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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Uh, still confused it seems.



A move order hick-up? Yare, yare!

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Regarding the game, the 3-3 point is inefficient to build from. You should ignore it for a while, because it's not a threat as a result, it's just points. I think black's goal was to goad you into an overplay and then use the side stone to fight. If you must approach, the large knight's move approach may work fine, but something like san-ren-sei would be quite good as well.

Those were the two of the three options he recommended I should have used instead, the other being a two space low approach. I rarely see 3-3 stones, though they're not as "what do I do now?!" as 5-x stones!

PeterN

Yeah, that's also quite viable. My sense is that the 3-3 can be better for white than black, because you are basically plunking down 30 points plus komi and challenging black to overcome it on the board. It's certainly not unplayable, though, and has the benefit of unfamiliarity to boot.

So much seki!



PeterN

Just a minor non-review note- you should capture the two stones in the bottom right seki. Black has three points there that weren't counted.

Hmm... never considered that before, thanks!

PeterN

Progress Report: -

Tsumego: None
Games Reviewed: 1 lost game, 1 won game
Other: Played through games 60-64 of Invincible

Bit of a break from tsumego this week, AKA I was lazy on it.

Although one of my games reviewed was a won game, it really should have gone to my opponent, while it is a victory for tsumego it is a disaster at direction of play: -



PeterN

Hi Peter. You did not ask for comments, but here they are anyway. What struck me most about this game was your very conservative play, which let your opponent draw slowly ahead. It felt like you were tired or just on cruise control, playing safe and solid small scale moves. Try to find more active moves. Force yourself to over-extend a bit, outside of your comfort zone. Put some pressure on your opponent!

could be C3 -- perfect timing. But the game move is also good.

should be K17 locally. There is no excuse for holding back on this side, where you have so much more thickness than W. However globally I think the bottom side is larger.

is the right direction, but far too conservative. Did you think you already had a won game? If not, K3 or K4 or J4 are all more positive moves, playing on a large scale. Maybe you will lose if your opponent decimates your moyo, but you will have good chances for a convincing win, and at least it will be interesting.

should block at R10, limiting W eyespace and making territory. P6 is over-concentrated, adding strength where you are already super strong. In the following sequence, you let W settle his group with territory in sente

is thick, but it defends no weakness and threatens no weak group. You need to make some actual territory, or destroy some W territory.

Hi mitsun, thanks for the comments, they are appreciated

Although this game was played fairly late in the evening for me, it wasn't enough for tiredness to come into play, and I wwasn't playing on cruise control either (I ended up in byo-yomi!). Slow and safe play is my problem at the moment I think. Without checking my game records I'm reasonably sure a significant number of my wins come from killing groups and not just gaining more territory.

- At no point did I think the game was won until right near the end, pretty much a perfect example of slow and safe play problem, same with

- The move we came up with while reviewing was Q9, not sure if we even considered R10, thanks for pointing that out

PeterN

Progress Report: -

Tsumego: None
Games Reviewed: None
Other: None

Work has been hectic this week to say the least, and been too mentally drained to play let alone do any study. Not good after last week's tsumego laziness.

PeterN

Goal: +++FAILED+++

No real surprise that the goal of reaching 1D failed, especially given my quote at the time of making it. I had hoped to improve by more than one stone though, oh well.

Still, just because I failed doesn't mean it's time to stop, just means it'll take "a bit" longer.

PeterN

No sweat! After almost five years and counting, I'm still not a solid KGS Shodan. Funnily, I also started at 5- to 4-kyu : D

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Thanks for the encouragement SoDesuNe!

Though I'm going to abandon this journal for now I think, especially as I'm now sliding from 3 kyu to 4 kyu.

PeterN

Well after all this time of no posts I do have an update to put on here.

Since my last post I have done no tsumego and no study, save for playing and reviewing some games on the ASR League, but I'm not sure there's really been enough of those to make a significant difference. It does seem that just playing has created sufficient incremental improvement to boost me up to a 2k rank on KGS now (that or they changed the anchors or I just hit a lucky streak of wins). This took approximately one year and ten months since reaching 3 kyu.

New rank: 2 kyu!

And here is the game that pushed my rank above the boundary line which I'm not quite sure how I won after an early reading failure: -



And the first game I played as a 2 kyu on KGS: -



PeterN