Life In 19x19

EdLee wrote:Hi jlt,

Thanks.
Your bot is nice: (1) it's superhuman and (2) you have a bot.

Leela 0.11.0 is not superhuman, "just" middle/high amateur dan.

For what it's worth, LZ #175 think it's ok for white. A little suboptimal (after , white is at 52%, down from 53.6% on an empty board), but it doesn't really matter.

Leela 0.11.0 is not superhuman, "just" middle/high amateur dan.

Oh!

it doesn't really matter.

Correct.

Thanks for all the feedback. My son was born yesterday so my quest was halted for a few days. Will review soon .

Congrats!

After a one week hiatus. I'm back in business. Thanks for the game review and comments! Put my play into perspective.

Taking one step back in order to move two steps up

After playing a few games feeling underwhelmed with my own play I felt that I needed to take a step back and look back at the fundamentals. Looking back on reading 'Attack and Defense' I realize that I could not grasp some of the concepts presented in the book due to my lack of understanding of important concepts. Currently I'm solely solving Tsumego and reading 'Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go'. This is also kind of a necessity since my newborn needs a lot of attention, which limits my opportunity to play for 1 hour straight.

I feel that if I improve my basics a bit more, it'll jump start my progress in the coming weeks. Even if this is not the case I still enjoy learning about Go concepts.

Current rank: 15 kyu (OGS)
Current goal: 9 kyu (OGS) by 31-12-2018
Currently reading: Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go

Theme of the week:
Back to the fundamentals

Hi rikuge,

Back to the fundamentals

From my experience, this never ends.

One stone at a time

Over the past few days I've focused on getting better at shapes by watching Dsaun's shape lecture and reading the book 'Shape up' by Charles Matthews and Seong-June Kim. With my increased knowledge on shape making I've start to look back at some of my earlier games and found a massive amount of bad shape present in those. After this I'm trying to be more concisious of shape in my games. There is however so much that needs my attention, direction of play, liberty counting, terrority counting I can't help but feel overwhelmed every time I play. Hopefully that will get better as i progress.

At OGS I've finally hit 14k. This was my most recent game against a 15k player. There is so much room from improvement (with obvious mistakes from both sides). But overall I'm content with my progress so far, but very eager to learn more.



Current rank: 14 kyu (OGS)
Current goal: 9 kyu (OGS) by 31-12-2018
Currently reading: Shape up!

Re: shape.

is overextended. The rule of thumb is that from a wall of n stones (if n=1,2,3,4), make an n+1 space extension.

rikuge wrote:One stone at a time

Over the past few days I've focused on getting better at shapes by watching Dsaun's shape lecture and reading the book 'Shape up' by Charles Matthews and Seong-June Kim. With my increased knowledge on shape making I've start to look back at some of my earlier games and found a massive amount of bad shape present in those. After this I'm trying to be more concisious of shape in my games. There is however so much that needs my attention, direction of play, liberty counting, terrority counting I can't help but feel overwhelmed every time I play. Hopefully that will get better as i progress.

Let me pass on some applicable advice for that kind of overwhelm. Study the game, but when you play, forget what you have learned.

That sounds paradoxical, but focus on the current game, the current move. If you need something that you have learned, you will have it. If you need something that you haven't learned yet, maybe you will find it. Relax and focus.

You outplayed the opponent in the opening. I added a few notes about it.

The highlight of the game is the fight in the middle arising from the invasion of your moyo, between 57 and 64, where I'm offering some thoughts, fueled by LZ analysis.

Knotwilg wrote:You outplayed the opponent in the opening. I added a few notes about it.

The highlight of the game is the fight in the middle arising from the invasion of your moyo, between 57 and 64, where I'm offering some thoughts, fueled by LZ analysis.

Thanks for the extensive review. Very interesting to see the patterns that you / LZ came up with. The double hane at 64 didn't feel solid, so I'm glad to see some nice alternative. Also, I pulled back on move 72 since i regarded that middle group as dead, he didn't notice it and played 73 which lost him/her the game I think.

@Bill: Will keep that in mind thank you .

It's been exactly a year since I started my journey and what year it has been!

Sum of the highlights:

- Joined the Yunguseng league
- Visited the European Go congress (sadly had to quit after one day because of illness)
- Played in the Amsterdam Go Tournament
- Went to Yunguseng spring camp.

I really need to get better at fighting, most of my games I win because of a "strong" opening". Does anyone have some tips for me?

Currently sitting on a 5k OGS / 6k IGS rating. The game below was one my most recent games and left me with a good feeling.



