IGS is also a very good source of games at the DDK level.

Here are some comments on your first game. I thought you played very well. I like that you had a clear plan from early on -- focusing on building territory on the top, bottom, and center -- and toward that end you identified strong moves in support of those goals. Here are a few things to think about in general:

1. You do a good job of identifying key moves for your goal, but you seem to make large gote moves without thinking first whether or not there are supporting (or important) sente moves that could be made first. (move 53 for example).

2. You need to be a bit more careful with your connections. At times, you are too focused on extending and not sufficiently focused on maintaining the connection. For both moves 15 and 33, you would have done better to make a smaller extension to avoid being cut.

3. I think you are at the point where you could think a bit about how to gain moves by harassing opponent's weak stones. Moves 47 and 55 are examples of when this could have been useful. They are also examples of sente moves you can make before making other moves.

4. This is a more challenging comment, but I think it might be good to put it on your horizon. In this game, you developed a single plan early on and you were able to execute it. That is a very important step. You should feel good about that! However, part of the reason you were able to execute it was that your opponent allowed you to do so. At some point in the next few rankings, your opponents are not going to be so cooperative. To counter this, you'll need to be more flexible in your strategic thinking. For example, you might build a moyo, knowing that it might get invaded, but with a contingency plan in mind for the invasion -- such using the invasion to build another moyo somewhere else or as I illustrated in my comments, use the invasion to invade the opponent's moyo. For example, players often think of the main goal of developing a moyo is to claim the territory inside. However, that's not always true. The better way to think of the value of a moyo is that it threatens to claim the territory inside. That threat will either yield an invasion or territory, but you want to build the moyo in such a way that you will benefit either way.

Thank you for the comments BG! Lots for me to think about there. I'll try to think about finding more sente moves in my next few games.



I'd heard that sort of thing about moyos and their purpose before, but that's the most succinct way I've seen it expressed.

A few comments.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Oops, again it's been a while and I've been too busy with PhD to play any games. I played again last night and just finished posting up a review, with help from a few comments from the #go IRC channel on Freenode. SDK by June may still be within my grasp, despite my inability to keep up with my target!

Nice game. You played well! Here are some thoughts.

General areas to focus going forward:
1. Try to think about whether stones are worth saving before you save them. I think you both should have sacrificed a few in this game.
2. I think you are missing opportunities to threaten opponent's groups by not recognizing when they are weak or where they can be cut.

I finally managed to get another game in. Not keeping to anything like my 1 game a week target, but I have decided to retroactively clarify that my initial target was SDK by the *end* of June (since that's halfway through the year it's more or less what I had in mind anyway). So here is a soul-crushing game in which I snatched defeat from the jaws of what seemed like a well-fought victory in a 2-stone handicap game on KGS.

I can see that you are focusing on the order of development early on. And on a number of occasions you had the right idea in terms of general strategy. Unfortunately, while you had the right idea, you chose the wrong implementation at times. Keep at it and the right decisions will come. Below are some comments for you to consider. Another thing to consider is the shape of your wall on top. It would help to be more careful about not letting your opponent create cutting points or other defects in your wall, particularly in a game like this.

Hi dutchie,

cut, good.

Not so good. Drop to S5 first.
Study the local variations after S5.

OK. ( BG: was first mistake, not here. )

K17.

Study the variations if B N3.

o18.

Just a couple of days left to hit my target of SDK by end of June, I just played another game on KGS. Annoyingly my ? has returned, guess I should play a few more games to lose it.

Was a fun game, until I made several really frustrating mistakes in endgame. I'd be interested to see what best play would have made of the middle too.

Hi dutchie,

Almost a pass.

W almost passed with , so that's good for you.
( AlphaGo would have some good candidates here. )
Tricky: if J13 is enough for B to win, that's one possibility...

Did you consider G16 hane first, before here ?

Did you read E16 first, before here ?

The hane exchange ( - ) may be OK, but did you consider M17 first, before ?

Strange.

Of course, sente is important -- which is why you shouldn't have connected on --
you could've tenuki'd.
It's a good idea to get a rough assessment of the board, before .
( My feeling is B is comfortably ahead. If the final score was only B+1.5, then something bad happened from here. )

Your idea here is OK, but your shape is thin. ( e.g. C13 is still big. )

If you played here yourself on , you would also be nicely connected.

Did you read F12 ?

Did you read L10 atari ?

N14.

Did you read L9 ?

101 Did you read L9 ?

Ed Lee is right that something must have gone wrong and it was the sequence in the middle starting at f5.
I would like to point out though, that this couldnt have happenened if you had earlier played some throw ins in order to take your opponents eyes and liberties away. It wasnt strictly needed, since you kept is group dead, but it would have given you an easier time, if you reduce his liberties, so that capturing races in case of a cut like f5 are less scary. In fact, for example at move 130(the same trick applies in easier form already at move 127 and 129), you can even capture in a ladder using those throw ins(!), though ins, I thought this was nice:)

go to move 131.
also check move 147

It's been a while, and I have nowhere near stuck to my playing goals, but I'm back! Played a couple of games tonight, enough to go from 15k? to 13k on KGS. The first was very interesting, featuring a triple ko (that was definitely played incorrectly by both of us!). The second was a bit more of a steamrollering, finishing in a 188 point win for me. Who knows how far off my start-of-year target of 5k by January I'll be, but maybe it's achievable? I'll certainly be glad when I've moved up the ranks enough to have an easier time finding games.

