This is my latest embarrassment from yesterday morning.

Some comments:

Skydyr's comment on 47 is interesting - I would have recommended L18, and then K16 and G18 are miai for B. L18 avoids sacrificing K18 and leaves you without cutting points, but skydyr's line with G18 leaves you with strong positions in the UR (p18!), UL (g18 h19 d16) and CR.

However, there is one way in which L18 should have been obvious to you even if the sacrifice play seemed too daring - after you play L17, you are forced to play L18 to save K18! Now consider things the other way around. If you played L18 and then W stubbornly pulled out his stone with K16, would you ever consider playing L17? Of course not... it's a wasted move. But that's exactly the line you chose when you played L17 to start with.

More generally, this is called the 1-2-3 principle. The idea is that if you are planning to play "1" in sente, get "2" as a reply, and then end in gote with "3", you should ask yourself what work the first move is doing. If you played "3" directly, would your opponent play "1" himself? Will you change where you play "3" depending on where he plays "2"? After you play "3", can your opponent ignore it when you play "1" later? -- If none of these considerations apply, leave your sente moves for later! Just play "3" right away. Half of the time, playing "3" forces your opponent to play "2" anyway, and you end in sente.

The point about (L17 atari) being bad is a *very* important one. You will improve a lot if you can cure yourself of this bad habit, by reading ahead two moves and seeing that the exchange L17-K16 helps W. Simply playing L18 directly is far better; now W cannot save the cutting stones on both sides. Another high level technique to consider is K16-L17-L18-L16-G18, capturing two stones. In essence, B plays atari where W would like to extend, then gets to play the necessary L18 defense in sente. After that, B secures the top territory, and the W group at K17 becomes unimportant. One final note on this position: is a mistake; B should immediately capture at K16 for a great result -- the ponnuki is worth far more than the F17 stone.

But enough about technique. The biggest problem I see in this game is that B seems unwilling to believe that he can suffer a loss anywhere on the board. Time after time B attempted to salvage impossible situations, only making the result worse. I think the most important breakthrough you can make is to control your blood lust, impartially analyze a situation, then give up stones which cannot be rescued, and stop attacking groups which were once weak but now are strong.

For example, take a look at the position after . The L18 group is surrounded and dead, and the P15 group is getting very weak. There is really no hope for B to capture the N12 stones, as they have become reasonably strong, and they can easily get more liberties than the dead B group above. If B steps back and looks at the position objectively, there is still time to break off the attack and set about securing the weak P15 group. One option is to start the ko at O18 or Q18. Another option is to cut across the knights move at Q13 to capture the R14 stone. (Do you see why W cannot prevent this?) But instead, up through move 93, B plays as if there must be a way to capture W, and instead he gets sliced to ribbons by the W counter-attack.

Honestly, I didn't really consider L18. I was happy to give white 2 points in exchange for a wall and tasty aji where black probably would have gotten just a couple points as well. It does seem perfectly playable, though.

Thank you for the comments, guys. Very usefull. See what do I mean when I say berserker-state-of-mind?

Stupid devil on my left shoulder keep saying: "kill, kill, you've got to kill that group, yeeeeaaaaah, kill, kill..."

I definitely saw the berserker coming out in this game. I think it's a good phase to go through. In particular, it looks like you've just discovered the wedge-and-cut suji, and you're playing around with it to see how it works, wedging in everywhere. You're like a kitten batting around a ball of yarn - the same claws, later, will be used less frequently but more lethally.

Think of the wedge as like a ladder. In some circumstances it's very strong to play out a ladder, but normally you need preparation (like when you have a ladder breaker in place). A 25k plays out the whole ladder. A 20k plays out ten moves of the ladder, realizes he's captured, and plays a ladder breaker. A 15k is happy if he realizes he's in a ladder after two moves, and plays the ladder breaker. A 10k hopefully doesn't add any extra stones to the ladder, but plays the ladder breaker immediately. A 5k aims to play the ladder breaker before the ladder is actually on the board. If the opponent replies to the ladder breaker, then the 5k plays the ladder sequence.

Think of the wedge in the same way. Sometimes your wedge will just be unconditionally strong, but most of the time, you will incur a certain loss but get some forcing moves elsewhere as compensation. The next step, once you've fooled around with the wedge enough to be familiar with how it works, is to read out which forcing moves you expect to get, and play them without wedging in at all.

