Hi, everybody. I spent a couple of months away from the game before getting a few games in on KGS this week. As a bit of background, I first started playing Go ten years ago, when a buddy got me hooked on Hikaru no Go. Unfortunately, we couldn't find too many people to play with, so interest eventually waned, and I stopped playing all but the occasional internet game. Then, this past December, I decided to try to get back into the game again.

Unfortunately, I still have the same problem. I'm pretty much the only Go player in my whole group of friends, and my few attempts to spur interest at my local game shop haven't produced much. I try to study on my own, but it's difficult to get motivated when I'm only playing against my faceless Internet peers.

Still, I would like to get better at the game, and I'd be much obliged for any help I can get.

6: This move turns white's group from weak (invasion at M17 available) to strong (invasion not so good any more). It does not protect the corner very well, as white can still play R17. As such, it only helps white, and is usually a bad move.

8: Your thought process here is 'make white strong then invade'. The second part is a good idea - do it without the first part, and the invasion will be much easier!

16: You say 'decided to run', but your stones here are useless now. White is alive. You did get compensation with O18, protecting your corner. The best course of action now is to forget about running or living, these stones have served their purpose and do not need to be kept alive.

18: Taking a forcing move here is a good way to use the aji of your dead stone, but after this you may as well tenuki rather than make a heavy useless group.

24: Mutual damage is a fun plan. Hard to know what will happen though!

36: This seems better at G17, then you get E18 and capture a stone. You end with splitting white's groups and making your own group quite strong. Your way is not bad (making a wall) but maybe is not the best.

38: The exact position of this move isn't particularly important. Maybe J14 is best - this is the side that you want to be strong, and it means white doesn't get a free move at J13 later. Making the J16 stone alive is often less important than removing weakness in your shape.

40: Perhaps it is better to just play C11 and make your left side group strong ready to attack C6. The stone at F17 is not individually important, because it does not help the main purpose of the H14 group which is 'making a wall'. The stones are not important, the overall use of a group is what is important.

That said, white does have some holes in his shape that it might be possible to exploit, although in the game this did not happen.

58: A nice, large scale move.

64: Building more influence isa fine plan, and probably a fine idea here. This shape isn't normally so great as it's pushing from behind and so on; it might be more interesting to play something like M3 to try and push white into the corner, but it's hard to say that white has no good countermeasure. Overall, excellent plan.

66: A big move, but perhaps you can play something like N3 to damage white and help the F3 group at the same time.

70: Still an excellent plan, but here there it is notable that white has left a group weak in the bottom right. It would be more interesting to punish this and help the centre at the same time; a move like N3 hurts white's group (he can probabl live in the corner, but not very big) in sente, or half-kills it in gote if white tenukis.

80: Black is thick everywhere.

90: Terrible move; 0.5 points in gote. Again, be careful about wanting to save every stone - this applies at all stages of the game. Any normal middle game move will be much larger, such as N3 which really threatens white's group whilst sealing the centre from him.


92: N3 is still interesting. Where stones are touching like in the O3 area, it is usually very advantageous for the first player to make another move there.

95: Seems okay, though you still want to play in the N3 area

96: Very bad! Your stones are strong here, but now you are touching white and pushing him to the centre. You don't want to touch white (which forces him to become stronger). Instead, you want to surround white loosely and leave him the problem of living. You might, for instance, peep at M4, then play M6, to seal in most of the centre whilst leaving white the eye problem. You could also peep at M3 then play M2 (or some simlar sequence) to attack strongly.

104: Easier to just play K6, splitting white completely. You are strong on both sides, so you don't need to take the F7 stones off the board.


I won't review the rest in detail. Your main problem is playing really close to white, trying to get an extra 1 point at the cost of weaknesses in your shape. Again, you just have to loosely surround your area and leave white the problem of living. Even when white is definitely alive, you just have to loosely surround and you have more than enough points to win. By surrounding closely, you just repeatedly expose weaknesses that let him cut through you easily.

Welcome back to Go! A few ideas:

Thank you very much, Amnal and Ed! Amnal, what you said about playing too close to my opponent made a ton of sense, and has definitely improved my game, already! Ed, thanks for providing the variations-- really helps me to see my mistakes a bit better.