Full of passionate intensity... S2W's Study journal

[S2W]

A game I lost but should have won but should have lost.

Im still having trouble finding time for live games. The move back to Australia is sucking up all our free time and go is the victim. Lots of dgs is my solution but I'm getting very rusty in my live play. The three live games I have been able to play have all been losses. The first two I blame on jet lag the third I blame on a dodgy hotel connection, superficially at least. Although I had my opponent beat I was lucky it didn't go the other way due to some overly risky play in the corner.

Anyway I'm trying something new here. I went back to my game and tried to play it again as white (not reproduce the game but try to do my best each move as if it were a correspondence game). I'm not sure I succeeded entirely (I still finished faster than my usual 30-60 day dgs battles) but the hope was that it would highlight some differences in my live and online style.

[EdLee]

Hi S2W,

Happy 2015.

Since has lots of space, did you consider the lower left instead ?

did you consider any other ways to fix your shape ?

why ?

why ?



S5.

[S2W]

Happy 2015 to you too Ed!

Since has lots of space, did you consider the lower left instead ?

I did - going right my thought was to put pressure on the right group and leave the left open for a later invasion. Going left I felt I'd be making black stronger in the corner and the right group would still have space for a base. What is your opinion?

did you consider any other ways to fix your shape ?

Hmm - I dismissed the tigers mouth as bad shape but in this case I guess it helps protect the 4th line stone

why ?

why ?

Fear? So the idea would be to try extending on the outside then a move to protect the rhs group, then kill the cutting stones? (Sorry I'll try to add a diagram later - time and internet access are scarse at the moment.

S5.

Yeah I saw this in game after the fact - but not sure why I didn't correct it in the review. I must obsess over my dgs games more when there's more on the line.

[EdLee]

I did - going right my thought was to put pressure on the right group and leave the left open for a later invasion. Going left I felt I'd be making black stronger in the corner and the right group would still have space for a base. What is your opinion?

I think extending like you did with puts almost zero pressure on the right group -- the right group is already out, way out!

I don't mean extending left to strengthen Black's left corner.
I mean why not take Black's lower left corner yourself.

[EdLee]

Hmm - I dismissed the tigers mouth as bad shape but in this case I guess it helps protect the 4th line stone

Other than your connect and the tiger's mouth, did you also consider any other move(s) ?

[EdLee]

Fear? So the idea would be to try extending on the outside then a move to...

But you did not do that. You did not extend outside.
You never extended outside here.
You forced Black to extend ahead of you, and then you yourself crawled on the inside.
Letting B capture your cutting stone was terrible for you.

If you cannot handle the cut, then you cannot hane on at all.
The question is: does your hane work ? Can you handle the cut ?

[S2W]

Hmm - I dismissed the tigers mouth as bad shape but in this case I guess it helps protect the 4th line stone

Other than your connect and the tiger's mouth, did you also consider any other move(s) ?

There are none so blind ... Filling the other cut works doesn't it. I was worried about the left of the two cuts on the 2nd line stone but I can always fill the other on the right then capture.

Forgive my prosaic description - I'd almost give my left nut for a decent internet connection (and this hotel would take it - they are charging $0.10 per MB of "high speed" connectivity - I miss my unlimited data).

[EdLee]

Hi S2W, good luck with your internet.
Too bad your hotel does not provide "free", "reasonably" unlimited WiFi.

I was also out of town for 9 weeks and was at the mercy of others for WiFi.

[S2W]

I played a mixed bag of games over Christmas - New Years. Jet lag and dropped internet connections meant I lost quite a bit. But I needed to get more live games in before I rusted up solid. The story has changed since getting back to the us - either the jet lag wasn't as bad or I just didn't play as much during that period - but I have been able to play a fair bit and win more. I'm not sure how deserved the wins are - I feel like I'm playing the overnight shift on the go club accounts - but I'll take em. Anyway here's a recent live game with some of my thoughts - it's a but if a blow out but I felt like my play was sloppy.


For comparison here's a dgs game I played against a 1 kyu/1 dan. I have to say I don't remember playing my last move - so I suspect it was a "but dial" on the ipod - either that or I'm playing go in my sleep. Regardless I think he had me without the "misclick" but it was a close one.

[skydyr]

Not much to say about your first game except that your opponent was unreasonable and by the end, you both knew it. One small note though: move 275? Not a ko threat. If black cuts, white plays G14 and black loses the capturing race. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if you play as a 3k on DGS, your 8k KGS rating is wildly inaccurate. Maybe it's slow vs fast/blitz play, but generally I see ranks on DGS as stronger than their KGS equivalents.