Hello Vladimir,

I don't know if you remember me, but when I saw your study journal name, I remembered you. I played you twice on KGS when we were both rated at 10 kyu back in April a week after I joined the KGS. I remembered because you were the first opponent I played with an avatar and the first I played twice. You were having some connection issues, but you won both games (the first by 14.5, the second by my resignation). It was 2 days before you made this thread, in fact.

I would also like to reach shodan level on the KGS someday and I feel we could both help each other toward that goal. So I was wondering if you would like to play a game or two and review it afterward. (They can be ranked or free games, either is fine)

You've played a lot more games on the KGS since April than I have, but I attend a local go club so I'm still playing a decent number of games myself. Our styles are different enough that I'm sure we'd learn from each other.

If nothing else, I'd like to have a rematch with you. The corner mistake that cost me our first game was inexplicable even at the time -- how could I miss that!? -- and you definitely outplayed me in the center fight of our second game, but my reading ability is better now than it was then.

Either way, congratulations on rising to 8 kyu. I hope to join you at that rank once I find the time to play more KGS games.

moyoaji

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

@jts Thanx, mate. I was always wondering why they say that one point jumps are solid connection. It all depends on situation.

@moyoaji I'll be happy to play with you again, as many times as you want. The only problem is that I play 95% of games on mobile client and there's no picking your opponents. Only auto. But, I'll add you as a fan, so you could prepare game (put "Vladimir" in title) and I'll find that in fan games.
I agree that this might be very usefull for both of us, especially reviewing part.

I am one lazy, lazy, lazy guy.
While I stick to my playing routine (even increasing number of games played), I completly neglected tsumego, books and reviews.
My rank graph is seemingly ok, it goes in the right direction and I win a lot of games, but I feel stagnation of my improvement due to not sticking to my original plan.

This has to change. From this very moment.

If you're still getting stronger, just play for now. The stagnation you feel is probably just the fact that it takes more to advance a rank than it did previously.

I'm still winning (64% of wins with +/- 1 stone strenght difference opponent in 80 games from the beggining of June). Here's the graph:

www.gokgs.com/graphPage.jsp?user=vladimir

But, in last 10-15 days I make so much stupid blunders, strategic mistakes and, in general, I lost self confidence. Maybe it contradicts to the numbers I displayed at the beginning of the post, but it's like that. I feel much more confident in periods when I read books and do tsumegos.

I know that feeling. It can be easy to tense up in a game after a mistake and let things go from bad to worse. Remember that your opponent is the same skill level as you are, so they are just as likely to make a mistake. With kyu players there are always strengths and weaknesses. Some players are great at the opening but not that strong at life or death. Others might be good in fights but never know how to handle moves in yose. (If a kyu players was good at everything, they would be a dan player)

Know where you are strong and play to that strength. For example, I know my opening is now better than most players at my rank (The Direction of Play was a fantastic book) so I try to get ahead early and then play solid for the rest of the game. I'm also good at finding weaknesses in my opponent's framework and walls (hence my username) so if I do get behind through the middle game I then keep an eye out for those kind of mistakes.

Obviously you can't win every game, and you need to be improving in the areas where you aren't strong to get better. That is where your mistakes come in. Find out why your mistake was bad and what your opponent did to expose the weakness. That was how I got good at finding weaknesses in walls - a player at my college's club was great at it. After he beat me dozens of times with that I started figuring out where the mistakes were and stopped making them. Then, when I saw others make those mistakes, I took advantage of them. With KGS games this is easier because you can go through move by move and see. (My games were in person, so I had to try to remember)

Don't worry, your confidence will return soon enough.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

Good game this morning, moyoaji. We have to do it again.

Definitely. I look forward to our next match.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

Man, what a day. I lost 5 straight games. 5!
So pissed right now...

I thought you were seeking improvement, not victories. Are you surprised to find opponents that are able to beat you? Don't get so attached, review those 5 games and be happy you played 5 games in a day. Learn something new.
This is the 10th page so this advice might be late, but the biggest challenge will be keeping this rhythm when things get tough. Don't give up.

Thank you. Your post is probably the best thing related to go that happened to me today.

Today, KGS android client keep stopping and my opponents keep leaving even if I tell them in the beggining to wait for me if I'm disconnected.
I'm gonna be labeled as an escaper

I watched in horror as you played move that accomplished broken knight's move relation on two separate occasions in your game against onga [8k]. These occasions were moves 24 and 150. I think your game would benefit from shape studying. Sensei's library has a page that helped me understand theory behind some basic shapes:
http://senseis.xmp.net/?LameDuGo

You won the game though, thanks to some ripped keima situations that you opponent created. Moves 51, 57, 65, 113, 115, 123 are examples of those.