Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wcm180 Moves 180-181 - W: 2, B: 1
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . O X . O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O O X O X O O . . . O . X . X . . . |
$$ | . O X X . X O X X . O X . O X . X . . |
$$ | . O O X X O . O . , . O X . O X . . . |
$$ | X O X O . O . O . . . O O X X . . . . |
$$ | . X X O . O O . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . . X O . . . . . . . 2 X . . . . . . |
$$ | X . X X X O . . . . . . 1 . . . . . . |
$$ | . X . . O . . . . . O O . . O . X . . |
$$ | O X O X O . . . . X . X . O X , . X X |
$$ | X O O . O X O O . . . X . O X . X . O |
$$ | . X O O . . . . . X . . . O O O X . O |
$$ | . O . . . X . . O X . X . . X . . . . |
$$ | . . O O X . . . O O O O . O . O O O O |
$$ | . O X X . X . X X X X X O . . O X X O |
$$ | O O X , . . . X O X O O X X X X . X O |
$$ | O X . . . X X O O X O X O O . X . . X |
$$ | X X . . X X O O . O O X O . O X . X . |
$$ | . . . . X O O . . . . . . O X X . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

I'll assume this is what you meant

Strategy and Thoughts

_________________
1k KGS

Isn't that a bit like playing yourself, since I can use your tactical analysis to maneuver through complicated fights!? Unless of course you deliberately post wrong sequences to lure me into traps and I trust you mindlessly because you're stronger than me
Well, if you want to play it that way, I won't object. It will certainly be interesting to see how it works out!

For observers:

Thanks, yeah, that's what I'd meant

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wcm182 Move 182 - W: 2, B: 1
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . O X . O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O O X O X O O . . . O . X . X . . . |
$$ | . O X X . X O X X . O X . O X . X . . |
$$ | . O O X X O . O . , . O X . O X . . . |
$$ | X O X O . O . O . . . O O X X . . . . |
$$ | . X X O . O O . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . . X O . . . . . . . X X 1 . . . . . |
$$ | X . X X X O . . . . . . O . . . . . . |
$$ | . X . . O . . . . . O O . . O . X . . |
$$ | O X O X O . . . . X . X . O X , . X X |
$$ | X O O . O X O O . . . X . O X . X . O |
$$ | . X O O . . . . . X . . . O O O X . O |
$$ | . O . . . X . . O X . X . . X . . . . |
$$ | . . O O X . . . O O O O . O . O O O O |
$$ | . O X X . X . X X X X X O . . O X X O |
$$ | O O X , . . . X O X O O X X X X . X O |
$$ | O X . . . X X O O X O X O O . X . . X |
$$ | X X . . X X O O . O O X O . O X . X . |
$$ | . . . . X O O . . . . . . O X X . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Strategy and Thoughts



Tactics and Variations

Edit:

_________________
KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

Sure, but winning from a blunder or outread isn't fun. I want to win because I played perfect go. If our comments help each other, we just have to work even harder to outplay the opponent!

And, on this game:

Further thoughts

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

I resign. Thanks for the game.

Sorry for the long wait just to see me say that, but I kept thinking there should be something there. But if there is I couldn't find it.

I'm going back to read comments.

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1k KGS

Thanks for the great game, guys. It's been one of my favorites to follow. Always disappointed when it went on "break" for a little while.

I look forward to some of your post-game thoughts (from both players!).

_________________
KGS: schultz [?].

My KGS rank went up at least 1 stone while playing this game. Not necessarily because of the game, but just because it was over a month and a half long. I have a whole library of go books I read on the train to and from work, so I've been improving a bit. And of course putting read out variations to "paper" forced me to read deeper than I normally would, and I think that improved my reading ability a bit.

...

Anyway, I've done a once-over of everyone's comments. A quick post game analysis for my moves:

1. Just for observers to be aware, when I play handicap games I don't play passively or aggressively, I play normally. I noticed comments that I was playing passively, and the assumption being that I was playing that way because of the komi. Actually I was playing the first ~70 moves as if it was an even game (my philosophy for handicap games is that if the handicap is reasonable both players can play normally and have a 50/50 chance of winning. Interesting to contrast this with topazg's philosophy that the stronger player should complicate things).

While I probably played a bit more passively since I knew topazg would rip apart any weaknesses, looking over most of my moves they seem to "flow" with my internal gut. Which tells me that I probably play too passively in general. Which is interesting because I was definitely looking for places to take sente.

So something to work on. How do you actually work on this? My guess is becoming comfortable with local follow-up moves if a local move is ignored. eg: I'm not at all comfortable with ignoring a monkey jump, but there's definitely cases where a monkey jump should be ignored to take a larger point elsewhere.

