Game versus a (rusty) 4k KGS friend:

Actually, better, a loss to a 7k friend.



Tough game, I found myself without much of a plan in the midgame other than stop him turning the centre into one big territory. The result in the top left was very favourable to white too I think.

The result in the top left was very favorable to Black.



Make multi-purpose moves.

Attack weak groups.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Thank you Bill, exactly the kind of analysis I needed. My passive streak is becoming a serious problem for me. As is my inability to judge a local position correctly.

Some more comments.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Actually, as an aside before bed: Playing passively is probably my single biggest problem at the moment. I think so myself when I look over games and have been told it by strong players. The issue is I don't even notice it, it's so engrained into my play. So I wonder why, I think partly it's personality, I'm a pretty passive person in general and partly it's due to habits picked up when playing while depressed, which might actually explain why I'm so passive as a person to be honest. What to do about this? One strong player suggested to me that I try out being very aggressive for a few games, just to try and break the habits and get used to attacking. I look at my groups coming out of the opening and well, they're secure, probably too secure. Is this a problem? I'm not strong enough to know really, but I look at games played by much stronger players and they play a lot more loosely in the opening. Is this a question of style or am I doing something fundamentally wrong here? This is a question I'd dearly like an answer to because if it is the latter then I need to rework my entire approach to the game.

So anyway, some goals for my next few games:

Be proactive not reactive.
Be aggressive not passive, invite the fight onto myself.

I think just focusing on these two things might help me more than any amount of problem solving, reading or just grinding out games would do. Now, the hard part will be actually doing it and breaking the bad habits engrained over the past few months.

Thank you again for the review Bill.

You play less passively than probably most players at your level.



You might give that a try. Another idea is to try to play multi-purpose moves. Note that a number of my suggestions are not very aggressive. That is, they are not very strong attacks, but they accomplish something else at the same time. You can play multi-purpose moves, regardless of your mood.



Not necessarily.



Welcome to the club.



You play more passively than you used to. Perhaps that was because you did not recognize the danger before. This is not an easy question to answer, and there is a lot to learn about the strength of groups. In any event, you do not need to rework your approach to the game.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Do you know what's even more bizarre? The games I enjoy most are the ones with weak groups being chased and with running fights! Yet somehow I engineer things so there aren't such games. The mind is a funny, funny thing at times.

Got mauled in an even game tonight in Kaya's ASR league but I learned a nice bit I think. AS you can see my guesstimation method of counting sucks. All I knew was that I was losing by *a lot* and took a stab at around 40. Oh how wrong I was.



Edit: My opponent made a good point afterwards, I was spending too much time thinking of my own groups and not about his groups. Which I think is quite true in my general play.

Ed:

I had planned the cut. I chickened out thinking that my inside group would just be far too weak.

Point very well taken. I was not happy with the result following this move in the game.

I was overly concerned with life and this was very gote. My group has access to the centre and one eye if I don't play this move, perhaps I can approach the top right here?

(b) seems to be more common. Reduces his moyo better and gives a group with one eye and access to the centre.

(b) is far weaker. I hadn't seen this move before and didn't see the threat of the crosscut a few moves on. Inexperience and poor reading on my part.

I had read it didn't work but I became transfixed with having aji there. I also thought running with that stone would have been a bad idea.

I bottled it.

:b105: Yes, I can just nobi to the first line, his cut doesn't work.

Thank you very much for the review Ed.

Very welcome.

You have to read it out before deciding to push. Also, this is a very common shape. Study it.
Another standard exchange (when your D5 stone is pincered). Remember it.
First, what's the status of your group?
Q14 (the double keima) is a standard shape to fix the R16-R12 three-space jump on the 3rd line.
If you'd already read it didn't work, then don't do it. R12 has aji even without (which only made it more heavy).
105: I think T17 is not nobi but sagari (descend), but I'm not sure. Also, you have to read not only the R17 cut
but also the R18 extend and Q18 jump.

Wrong about what?



The DDK disease. You used not to play that way. Get over it. Think about multi-purpose plays and about the local balance of stones, especially early in the game. Playing more than two stones more than your opponent in a local area is almost always wrong early in the game.

Comments:

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Thank you Bill, very instructive. I meant I was wrong about the score by 30 points. I need to start counting properly.

Good day at the club, achieved my goal of beating the local EGF 2k on 9 stones at the second attempt today. Lost two other games. Overall happy with my progress. I was being murdered on 9 stones a month ago.

More interestingly, I got some advice from a KGS 4d to start laying problems out on a board before solving them in my head, he'd gotten the advice from a pro, it slows things down a lot but I think it might help with remembering shape. All I need now is the patience to solve problems this way. So I tried doing this at the club when we were down to 3 people and I had some time to kill. It's very interesting, I think I'm going to start doing it a lot more, I found I was paying far more attention to each stone's position having to lay it out myself rather than solving just in my head. I'm hoping it'll give me a better sense for shape and weaknesses in shape. It's a pity that gochild's problems are usually 11x11 and not suitable for any board I have. But the problems from 1001 L&D, Get Strong at Tesuji and Speed Baduk will all work well with this technique.

Study plan for the week ahead:

Kids are back at school, work at home is quiet so I'll have plenty of time to play games. I'm hoping to get 3 slow games in a day. On top of this I hope to continue with solving tsumego which is more kid friendly because my son will join in.

OIC. I thought that you meant that you thought that you were behind at around move 40. You were.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Yeah it was a losing game. I disrespected my opponent by playing on for practice without asking first. I apologised after the game.

Game with topazg: I was lost for most of it, playing on instinct rather than having some grand plan which made for a very tough game mentally. Very tight, I'm sure I made a load of mistakes in this game.

I don't think that you disrespected your opponent by playing on. After all, you were playing even. (You could have resigned at move 1. )

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.