pincer or N17 to stop black from building top, which he apparently wants.
14: yes, should be C4.
18: this should be high, or pincer? Now you have two low positions on the side...
20: see comments on 7.
22: too timid, definitely. Extend further, or being operations in top left corner (E16?)
26: unnecessary to help black fix the large enclosure. If I were playing in this area, I would look at e.g. F15, which aims at both messing the top (or the corner) and expanding my side. Or if you want to take it safe, E14 or F14? not sure if this is biggest area.
28: Slow, maybe F15? However, this problem is caused already by 26.
30: I disagree with Unusedname: this should be on left - although the problem there are the two low positions facing each other created earlier.

Many thanks for all the comments.

I've printed them out and will go through them tonight, and come back with questions if something isn't clear.

One extra comment, which I don't think has been made. After 163, B1 is a relatively large move.

If W plays B1, he immediately gets four points of territory in the corner. If B responds, that's gravy - but most likely, W will subsequently push and reduce B by a further point in sente. That's -5.

If B plays B1, he has a follow-up that captures two stones in gote, ending at +6.

So that's a 9 pt. gote?

I only bring it up because it has a combination of things that sometimes cause people to underrate endgame moves - three different false eyes can turn into points depending on whether someone gets an additional eye, a gote move with a sente follow-up, and an apparently defensive move with a large follow-up.

Thanks jts, another valid point.

I took the advice given in general terms and played a couple of games last night. I lost them all, but I'm much happier, because I lost them in interesting ways, and I lost them while trying to win, which I think was lacking in the game I put up.

Did you lose by getting certain groups dieing? If that's the case you have some really good material to study right now!!

If this is the case, go back in your games until the point where you played away from the group that died and try to figure out 2 things.

1) Could I have played a better shape that would have allowed me to live?
2) Should I have added another move before playing away?

It's also VERY important that you don't review the game into dozens of variations countless moves deep. Only review them into maximum 4 sequences of maximum 7 moves deep.
The reason for this is that if you have to read deeper than that, your situation was too complicated and there will most likely be a better move somewhere on the board which is not as complicated to read out.

I hope that made sense.

The sagari to B-01 only gains 4 pts., not 4.5.

The sagari to A-14 is a 4.5 pt. reverse sente. It threatens the clamp at B-16, which gains 2.5 pts.

Edit: Corrected the following. My bad.

The hane-connect at Q-01 gains 2 5/6 pts.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Adding 5 to 3 - not my strong point.

I once put a stone on the second line in atari, and then tried to remove it.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Bill, are you saying that W should play Q1 (sorry for a very obvious question!)? It seems to me that B just plays P1, and then W must respond at R1, giving sente to B?

I get the horrible feeling that is exactly what you have said in your post, which I have just foolishly repeated, but I can't see why that would be desirable for W to play unless there was no other move available.

I'm off to look up reverse sente again. It must be the 10th time I have looked up the definition.

Okay, scratch that entire post, except why should it be played? On the Sensei's page, http://senseis.xmp.net/?ReverseSente it says these plays are rarely played before the opponent gets the chance to play them?

Hopefully this time the definition will sink in. And I see from the same page that you have added yet another thing to learn! Thanks Bill!

Well, hm. Maybe the SL page needs a rewrite. Reverse sente isn't at all rare in amateur games. I don't think there's necessarily anything rare about them in pro games (other than the fact that so many games are resigned before the endgame). The point is that you should plan on your opponent getting all his sente moves, because he will usually be able to take them before you do, and if he does permit you to take one, you should expect that there will be another gote move that is just as large for him to take after you give up the initiative.

But in this game both players played a lot of small moves in the center between, say, 174 and 194. For almost any of these moves, you would have been better off playing one of the moves Bill highlights. B has waited too long to take his sente.

Oops! I thought that the weakness of the two R-file stones in the corner was enough to make the Black hane-connect sente. I should have verified that. It does not. My bad.



I have added variations to the SGF file at move 166 to illustrate the three plays. It does not explain everything about them, by any means.

On the question of playing sente. Gote is symmetrical in that whichever player makes the play gains the same, on average. Sente is asymmetrical. The player with sente gains more than the player with reverse sente. However, the reply to sente gains the same, so the exchange gains nothing on average. (Note that there are different meanings of sente. It is possible to make an exchange with sente that gains something because the opponent has nothing better. There are a couple of examples in the variations of the SGF file, as it turns out. But it is true of sente in the technical sense.)

Because of this asymmetry we say that the player with sente has the privilege of playing it. The reason is that normally he can make the sente play when there are other plays on the board that gain less than that play but more than the reverse sente play. Then his opponent replies, because the reply, being the same size as the sente play, is also larger than anything else on the board. OC, it is possible to construct whole board positions that are not normal, but normally the player with sente has the privilege.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.