Next to the highs there were also several lows. After 7 months and the spring camp I was kind of burned out. Normally, I'm not a very competitive person however with Go, losing really hurt my self-confidence. Also, my progress was stagnating and it really got me down, this was also primarily caused by game anxiety. More than half of the time I spent on go I spent on watching tutorials, streams and reading books instead of actually playing. My solution for this was to play as many fast games as I could. This caused my game anxiety to reduce, however I was getting careless and didn't get the enjoyment out of playing as I used to.

All in all with Go for me there is a thin line between caring too much and caring too little. The friendships and beauty of the game really pulled me through though this last year, and I can confidently that Go will be a large part of my life in the coming year.

My goal for this year is to play as many games as I can and meet new people along the way .

I was skeptical when you said you win games by playing a good opening, but then when I saw this game, I must admit you do have a good opening and you indeed take a decisive advantage there.

I find you have a good direction of play: you know where the territories are, where to attack for profit. You have good timing too. When you played away, I almost invariably agreed.

Your way of playing Go shows that you are very mindful about it. That's likely to give you a lot of pleasure playing.

I've reincluded your game with 10 questions.

rikuge wrote:I really need to get better at fighting, most of my games I win because of a "strong" opening". Does anyone have some tips for me?

I can offer reassurance. I also had a good opening at around your level. In time the rest of your game will catch up, as you gain experience. You can certainly make dan level.

In your latest game, by you had a good lead. There was still a big play on the left side, but you eventually got that, too. (BTW, you should have played around earlier, to support your group in the top right corner.) You didn't do anything stupid, and eventually you won. Winning a "won" game is not always so easy, but to improve you should try for more than just not doing anything stupid.

was a good reducing play, which you parried well. was good, preventing Black from making good shape and threatening to push and cut. defended, but Black still has weaknesses. was a solid play, good enough to win the game, but Q-05 would have been even better. (You played there later. ) And O-07 would have been even better, threatening the push and cut and forcing Black to make bad shape to prevent that. O-07 remained a good play well into the game.

would normally be a horrid play, threatening only to take two stones on the side. The thing is, you were so far ahead that Black had to save those stones. Playing a good opening lets you get away with bad plays later on. (Not that you should play a bad opening, OC. )

pushes from behind. That is not a good way to attack. You didn't need a good attack, so you got away with that. Better attack: White O-07, threatening to push and cut. Black P-07 connecting with a bamboo joint. White O-10, getting ahead of Black. White's aim should be to contain Black's group to the bottom right quadrant, where it is outnumbered, and currently eyeless. Can Black live inside? Maybe so, but make him prove it. Since he is only a 7 kyu, probably not. And if he does live, you will have made outside strength, which will do two things. 1) Make territory in the top right. 2) Attack Black's running group in the bottom left. For instance, you may be able to play the attachment at H-08 at cut his 5 stones off. Maybe he can live with them, maybe not. It goes without saying that if he does live inside, you should take sente to attack the other weak Black group.

was a good play, preventing Black from playing there and threatening to push and cut. It would have been even better to start with O-07.

Very important. The jump to K-09 separates and attacks both Black groups. Black will probably run out with the group on the right, and then you can attack the one on the left.
You do not need this attack to win the game, as you demonstrated, and there is some risk that you will make a mistake and lose it. But the practice you get in attacking will make up for the occasional lost game.

You play a very good opening, which means that in the middle game you are poised to go for the kill. In his Killer of Go series, still in print, I think, Sakata advised kyu players to go for the kill. If you review your game with bots, they will probably not tell you to do so, because you will not have to to win the game. But if you want to improve, go for the kill. In this game you could have confined Black to the bottom right quadrant, where he probably would have died, and if not, you could then turn your attack to the weak group in the bottom left. As tennis instructor Vic Braden used to say, Go for the early lunch.

With your good opening, become a killer of go and you will advance rapidly.

Good luck!

Edit: After thought. While bots may not recommend attacking in order to win, you can use them in review to suggest attacking plays. Once you start attacking, they can point out overplays, as well.

rikuge wrote:I really need to get better at fighting, most of my games I win because of a "strong" opening". Does anyone have some tips for me?

Beside frequent and numerous tsumego and tesuji problems, my advice would be to try to make your games as messy and complicated as possible. I've yet to master the art of turning a game into a whole board semeai so I can't advice on that one, but going for a very territorial style early then invading deep is one option (exemplified best by the "invade both 3-3, live on the side" strategy), or the opposite, making large frameworks to force your opponent to invade. Then there's the start running fight and make it so several groups are struggling against each other to make life in the center. You can also look into joseki that lead to a fight in the center (which don't necessarily have to be the super complicated taisha or avalanche or magic sword or whatever).

Taking sente while leaving acceptable weakness in your shape is another way to get into complication when you opponent try to punish that.

tl:dr : If you want to get better at fighting, get into more fights.