In the below game I played a 2-stone handi as black won by 12 points. Surprising enough since I thought I was losing. I tried a different approach this time, playing mostly gote moves.



Even if I won by 12 points on 2 stones, I still want to weed out any mistakes Much obliged in advance for your kind comments.

Hi tekesta, I don't quite understand: if you want 100% gote on every single move, why not just pass on every turn ?
Otherwise, playing for gote is the mistake.
It's an interesting experiment, though.

Many players make the mistake of loving sente too much, making bad exchanges etc, so trying to focus on finding good gote moves seems a good antidote.

Maeda Ryo always likes to say that sente is bad, and gote is good, except in the endgame. My understanding of this is that sente fixes dynamic shapes into permanent form, and should be held until you are certain what you want the permanent form to be, while gote makes solid gains.

At 58, I think you can play N16 instead of the hanging connection. It is sente, but I believe it is to Black's advantage anyway ...

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I could throw in an example of a bad sente move - as was discussed in http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=171474#p171474. I was proud of making a reduction in sente, while you called that sequence "standard bad habit". Of course the fact that "bad sente" moves exist does not prove the existence of "good gote" moves. In the "Attack and Defense" book in the chapter "Defense" there are a few examples of defensive moves which look small and gote'ish on first sight but help to gain the initiative later. Maybe "good gote moves" are either urgent points or moves, which do not require an immediate repsonse but which keep the aji in a certain board region on a high level (one might think - if there is too much aji left, a response would be anyway required so in reality the move was sente. But that is not always easy to forecast in complicated positions. Maybe the solution is: gote vs. sente --> a continuum ).

I think any game that is played with a specific idea to experiment with, deliberately deviating with what you think is good (i.e. feels comfortable) is a good training. Let's dwell on what "good gote" are:

- defend before you attack
- avoid being surrounded
- make a base then jump
- connect weak groups on a large scale

a bit worse are

- adding extensions to strong groups
- when surrounded, make life
- extend the base
- connect groups that are quite viable on their own

Not really gote are:
- attacking a group by checking or capping it
- developing a framework
- reducing a framework
- invading a framework
- cutting weak groups

The idea of such a practice game would be to look for "good gote" whenever you are tempted to play a "not really gote" move. Like Uberdude says, this can be a useful antidote to overly ambitious/aggressive play.

An interesting idea to add to your gote moves is to look for miai, i.e. leave equivalent options after the move.

If this is the idea you are after, we can review the game from this perspective.

That's why he never plays tenuki before move 180.

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Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

"sente gains nothing" (http://senseis.xmp.net/?SenteGainsNothing) but gote gains something such as territory, life, etc. In a sense sente is kind of aji keshi because at least it removes the possibility of playing the move later or somewhere else. Of course terms like sente and gote, attack and defense, have subtle shades of meaning so it's not black and white