2. I played a joseki on the top left that I did not "understand". This game is an excellent example of "memorize joseki and become two stones weaker". I don't know if I would have been better off just playing from my gut (I'm more confident doing this than I was a month ago), but certainly playing joseki you do not understand (in terms of weaknesses of the groups on the board) is a recipe for disaster, especially against a skilled opponent.

The joseki in the top left is like a tower of jenga blocks. Everything is very specifically balanced. Not something to be manhandled.

3. Separating groups of stones does not magically give profit. I think this is a dawning realization cemented by reading topazg's comments.

This is similar to chasing weak groups, in that chasing weak groups doesn't magically give profit.

So the moral of the story is, of course, don't force moves if you don't gain an advantage by doing so. I thought I understood this lesson, but clearly not.

4. The 1-2-3 principle. I thought this was something I understood but there are clear cases in this game where I make a sequence of moves a-b-c, where I'd be better off just playing c. I need to be more mindful of this.

5. Still need to get better at reading. I think strategically I did okay, but I was out tactic-ed at least a half dozen times. So more go problems

If anyone has any other specific areas/ideas they think I should work on please let me know.

_________________
1k KGS

Thank you very much for the game. I enjoyed it, particularly the first 100 moves and trying to handle such a large komi. I think I was lucky to be successful, but it was an educational experience for me - my game against fwiffo greatly helped me plan this one.

I found a bunch of comments amusing and insightful - "Ah, he's a mind reader! Demon! Witchcraft!" - and a number instructive (unkx80's post 17 for example - obvious to me now he's said it, but a bad habit of mine beforehand).

In response to your comments Numsgil:

1) I agree, I don't think you played passively at all. You played to cut and split, and you tried to make the top left messy. There were no "I need to live so I'll make this eye inside my own group" things going on. You were unfortunate in that 2 big fights in the top left turned very bad for you, but it wasn't through playing with the wrong spirit.

2) Agreed here as well. This is also a particularly complicated joseki, and one I've become fond of as a result. I think if I can ever make a recommendation that equips your happiness with choosing from, and deviating from, josekis, it's The Direction of Play book. It's got quite a steep learning curve and much of it is high level thinking, but it helps in situations like the lower left -> your comment that O3 was a mistake because it doesn't look like a joseki was somewhat amusing - I'm 70 points behind, so ask yourself why I'd play a move like that, what am I aiming for etc.

3) I agree, and this was, in my mind, your biggest thought error throughout the game. Looking at ladder / loose ladder sequences for M5 were almost madness, simply because even saving that cutting stone doesn't do anything for you when White is happy on both sides. In fact, merely trying to save it will give White ammunition as it becomes a heavy group to chase quite quickly. Also, don't ever think that a long knight's corner enclosure is thickness (post #44)

4) Agreed, although you really only did this badly once, at the bottom of the board.

5) This is something which is always hard when the strengths are mismatched. The top left fighting was a very good example of it. Moves like 61 were big, but you should be settling without needing to read. Something like:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bcm61 Move 61
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O O X . X O O . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O X X . X O X X . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O O X X O X O . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . O X O . O X O . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . C X O . O 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X X . 3 . 5 . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 2 . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . 4 . 7 . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . O . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 1 . . . . . . . . . O . O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . X O . . . X X . |
$$ | . . X , . . . . . . O O X X X . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . O X O O . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . O X . . O X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Now you can build your own attack, neutralise my influence, and never have to play at the circled point.

Life and Death will help, as will tesuji work (and in my opinion, probably more so). I get a lot of the value out of L+D problems by learning to read for throwins, eye-shape stealing moves and so on that are actually learnable as shape points and tesujis without doing the L+D problems themselves. Either way, this does make good sense.

Also, as I mentioned in that paragraph, don't underestimate the value of good shape. Move 139 is a great example of a move designed to protect something, but in the wrong way. At that point, you should be concerned about A3, C3, B2, D3, and F2. All these moves offer potential for problems, even if some are reliant on others working out before they are effective. In the end, you picked a move that made C3 and D3 slightly less effective, and that's all. Playing a move like C2 yourself would have completely fixed A3, C3, B2, almost completely fixed D3, and made F2 overplay. Sure, you lose a point or so of territory that you got with your move 139, but you gain it back with interest in the corner itself, and for endgame you can now play at D6 instead for even more points. This was a small mistake, but significant from the point of the way you thought about the move.

After the left had settled nicely, you were still leading the game, but move 125 was the game loser for Black Connecting underneath with L18 works, and is the only move I think you could want to play. Removing a bit of aji from one of my stones and letting me swallow up the top was huge.

