Hello,

I started playing Go awhile ago but have taken most of the past year off. I stopped doing problems and I've only played about 10 or so games since September. Anyway, I've been trying to get back into it and have been amazed at how far I've slipped. I was around 14kyu when I stopped, I think I'm around 18kyu now.



My thoughts:

Move 9: I think this is too far an extension. I debated between this and L3. If I'm not mistaken, I believe M3 is used for the micro-Chinese.
Move 15: While I like territory in the corner, I felt that this was a mistake right after I played it because I expected to end in gote, which would allow white to potentially pincer my F17 stone or to play R14 or R10.
Move 35: too slow and cautious.
Move 37: debated E9 or tengen. I thought this was better territorially.
Move 41: thought about double-hane, but I wasn't comfortable with potential complications.

After move 107, I expected him to play at K12. I was then going to double-atari at either H8 or J9. But he resigned, swore at me, and that was that. However, had he played slightly more solidly, he would have ended up with quite a bit of territory on the left and I had some points he could easily have invaded.

Thanks in advance for any feedback

9: You are correct: it is too far. But K3 would be better. Your F4/F3 stones are heavy, and facing a probably live group in the corner.

13: H3 looks slow, but is really solid.

15: Move 14 by white is terrible. Play H2 and thank him for forcing you to make a good move.

25: B14 secures life in sente. It is also bigger than your move.

27: This looks like you intend to use F17. Forget about it for now. It is in the shadow of a much stronger white group, and therefore its value is compromised greatly.

29: Big. But H2 is urgent.

37: The first person to hane at D8 or E8 gains an advantage. But H2 is still big.

41&43: Generally, it is best to extend when crosscutting. This develops fewer group with more liberties per group. Playing as you did gives you lots of small groups with fewer liberties.

75: M11 kills something. You wanted to play M11 anyway, didn't you? If not, why did you play L10?

86: He's bluffing. H5 is not a ladder breaker. Read it out: you can kill.
BTW: a good general rule of thumb is that a ladder breaker requires 3 liberties. H5 has only two, which should make you suspicious enough to read the ladder all the way to its bloody end.

107: He's rude, and you did nothing wrong. It is your time to use as you wish - especially in a game-deciding fight. If he is not prepared for that, he should start only games with a smaller time limit.

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9: While K3 or K4 would be the "correct" extension from your two stones, neither L3 nor M3 would be wrong, so long as you understood that you were weakening F3 to support the P3 area. I think that's a very enterprising experiment for a DDK.

But the best move is probably D5. I've played around with a few of variations, and even with the weird defensive move at D2, D5 seems to be a vital point for gaining control of the local situations. Normally W's D2 is at D6 for this very reason.

13: Excellent tenuki! In the sense that playing G1 would be very bad. I still like D5, though.

15: C14 or D14 is the move to play in the upper left corner. Surround him on both sides, ask him where he expects to run to. Now, I'm surprised Joaz wants H2, I was going to praise you for ignoring. The way I see it, it's 6 stones to 3, but even if W plays again and captures F3 entirely with one stone he can't wring a 60 point advantage in the lower left corner.

22: C14! This is actually a fairly complex position so I wouldn't expect you to just "see" that C14 works. But play around with position and see what happens if W replies at B15.

37: E9 is strictly worse than E8, I think. D8 is also worth trying, although I think W is too strong for that to work here. Tengen wouldn't be bad, but it doesn't work with your wall well enough to compensate for letting W have E8. Other moves to keep an eye on: H2, P4, P10, O16/P16. P10 strikes me as better than the similar-looking K15 because you are trying to make $$$ on both sides of R10; but the main focus of K17 is just to prevent W from expanding from his wall, and P16 would be a good way to reinforce this essentially defensive mission while also increasing your control of the corner.

41-46: Giving W this shape is worse than just letting W connect. Very strong shape. Better to play M14 or M13 to begin with, rather than sacrificing that stone to no purpose.

63: A cut! Good!

71: Shape point! Perfect!

87: Ohh, the ladder still works. This is a mistake.

97: Unnecessary, he needs to connect before poking in.

Great game, I think you are recollecting your old skills better than you think. Even within the game, it seemed you were playing more confidently later and later in the game.

Also, move 19 looks better at C18.

Hmmm...after reading JTS's comments, I still like H2.

EDIT: Removed erroneous diagram.

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I tried to make some more or less useful comments (and will be happy for corrections)...

Thanks for all the thoughts. I found white's choices in the upper and lower left confusing since they didn't follow joseki that I know and, if they were joseki, they aren't ones I'm familiar with. This is compounded by the anxiety I feel while playing online, which is something that I hope will get better as I play more often. Playing in person, even tournament games, I don't get all that nervous.

His comment on the time at the end was odd since the time setting was his suggestion in the first place (I also deleted his swearing at me from the sgf I posted here). It's possible he was complaining about the pace I was setting, which is partly due to the lag I'm experiencing because of computer issues. Plus I tend to be a very slow player.

I'm very new to IGS and I'm unclear on exactly how the time setting works. I'm accustomed to KGS, where you often get a certain amount of main time and then a number of byo-yomi periods of, say, 30 seconds each. With IGS, it looks like there's main time and then a single byo-yomi period in which you have to play a certain number of stones. I'm sure there are different settings available, but I still find this confusing.

Anyway, thanks again.

ikkyu, each of IGS and KGS supports both time controls:

The one you're used to, "Byo-Yomi": (initial time) + N x (over-time). Example: 30 minutes + 3 x 30 seconds. (Implicit: 1 move per over-time.)

Here's "Canadian" time control: (initial time) + (number of moves per over-time). Example: 1 minute + (25 moves per 10 minutes).

