did you consider C14 hane ?
( Both and missed the first feeling hane. )
good result for W.
push at P3 first, otherwise after you connect, B turns at P3 in sente.
this result is a disaster for W.
( Before hane you must read very carefully. )
connect N4 first ?
and both gote; both of you confused by junk food ( N2 ).
maybe jump to P11 directly ? B lower right too thick.
basic shape is extend o11.
111 result bad for W.

Big problems remain with basic shapes, contact fights:
good result at , but subsequent contact fights
ended up badly for W.

Yeah, this game wasn't one of my finest moments.

- No, I didn't consider it and even if someone had said it I still think I'd have rejected it (unless I saw their rank was higher than mine), pushing through that one space jump just looks so right.

- Wasn't quite sure how to deal with this area, I know 3-4 point josekis poorly enough, let alone 5-4 point ones, I will try to remember this.

- This whole sequence started with a misread and ended with me simply salvaging what little I could from it, which wasn't much.

- I was trying to shore up my group on the left and expecting him to capture my three stones. I shouldn't have expected that....

- Didn't realise this was bad as the group managed to live, despite being another misread.

- Believed the group could live and wanted to take some points.

111 - No argument there, we thought pulling back to defend at the start of this whole sequence would have been the best option when reviewing it.

PeterN

Peter, you are right about , it's the correct move because afterwards,
B has two cuts. Conversely, if B gets the same wedge first,
then it is W who ends up with two cuts.
This is why attach at 3-3 is not joseki.

Progress Report: -

Tsumego: None
Games Reviewed: 4 lost games
Other: Played through six games from Invincible

Got lazy on the tsumego this week and didn't do anything at all

Reviewed four lost games, two on the ASR League, and two offline, one of which I just got completely flummoxed by my opponent and still have little idea what happened.

Took a break from The Endgame and played through six games from Invincible this week, doubt these really help, but it's fun to do it sometimes. And even though I'm not far in the opening is beginning to look strangely familiar on each game.

Also learnt playing go when you go to sleep at 2am after watching football and still waking up normal time leads to not noticing groups in atari....

Game which flummoxed me: -

He just seemed to play everywhere at once and I felt like I was on the backfoot for a significant portion of the game.



PeterN

Hi Peter,

you know the joseki is C9. You tenuki, so you must know you owe W a move locally, otherwise you have a weak group.
Bad habit/bad basics. Why is this bad ?
if you already have the C9 joseki extension, then this a correct local reply to (like .) But you don't have C9, so this move is very slow and heavy -- W can attack your heavy group with C9 himself, etc.
Bad habit/bad basics. G8 is a shared vital point.
Bad habit/bad basics (similar to ). If you play the push, you must then cut at E15. The saying is "push and cut," not "push and retreat" or "push and push more from behind." If you don't plan on cutting, or you cannot cut at all, then don't push to begin with -- just play E17 ( ) directly.
joseki is Q15, extend. Numerous existing threads and discussions about this hane. Good to study the joseki Q15, and to study the hane variations.
Mistake, after the hane. You have to connect at Q15 instead. This is one of the important things to learn about the hane variation.
After this cut, one of your two B groups here will die. This is why is a mistake and why you have to connect at Q15 instead.
W gets a better result here than joseki. Study the joseki: Q15 for , compare the two local results.
Bad habit/bad basics.
Locally, M10 more efficient.
Bad habit/bad basics. Study these bad habits: , , , etc.
105 You got gote here entirely of your own doing. You gave W sente.At these levels, a significant portion of the problems lies in our basics.
Once again: basic shapes, contact fights.

Hi Ed,

I was W in this game Though I'll still go over these comments when I have some time.

PeterN

Hi Peter, sorry.

Thanks for the comments Ed.

- Never even considered tenuki here, I think the whole game it felt like I was responding for a large portion. Probably a reason why I virtually never see double approaches in my games.

- I like your varient a lot better, I got attack happy though.

- Yet another move I hadn't considered, first thing on my mind was don't get surrounded.

- And then promptly forgot about it.

- I suspect I do this a lot and looking at it while disregarding your comment it looks completely natural to me. Bad habit identified.

- Not something you commented on, but I really need to learn these josekis, I am getting into far too much trouble with approaching 3-4 stones.

- . Not much else I can say on this.

PeterN

This progress report has been cancelled due to the World Cup.

*Stealthexit*

PeterN

Progress Report: -

Tsumego: Continued reading Graded Go Problems for Beginners IV
Games Reviewed: None
Other: None

Not done an awful lot this week, not even played that many games, despite England being out of the World Cup still been watching some of the games.

On tsumego I'm now at 307 problems done and 99 of those wrong, almost the same rate wrong as the first lot I went through in this book the previous week oddly. Definitely noticing I'm terrible at the problems for making ko, doubt I'm getting even 1 in 10 of those right!

One of the few games I did play this week was the following one, a great lesson on pay attention and count liberties properly. So should not have won this game....



PeterN

Tsumego: Finished reading Graded Go Problems for Beginners IV (63.8% correct)
Games Reviewed: 5 lost games
Other: Played through 1 game from Invincible

Ok, back into the swing of things more this week it feels like.