----

I'm reasonably happy with my play in this game. I made a few reading errors in the top left, and I completely messed up the top right. For unkx80 and Daniel, I didn't play the top right just to get M15 in sente. I played the top right to get a good result, and, having failed, played M15 rather than make my mess worse

Thanks very much to everyone for their interest and comments, and particularly to unkx80 who picked up on a number of errors in my moves that are clearly signs of my own bad habits

Both of you played a good game. Even though Numsgil lost, he played with the right kind of spirit. The game is largely lost in the upper left corner, but this is mainly attributable to reading mistakes due to strength difference.

I don't have anything else to add apart from what other and I have said.

@topazg: This game spanned quite a long time - I had to trudge through this huge mass of posts just to recall what I have posted!

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My homepages: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Unkx80 and http://yeefan.sg/.

advice to Numsgil:
in my opinion you are over thinking.
many many variation you drew are unnecessary.
think simple variation.
if you make your game simple that is a sign that you are improving.
people think that stronger people make things complicated but truth is that they keep everything simple.

remember that when you are outnumbered you dont fight and take care of your stones.
if you see my handycap games i try my best to take care of my group until i outnumber my opponents. you must learn to wait till the time is right.

_________________
"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

Outnumber? You mean more stones locally? Or winning point-wise?

If by playing simply you mean not considering unnecessary variations I think that comes from internalizing heuristics after doing thousands of problems and games. Not something you can just "do". Also somewhat dangerous since, as you learn, you have to self consciously apply new ideas and techniques that feel unnatural. Sort of like learning to play guitar: you have to go through an awkward phase learning finger placement before you can just play comfortably. If I just play by gut I'll play like a 10k, since that's how strong my gut is. That is, my gut is wrong quite often and I have to manually read out variations to correct it.

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1k KGS

It's a lot easier to juggle well than to juggle badly. But before you can juggle well, you have to spend a lot of time juggling badly. I think this applies to reading in go, too.

Additionally, I think new players through 5k (and sometimes me, too) are unable to read deeply because they think of too many (bad) options (not enough pruning). But I think at my level (1k) it's more common to read incorrectly because we miss a good move (too much/incorrect pruning).

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

MW can correct me if I'm mistaken, but I'm pretty sure he means locally. Assuming neither player has horrible shape or anything, the player who has the most supporting stones locally will come tend to come out ahead in local fights. It's like a cross-cut. If you already have a stone near enough to act as an extension from the cross-cut, then it's as though you got a free move in the fight.

By simplicity, I think he is talking part about pruning, and part about ignoring simple good moves for needlessly complex variations. For example, if someone peeps at your wall, it is usually best to connect, even if you CAN do something different. If the alternative plan isn't better than the obvious for some clear and definable reason, then stick with the logical, straightforward response.

Advice aside (as I'm not really qualified to give any), this was a really good game. It was fun to watch someone around my level play 'even' against someone stronger. That top left is a really painfully confusing joseki fight, which I've learned in the Big Brother game. I really need to study it, but it's intimidating. Both players did really well, and I applaud the attitudes of both. Numsgil was the implacable legionare, unwilling to give ground against an intimidating force, and Topazg was Ender, seeing a swarm of ships form a cloud around a planet, thinking 'You mean I have to win THAT!?'

Great game, hard fought.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

outnumbered ~ locally
like i said...i do not start my handycap game with fighting.
i always wait till i am stronger.
you should do the same.

_________________
"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

Hmm...

So taking the number of different variations in my tactics and variations diagrams as an indication of how many different variations I consciously read out when I consider a move (how "wide" I read), is that more than most high kyu/dan players here do when they play a game?

Maybe as you grow from DDK through the SDK, your breadth of reading increases, but then there's some watershed point where you understand enough of the game on an intuitive level that the breadth actually decreases since you can weed out bad variations. Then reading becomes deeper instead of wider. But then as you say the danger becomes culling out moves without even considering them first.

Anyway, an interesting idea I hadn't thought about before.

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1k KGS

I think there are two distinct intentions to the phrase 'as if in an even game', and that you may have the wrong one.

The wrong way is to play as if in an even game locally. These moves may be good locally, but actually be rubbish becuase they ignore the handicap nature of the game. I think these may be the moves perceived as passive, perhaps because your even game play is actually not good - too passive even *in* an even game (though I didn't look at the game in detail, so I'm not sure).

The correct way is to play as if in an even game over the whole board - which in this case means attacking. To the even game mentality, Christmas has come early, and Santa has brought some free moves. For the stronger player, it means complicating things; when well behind but still playing, this *is* the correct way to play. It does *not* mean overplaying, just playing normally in a way that encourages mistakes from the opponent.

EDIT: To play less passively, ignore your opponents moves. This doesn't have to be in a big way, or in particularly complex sequences. For example, ignore the 4-2 slide to your 4-4 point. I think it's good to get in the mentality of making your opponent work for you, not working for them, and that these simple things will help you get a feel for doing the same thing in more complex situations.

Glanced at the game.

Topagz! Stealing my ideas and sequences... *hoards more tricks*