Another long gap between posts. Looking back on my goals from last year, they probably would have been achievable if I'd stuck to my plans. Still, I think I made reasonable progress overall.

What have I been doing? I've worked my way through GGPB vols 1 and 2, and made several starts with volume 3. I've found that some of the problems are beyond me and have been restarting it before I get too frustrated, although it's been a while since I've done any from it recently. I've also been doing the odd puzzle with the Tsumego Pro app on my phone when I have some time to kill. For whatever reason, I feel like I have a bad habit of just guessing moves on that because of the immediate feedback so it doesn't feel as useful as the books.

I also bought Bruce Wilcox's Contact Fights book/tool/thing based on lots of recommendations aroudn L19 a couple of days ago and have worked through the Elementary and Novice sections. And wow, it really does feel worth the money already! I played a few games trying to put it into practice, and after a few losses it's really started to feel like it's coming together and making sense. I've now managed to get what seems to be a fairly stable 9k rating on KGS, only 9 months after my initial target. I'm definitely really happy with that. And I feel like I'm enjoying playing a lot more than I did before too: no longer finding the losses as frustrating, and it's getting much rarer for them to be decided by a stupid misread in endgame or anything like that.

So for the foreseeable future I want to get back into GGPB3 and just keep playing! Maybe I'll be able to catch up on my goals from last January and be 5k before autumn comes back?

I've played a couple so far, but I'm still yet to beat an 8k. Here's tonight's game, with a few variations and comments:

Shortage of liberties is dangerous. In your variation with double-hane, W cannot cut, because B has a killer answer -- a tesuji which frequently appears in problem books. I am sure you can find it if you look. The key to looking is to notice the shortage of liberties.

was the critical win/lose fight of the game. There is not enough room for B to live outright in the corner, but W is not strong enough on the outside for a clean kill. at B2 would give B a ko for life, which comes up often after invasions like this. You might also consider invading at C4 instead of C3, since you have some strength above if W allows you to run that way.

Thanks mitsun. I can see that tesuji now, but I'm not sure if I'd spot it in a game without someone pointing out it's there! On the other hand, I can't see W's move to prevent B from living outright in the bottom left. Can you (or someone else) show some variations?

Here's a game vs another 9k where I spent most of it thinking I'd lost, to be amazed when KGS told me I'd won by 7.5. I've gone through and reviewed it, and there's a nice little L&D puzzle at the end that I think could have been seki if I didn't defend my cut.

Conclusion from this game: it looks like you are great at playing big points and often play away from a local fight (tenuki) to do that. Sometimes too soon for my taste, but most semi-beginners tenuki not nearly enough, so keep the good habit. However, develop your sense of weak groups and how to attack them (in particular): 1) look for cuts 2) surround 3) reduce their space 4) play at their vital point

12: your sense of direction is good, but I believe something else is called for here: mutual strength in local combat; and so I favor another move
28: I would play the same move as the one I had in mind for 12, also because the direction of your influence is not so interesting here
36, 38 (and subsequent): I believe there's a much more urgent area than this
52: somehow, neither player recognizes the potential left here; only very late the move that would catch most players' eye is played
62: when you push through like this, both players hurt their own stones; now which one's stones affected are more important here? This is regardless of not seeing the atari.

76 to 98: after the loss of your cutting stones, you start playing very well. By 100, the damage is largely undone.
100: However, I would not miss out on an opportunity for sente here, locally double sente.
104: You know shape, you're in for progress
106: you play large points in early endgame, you're in for progress

126: with the wall you built, the move that has been asking to be played since 52 is now screaming



(BTW, you are right that the position in the end would result in seki if you don't respond, but this is due to lack of ..., otherwise Black would go for a ...)

Thanks as always for the thoughts, Knotwilg.

My routine's been a bit out of sorts recently, and certainly things like tsumego and playing have fallen by the wayside a little. But I was with some family in a board game café over the weekend and I talked us all into a little informal rengo and taught them the basics on a 9x9, which has rekindled my interest. I have bought and read the first couple of chapters of Attack and Defense, and splashed out on a goban and stones for myself. More excitingly, I've also signed up for my first tournament, the 21st Bar Low in London in a couple of weeks. I think I'll try to get to a club session or two in nearby Winchester beforehand to get some more face-to-face practice in, subject to nothing coming up on Wednesday evenings.

I played a KGS game against an 8k just now, and annoyingly I lost on time thanks to the Shin KGS interface not beeping at me when I was using up byo-yomi periods. It's nice to be able to play in a web browser with a somewhat more modern interface, but the lack of sound for time is really problematic, seeing as I tend to get lost in thought at the best of times. The game wasn't looking great, but I think it was pretty interesting whatever the result.



I think things to work on here are time management, reading/L&D, and making sure I'm not just playing moves without even considering possible responses (eg move 123)