Finally managed to finish the tsumego book, but that last section is definitely beyond my level at the moment. How this book is meant to be aimed at 10-15k I really don't know, unless my tsumego is far far worse compared to my rank than I'm believing. Back to volume 3 next week.

Reviewed 5 of my lost games this week, one of them reviewed by a 4d who was watching one of my games on KGS (not a clue why, but hey ho), so that's probably the most valuable of them. I make a lot of moves which he was saying *must* be played, just about 20-50 moves further into the game than they really needed to be played. Also made a couple of moves which give me more profit than the normal responses but which should just outright die, although I got away with it in every case in the game as none of them were easy to kill (for 5k's anyway ). I suspect examples of these are scattered through every kyu player's games.

Played through another game from the Invincible book, as always, no idea if it actually helps or not, but it makes a nice change.

Despite still not reading more of The Endgame (I know I need to, but it's one of those topics that I have to almost force myself to read) I have at least been trying to maximise the number of endgame points I get, primarily by not playing them quasi-randomly and at least attempting to play them in the order of the most valuable, though I still fail to defend well against the monkey jump .

Overall this has felt a good week and I feel like I can see the boundary of 4k on the rank graph slowly appearing in front of me now!

Sometimes I wonder if that rank graph being so visible is a major source of problems....

PeterN

Tsumego: Started reading Graded Go Problems for Beginners III again
Games Reviewed: 1 won game
Other: None

Another slack week on studying with watching World Cup matches, though I got through 188 tsumego problems with 6 wrong, this was only 7 of the normal 10 train journeys used.

Had a second game reviewed by the same 4d as before, generally played better than the previous game he reviewed due to my opponent making mistakes that I was able to exploit, even if not to the extent possible, and an invasion that I killed outright, but a number of mistakes still pointed out. Invasion techniques are still poor from me, and I let my opponent form a dangerous moyo which is a not so rare occurrence for me.

PeterN

Tsumego: Fnished reading Graded Go Problems for Beginners III (95.7% correct)
Games Reviewed: 2 lost games
Other: None

Ok, better tsumego completion rate this week, and feeling quite good about getting so few wrong, even if the fear of having half memorised the specific problems is back again.

Both my reviewed games this week were on the ASR League, one of which I thought I was doing incredibly well to only be losing by about 20 points as my opponent was a 2D (until I made a stupid suicidal move and resigned) and the other, well, I've heard the saying that you might live with a group but wish you hadn't... now I really know what that means.

1st game: -



Oh move 210... why did I play you....

Main parts of this game were creating a weak group near the top right with and not playing D7 when I could have.

2nd game: -



This was just embarrassing....

PeterN

Been ill most of this week so no real progress, just played some games on the days I felt good.

PeterN

Tsumego: Started reading One Thousand And One Life and Death Problems again
Games Reviewed: 2 lost games
Other: None

Got through a surprising amount of tsumego this week, 445 problems with 33 wrong, with almost every single one of those wrong answers on the life problems, really need to work out a way of reading those out as well as the death problems.

Only reviewed two lost games this week, one was on ASR and both of us were close to even so nothing major spotted, just some reading errors on both sides. The second was lost through fear....

Another week with a major losing streak in a single day, I lose a couple of times due to stupid mistakes and then just go on tilt to borrow the poker term, feeling unable to let go of playing another game and beginning to use less and less reading as the set of games goes on. My second lost game I reviewed was in the middle of this and at one point I feared losing a group, pulled back to defend it, and then lost the group above in a splitting attack when I believe I could have maybe outright killed the attacking stones if I had decided to read. Move 122 at K4 instead of what I played, although I am most likely wrong in my reading I could at least have fought it.

Although it was move 76 which started my whole thing in the first place.



PeterN

+++GOAL ACHIEVED+++



New Rank: 4 kyu!

This study journal has been running almost exactly one year today and it is now finally over as I have reached the goal I set out when I first started. It's been a long and hard slog of a journey to raise the rank, and had many pitfalls and, sadly, a number of stupid emotional outbursts of anger and frustration when hitting those long losing streaks.

Feels strange now that the goal is achieved, I've been posting regularly on this topic for so long now (and yes, I know I'm one day out compared to normal today) and at times it has felt so so far away. Reachng 4 kyu might not sound much, it is a strange target afterall, but I'm still happy to have got there.

Don't think I could have done it without you guys who've been posting on this thread, so thank you all!

Rank Progression Chart: -

07/08/2013 - 8 kyu
25/08/2013 - 7 kyu
13/10/2013 - 6 kyu
09/03/2014 - 5 kyu
09/08/2014 - 4 kyu

PeterN

It said 4k after my name when I made my post, then it later dropped to 5k before I played any more games....

PeterN

Exactly: your rank is borderline.

Your level is related. But your opponents and their opponents have.

I dread to think just how borderline that 4k was for my opponent's losing some games knocked it back under. Though KGS always gives me the feeling that it tries to bounce you away from the rank boundary, both when going up and going down.

PeterN