But we can merge or generalize both of them: (initial time) + N x (number of moves M per over-time).

For Byo-Yomi: M = 1. So in each over-time, you must play exactly 1 move.

For Canadian: N = infinite. And M does not have to be 1.

IGS supports both time controls. So does KGS.

You can't memorize them all. You are going to meet an unexpected move sooner or later. Preparing for joseki not only involves memorizing some common lines, but also learning why joseki is joseki. If you understand why, then when your opponent deviates, you will understand how to take advantage of it.

Let's look at the two corners from your game:

1) In the lower left corner, on move 6, Schawipp notes that "not good if w doesn't have anything around k3". He's right: white needs something aound K3 to do this. ( Or if he has a stone around D6, it works also ) The idea behind this is that the kick at E3 forces black to become heavy with F3. The heavy stones can then be attacked IFF white has enough stones around to do it. ( See viewtopic.php?p=36322#p36322 for more details. )

You don't need to memorize joseki to handle moves like the kick at E3, you only need to understand what white is trying to do, then you can figure out the refutation over the board. He wants this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Bad for you
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . O . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . O . X . . . . .
$$| . . . . O X . . O . .
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$---------------------[/go]

But he has this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Circled points are miai. \n He can't get both
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . C . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . O . X . . . . .
$$| . . . . O X . . C . .
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$---------------------[/go]

Once you recognize this, you need only play one of those miai points - or something close, sometimes - to refute his attempt.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Good for you. \n Because you can invade C3 later. \n He cannot easily invade H3.
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . 1 . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . O . X . . . . .
$$| . . C . O X . C . 2 . .
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$---------------------[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Good for you. \n Because he must play 'a' to avoid being crushed. \n And you get to play 'b' and 'd'
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . d . . . . . . . .
$$| . . c b . . . . . . . .
$$| . . a 2 . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . O . X . . . . .
$$| . . . . O X . . 1 . .
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$| . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$---------------------[/go]

(( gotta take a break, so I'll post this, and add second example later ))

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Quick question:

A number of people have said that I should have responded to to white's move 14 with H2 instead of playing away. Obviously, playing H2 would have prevented white playing there, but am I right in thinking that there is some other benefit to this move that I'm not seeing? H2 seems to me to invite white to play the eye-stealing tesuji at H4 (I don't have the sgf in front of me at the moment, so I'm going off of memory). Is that not something to be concerned about?

It seems I lied when I said "quick."

White can play the eye-stealing move, but it's not really a tesuji in this case. White gets left with a floating stone, while black can easily connect to the stones on the right to live, so black isn't under any sort of real attack. Black could respond with an okay empty triangle at g4 to take a liberty from white, and if white extends down to peep again, just extend right to j2. Black's stones will be able to fight out, and white is left with a couple stones that have no eyespace and no prospects. Playing this move would be better for white if the stones to the right were white instead of black, but as is, white would likely cause himself more trouble than he gets benefit out of it.

First, was a wasted move -- W should have played at directly, and B would still pull back at H2.
Forget H4 for a moment and just look at the exchange: W is crawling on the 1st line, in exchange for B getting the 2nd line,
solidifying the bottom area for B -- B is happy to pull back at H2.
If B does not play H2, then W can atari at H2 and walk right into B's bottom area.
After B replies at H2, if W plays H4, B would consider to counter-attack with H5, etc.

After White has invested 6 stones in the bottom left corner while Black has invested only 3 stones, and two of White's stones are on the first line, including . At the dan level Black has an easily won game. If White takes three more moves in the opening to capture the three Black stones Black will be immensely happy. I would play a double approach in the top left corner in a shot. (The 3-3 invasion needlessly weakens the approach stone that is already there.)

As for your being 18 kyu, you demolished that 17 kyu. I did not go through the whole game, but you played on a different level than he did, at least 5 stones better, from what I saw.

Edit: OK, I looked at the rest of the game. and were pretty bad. If you just extend to E-08 into White's sphere of influence with White can give up the ghost.

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Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I was around 14-15k when I stopped playing for a while. I started again in February and faced the same problems you did. You don't need to worry, your reading and shape knowledge is still there, it's just rusty because it hasn't been used in a while. It took me about a month to get back to my old level (I just played a couple of games every week and solved easy tsumego on a regular basis. If you're curious, that's my study journal: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=7876).

Thanks for the encouragement. I just bought copies of Graded Go Problems vol 2-4. I had made it through vol 2 with a pretty high success rate, but that was last August and I'm going to start it again. I also have 1001 Life & Death Problems, which I'm going to start going through again as well.

I think part of the problem with my reading (aside from rust and not being all that good to begin with) is the anxiety I feel while playing online. Don't know why.

As an aside, 4 of the 10 games I've played since September were in a one-day local tournament this spring. I went 1-3 and my brain felt like mush afterwards. I should have played or studied leading up to it. However, one of my losses was the best game I've personally ever played and I could have won except that I literally convinced my opponent not to resign after I captured a large group of his. I ended up losing by 4.5 points.

It shows your good attitude to the game And things like that will pay off in the long run. It doesn't matter what your winning rate is. Playing is experience, experience is good for you regardless of the result. Not being able to play your best because you hadn't studied, were tired, ad so on, this isn't really important. Just play.

Heh, you wouldn't say that if you saw some of the other games I've been playing. I had a game yesterday with another 17kyu where after about 80 moves, I was well on my way to losing by 150 points. I resigned and he more or less said, "If you wrote 'gg' why are you resigning?"

The loss was entirely my fault: I played orthodox and when he invaded my 3-3, I didn't extend off of my wall soon enough. He tried to surround it and I would have had to live in the middle. Oh well, live and learn.

I'm going to start a study journal. I used to have one and I found it useful, if frustrating.