Hi Aidoneus, I think your descent was good, but some of the follow-up plays were the real problem.

Note that in the normal Joseki, White gets life in sente so even if you kill in gote that could be a big improvement! But notice that you actually try to take sente by tenukiing at . I haven't read this fully, but if you kill White and get sente, that is huge! and you should expect that White will get some advantage from the fight at least (and that the fight should be hard). Also note that at this point White's corner is in trouble, but your 2 groups are weak and cut, so they are not very safe either. You might want to play another move here rather than tenuki to guarantee that White is dead.

But the really glaring problems are and . You are being too greedy and creating 4(!) weak groups for your opponent to attack. If she kills any, that is a huge loss for you!

Instead of , what about B2 (makes miai of C2 and A3)? Simply C2 may work as well. In either case, you have a shortage of liberties to worry about, but I think you are one move ahead.

As I mentioned above, this would be easier to read if you had not tenukied back at , if you don't want to have a dangerous fight at , then you can be happy to kill White's invasion in gote back in the early game.

I'm desperately trying to sense when I can safely tenuki instead of following all the time.

I'm desperately trying to sense when I can safely tenuki instead of following all the time.

Hi Shawn,

Yeah, I looked first at at c2 but after at b2 I thought that I was too short of liberties. I actually spent most of the 7 minutes I took for this move looking at at b2, at c2, and at a3 before giving it up as hopeless because of shortage of liberties again after at b1, at a2, at f2. I guess that I misread that position in my head! (I really stink at corner L&D problems. I'm still working through the elementary problems from Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of L&D at http://tsumego.tasuki.org/.)

Besides creating weak groups, the only thing I really know how to do is play gote moves. I'm desperately trying to sense when I can safely tenuki instead of following all the time.

Unless I'm misreading, I'm pretty sure black can still win the capturing race at if he plays to capture with A10. It's 4 liberties to 4 liberties, so this has been big and unsettled for a while. White will connect under with the corner, but it's still the loss of a string of 10 stones or so for white that also connects all of black's groups locally. Alternatively, black may be able to take the corner by playing B2, but he will probably lose the outside group of 4 stones in exchange, which would save the 11 white stone group.

When you are not sure whether to tenuki or not, tenuki. If you are wrong, you will probably find out in the resulting fight, but if you take gote when you should not, no bell rings.

On I thought about the atari at e5, but it seemed to me that after at f4 I would have to either extend and connect ( at f5, at g5, at d5), or just connect ( at d5), with both ending in gote. Wrong?

Concerning the variations around I saw some of the moves that didn't actually work, but not the ko sequence--in particular, I missed the throw in. It seems that ko is the best that Black can expect against best play by White, though, right?

As for your other comments, I need to be more cognizant of disconnecting my opponent's stones, keeping my own stones connected, and to stop making my own stones heavy. Maybe if I make a sleep tape to indoctrinate myself...