We will be traveling soon, and next week the wife will be very busy with work stuff, so last night I grabbed a chance to go out again back to the park. Again, a couple of the same guys. No one really wanted to play me, so I was just watching the game that was going on. A bit later the manager came down to the park. (I'm a bit worried that the only reason he came out was because I was there.) Anyway, he very nicely gave me a four stone game. I tried an aggressive opening strategy like I do in the 6 stone games, like this:
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[go]$$c This is a label for the diagram.
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . O . . . . . . . O . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . X . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]
I feel like I remember Kageyama saying in "Kage's Secret Chronicle" and other authors as well, that amateurs will play too timidly in a handicap games and so lose the value of the handicap stones instead of keeping white on the defensive and controlling the game. This may have been excessive here. Probably I should have shown him more respect in the opening and built up power before attacking. In this game though what happened is that basically we started fighting on the right. I was able to live very, very small in the upper right. Then he approached the lower right along the right side and I tried a two space pincer to keep him under pressure but giving myself some room. But then he played against my two weak groups, the one created from the pincer stone and the one on the upper side. I tried to pressure his lower right approach stone group but it was my group that started to get surrounded. I decided to make territory on the lower edge even though I knew that right side group was weak, because I thought, if I just let him keep jumping in and fighting I will end up with no territory. I knew I was taking a risk, decided to gamble, but of course my right side group died. I played on though until my upper group died too.
In the second game, I took black in an even game. I played 3 stars but I did what I believe is called
ippoji. I think he led me down the garden path so to speak. He created a weak group in the middle and let me chase it toward the right side. I was making very thick walls surrounding a huge area on the upper side. At some point I tried to go back and make a definitive solidifying move in the upper right corner. He invaded. I of course spent all my time trying to kill eyes and not let any stray stones get caught. But then the result was basically two groups tangled together. So a kind of capturing race, but he had one eye and I had none. They pointed out that I had definitely wasted a move inside his group. I knew this even as I played it but somehow I still imagined that I was somehow making the situation easier for myself. No one chose to weigh in on whether the group should have lived or died or not. To me the key point was that on the right side although I had some power in that area I wasn't strong enough and so I ended up having to make a choice between two evils. Either I can keep my center group connected out, or I can keep him cut apart. I couldn't have both. Maybe if I had taken that wasted move inside the group and played it on the right side it might have made a difference but hard to say without having a game record to review.
Anyway, we spent a good long while just sitting in the park in the cool nighttime. They were telling me about the club, and we talked a bit about playing on the net vs real life. Also a bit about Mah Jhong. Very pleasant.
So, I will definitely go back this Saturday during the day and take my boys to the park to run around, or maybe play a few games. (They generally much prefer western chess and have only played go a couple of times.)
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Went back on Saturday. Not as many players as I expected, but there were enough for me to get 5 games with 3 players.
The first game was 4 stones, I think I was getting demolished at the beginning, but then I started staging a comeback. I felt a good number of things went my way. Still, I lost, and I wouldn't really describe it as a close game, but it was fun for me. The second game was also a 4 stone game. Basically, what happened was I had a pretty small group in the center of the board that got captured. The problem was that it was pretty important. He had a big long twisted group. I looked at it a couple of times, but it seemed to me alive already. At one point I made what I saw as a nice endgame incursion to steal a small area from him. This was actually more threatening to him than I realized. I don't think I could actually kill it at any time, but what he explained to me is that if this small center group lives, then he has to worry about this group and make some kind of defensive or eye making move. I definitely didn't intend to give up the group, I just got caught up in other stuff. I played on for a bit and then he explained the situation to me, so I resigned (much like the game at the other club).
Another thing I sometimes worry about is this etiquette line between, experimenting and trying something out when I don't see a direct refutation of something, and doing what could be called "playing for tricks" or something like that. I just mean sometimes, things look weak to me, but they aren't. If I see something that seems to create some complications in an area I will try it out, but I worry sometimes that this just seen as wasting time or hoping for a mistake. It's not a crucial issue or anything but something I think about more when I am playing against strong players giving me a handicap because there is a balance between the educational value of it and the sort of distaste I know some players feel for this kind of thing.
After that I played against a guy much closer to my level. There was some debate, but the guy who seemed to be kind of arranging things for me, (the second player above), suggested I take 2 stones but suggested it had to do with the differences of our style (that my next opponent would be very aggressive and he didn't know how I would handle it). The first game ended fairly quickly, I played a 3-3 point for my free corner due to what was said before. He tried to pressure me but I got a good result and a decent sized group of his died on the bottom side. Since this didn't seem to have anything to do with the handicap stones, I suggested we play even for the next game.
This game was a prime example of an issue that has plagued my go here in Taiwan since I started playing again. In a good number of the games I play against players close to my level I will kill a medium sized group, and still lose the game. Now, I don't think these players are letting me kill the group on purpose in order to distract me from the big picture. But I think it's more of a psychological issue. I will kill the group, then I get into this mentality where I feel I am winning for sure. I'm not counting the board and coming to an objective estimate. I just feel "Oh, I'm winning so I should play conservatively and just bring it home." But this doesn't really work. So with this second game, I played my 3 stars, and when he approached on the outside I played the knight's move covering move on both top and bottom and some further moves to build a big moyo from the right side into the center. It was substantial. But then on the other side of the board, I also felt I played well killing a non-negligible group on the left side, and taking the upper left corner. On the other hand, he ended up with a big territory ranging from the lower left corner out into the center of the board as well as some along top and bottom of the board. I really felt quite certain I had won this game, and was quite surprised to find out I had lost it by a sizeable amount (maybe 15pts).
So this is why I feel I need to study positional assessment. I think I am losing games that I really should win because I am shifting into low gear when I don't actually have the kind of lead I think I do. I'm not sure, but I think I could have played to harm is large central area at least some. If I had done that it might have flipped the result.
The last game was awful for me. I took black again. This time, instead of letting me build a moyo, he played to break up my right side and start fighting. We did a fair bit of fighting and I just seemed to get a pretty awful result everywhere, and we didn't get too deep into the game before I had resign. Honestly, I feel I need to study fighting a lot too, and I bought a copy of Jasiek's "Fighting Fundamentals". I've just browsed it a bit, but it looks like it is pretty much exactly what I was hoping for, but it will have to wait a bit. I think the counting project has priority right now.
So, again, a major reinforcement to me of the idea that I need to learn to count the board.
As I said above I will be traveling for awhile so this thread will definitely be on hiatus for awhile, though I will still be able to post on L19x19.
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