Offering diagonal. I generally like having many small groups.

Pretty standard opening. I might Sanrensei. Fun opening. Or I might go for a standard opening. Haven't yet decided. Decisions, decisions. And it feels great to be playing. This is my first game in about a week! I hope my break pays off!

I seldom see people playing diagonal nowadays.

I don't like the opening, especially as white. I look at the opening as an inevitable evil stage before the beautiful middle game chaos starts.

Also I need to get rid of my habit of clicking on any spoiler that I come across

My move is a pretty common response, so I'll go with that rather than trying something else. Familiarity against a superior foe is the safe way to go. However, I aim to make this a very fight oriented game later on. In one of my previous games, I chose a seemingly dangerous early invasion inside an opponent's moyo that worked out quite well. Not only did I live, I destroyed their potential territory. I'm not sure that will occur in this game due to .

Either way, I'm really looking forward to seeing how this game progesses. Perhaps I'll learn something if I play aggressively. That's my normal tactic against stronger players. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Don't let him settle that easily. Any complication is good

I'll take a one space jump here. There are some ways for proceeding from here. I figure he'll one space jump from and that's fine. If he plays somewhere else, I guess I'll rethink how to proceed from there.

Is the term for this armpit or shoulder hit? Or something like that? Oh well, I'll play it anyway. I like this shape. A lot. I think it puts in a good situation. But again, I'm 8k for a reason, so my logic is probably flawed. Either way, I think this is a good situation for .

An interesting move. I don't plat 3-4 often, so I haven't encountered it yet. Pro's don't play it either. Black looks a bit over-concentrated to me. I think there is no explicit punishment, but that the over concentration is the punishment.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

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$$ | . . 8 . 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
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$$ | . . 4 , 5 . . 6 . b c . . . . O . . . |
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a was my first instinct, but seems a bit premature. Perhaps later, once my groups are more stable.
b and c calmly take a bit of a base. c might be a bit thin considering the closeness of blacks stones
d tries to take away his base. But a pincer seems annoying.

I'll probably go with b or c.