In the second game, there's a reason white played out the lower left and the lower right the same, and it's because it's not good for black to make that attachment with that pincer. Jumping out with the large knight's move after the pincer is pretty standard, though there are other options as well. The one space jump directly after the pincer is also pretty simple, pushing white along the bottom in order to counter pincer.

At , one more descent at B16 is absolute sente against the corner group. I'm not absolutely sure, but you may be able to play F19 and follow up with B16, since if white hanes at B16 and black blocks, white owes another move or dies. I recommend looking up the J and J+1 groups on sensei's library.

I like playing B2 for black also, especially after move 60 or so when white plays out the lower right. There's already the aji of P1 and you don't want to deal with that twice. Plus, once your group is quite solid, you can fight much more effectively. However, finding time for it is tough, and points to the initial trouble with the corner sequence.

I'm not sure about the sequence starting with . My every instinct says that this is a bad idea, and leads to a heavy group without prospects, but it seemed to work out in the end without giving white too much. I suspect white tried to kill too hard. On the other hand, it strengthened him enough to kill the bottom, so...

As for the ko starting at :w174:, I'm not sure what white was thinking. This seems needlessly dangerous. Without counting, I think white could have reduced a bit, lived with the corner group, kept black's group dead, and called it a win despite losing the side group.

[S2W]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if you play as a 3k on DGS, your 8k KGS rating is wildly inaccurate. Maybe it's slow vs fast/blitz play, but generally I see ranks on DGS as stronger than their KGS equivalents.

Thanks for the review skydr. Re the ranking - well I was going to say that my DGS rank is only a temporary blip but I've been holding firm at 3k for a while now ... so maybe not?

My other thought is that IGS has a bit of a step jump around 10k-9k I definitely struggled to get over those ranks and have found at least one other sdk player on dgs who was also stuck at 10k on igs. Also IGS seems tougher at sdk level than kgs (but oddly it seems weaker at the dan level).

Other factors that might depress my igs rank are the time I play (often late my time, afternoon/early evening for my opponents in Japan. Plus I play automatch which seems to pit me against a lot of club accounts. Mostly though I just suck if I play fast and it doesn't matter if you have to change a diaper or rock a kid to sleep in a dgs game (but even that is rare these days).

I admit though I'm thinking that I'll get 7k soon (actually hoping to make 5k by May) so maybe I'm just inadvertently sandbagging till my rank gets up. (And queue the ego fueled downward spiral ).

[S2W]

Playing against myself - the rematch

The rematch against the 2kyu finished today. As I mentioned before the opening was identical to our first game so I got to play Charles's suggested pincer. I'm not sure how much difference it made to the game - which played out in much the same way as the first - but I won again so yay! That said it really boiled down to another complex running battle in the center - so fuseki was probably not that much of a factor - though the pincer probably forced the running fight to start sooner than it otherwise would have. Any and all comments appreciated.

[S2W]

A close one!
A very close match against a 4 dan (w 6 stones). I'm in awe of how tough it was - especially because I thought I was doing pretty well in general. As usual any and all comments are welcome.

Ps. Sorry for spamming these two posts - I'm on the road again and figure I'll get out what I can when I can.

[Bill Spight]

Top of the head comment on the 6 stone game.

It is admirable that you are willing to sacrifice stones, but you seem to be sacrificing them to little or no purpose. For instance, puzzled me, but I figured that you were threatening to connect to . Then you played . And then after prevented the connection, you went elsewhere, instead of, say, the diagonal attachment at P-17, or the jump to O-18, threatening to connect or run.

[skydyr]

Playing against myself - the rematch

The rematch against the 2kyu finished today. As I mentioned before the opening was identical to our first game so I got to play Charles's suggested pincer. I'm not sure how much difference it made to the game - which played out in much the same way as the first - but I won again so yay! That said it really boiled down to another complex running battle in the center - so fuseki was probably not that much of a factor - though the pincer probably forced the running fight to start sooner than it otherwise would have. Any and all comments appreciated.

The short review seems to be that black didn't know joseki, didn't like being sealed in, and got into a complex fight that started out good for black while being unwilling to sacrifice, trade, or even protect his groups.

At :b15, black should double hane, as he has the ladder, and this won't turn out well for white. Even so, the fight looks decent for black and black could do quite well with just connecting at L9 for . But of course, instead black ignored his group, and then when white cut, went ahead and started another weak group that died so that white was stronger to kill. After that, it feels like the game is just a matter of mopping up.