Life In 19x19

Fedya wrote: - in the centre, there's a sente move, that will later earn you a few points
I hope you're talking about K7.

J9 threatens to cut off the White lump. Later, White will be able to capture the two stones to the left.

- White's smallest and weakest group is the lower right; can you use sente there to your advantage?

S6 is gote, so I should play S1?[/quote]

How about S7, then S1?

- there is aji in the lower left white territory, in two places, which you can perhaps combine
I tried E5 in the game. It doesn't work, because after white responds with E6, Black has to defend above or else White will play E8. (White actually missed E8 in the game.)

At B7 there is aji. You can almost use it for free first. Then play the clamp at C2. If White descends, you push up and use the B7 stone to create a living group. This is a useful tesuji to remember.

If White lets you cross under, he will lose a lot of territory.

- at the top there is a local sente endgame move we all know
I don't think the ogeima at N19 is sente.

I do, locally it is and must be.

How to play these areas, in which order, to keep sente and squeeze the most profit out of the whole board?

See below, the variation from 148 onwards. Of course, this is easy post game analysis, but it can show you some things to consider next time.

At B7 there is aji. You can almost use it for free first. Then play the clamp at C2

I was trying to figure out what to do with the stones around C8, but I couldn't find a to make anything work since the cut at C8 doesn't work. It never would have occurred to me to play B7 and then C2 and try to make two eyes that way.

They say "Make territory while attacking", but you have to know what to attack:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Position at move 66
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . O O O X . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . a X X X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . X . . . O . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . X O O X X X X X . |
$$ | . . . . . . . b 1 O X . . . X O O . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . X O X O O . X O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . X O O X X X X O . O . |
$$ | . . . O . X . . . X O O . O X O O . . |
$$ | . . . . O X . . . X X O . O X X X O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X X O |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

I had Black in this game, and I thought I was doing well. I was thinking about whether to continue the attack on the big floating White group that White just added another stone to, or whether to play at a, certainly killing four stones and possibly putting more pressure on the White stones above. I played at H7 (b), and continued attacking that group for another 10 moves until White played a. Amazingly, I was the one who had to struggle to make all my groups live, and I wound up losing by 7.5.

How are you supposed to be able to judge which one is bigger? I figured I'd be able to keep harassing White all the way to the left side of the board and get a substantial amount of territory on the left, yet that didn't really happen. And I couldn't read far enough ahead to see it wasn't going to happen.

I'd judge the white string as not that weak, because if white gets to save his four stones the stick is the group that's under attack, not white (who almost has eyes on the bottom) - so you first need to ensure the stick is thick and strong, then return to attacking white even if it means he'll get another move.

I'd also probably not attack it at all, say you play N10 and he plays H7, I'd probably go approach F17 or maybe just add one more move on the bottom to ensure that group is 100% safe - then white will have to beware not to get his string surrounded unless he decides to add more moves to it, but attacking it directly doesn't really seem very doable to me.

The two things that stick out to me are

1) If White plays at a, suddenly the stick of four Black stones in the middle is super weak. If Black plays at a (actually, my intuition would be to play one point to the left of a), Black's completely safe.

2) How are you actually going to make that territory on the left? You can't wall it off in three directions at once. Attacking the White group would be good for making one wall (facing the left side), but you have nothing else there to help out.

So once again I'm misjudging the strength of groups?

If the M8 stones are alive, your stick is just a stick in the middle of two white groups with eyespace and access to the center - if you take N10 they are completely alive and also gains a fair amount of certain points (like 14?).

So unless you guarantee that every move you make against white's bottom group is sente, then as soon as you play something not sente then he can play N10 and turn the tables instantly - and that group doesn't look that weak, it has a lot of liberties and your bottom group is a bit thin, for example, after H7 white can just play H8, he doesn't have to play J8 since you can't hold him in if you cut now so can you follow up with a double hane? If you just extend isn't he almost out already?

That's my take on it anyway, but I'm often overly cautious I've noticed in my games.

Fedya wrote:So once again I'm misjudging the strength of groups?

You are using the present tense. Do you still think your four stones from L6 to L9 are strong?

"Make territory while attacking" is a fine idea, when you can come up with a concrete plan to make it happen. Here is seems more like a vague hope. In particular, it will be difficult for B to make territory on the left side, with the solid W stone at C6 already in place.

In any case, the hane at 'b' is much too close to the weak W group to be effective. W will certainly get out, and then this stone will be left "squeezing toothpaste", and there will remain nasty cut aji at H6.

Better would be G6, attacking safely from a comfortable distance, while consolidating some real territory. Much stronger and more adventurous would be E6 or even D7, a leaning attack against the strong W stones to the left, trying to build enough strength in sente to come back to J9 for a kill. But it is dangerous to give up real territory for a speculative attack like this.

One problem with all of these possible moves on the left side is that they are fundamentally the wrong direction of play. B has a very weak group in the center, and a much stronger group below. So it makes sense to attack from above, strengthening the weakest B group, forcing the W group to run to the direction where B is stronger. From that perspective, the simple jump to J9 looks good.

However, in this position my real preference would be to make the weak B group totally solid with a single move, either N10 or L9, capturing four stones. Once these B stones become strong, the center W stones become much weaker. Since this play captures over ten points of territory, you could certainly consider it "making territory while attacking". This seems like the payoff to an earlier attack, which looks like it started with a cut at L6. There is nothing wrong with pausing an attack to take profit you have earned.

One problem with all of these possible moves on the left side is that they are fundamentally the wrong direction of play.

Something I've had a vague feeling about for quite a while is that I feel like I have at least a halfway reasonable grasp of tactics, but when it comes to strategy, I keep getting it distressingly wrong. (Look at the thread on the fundamentals over in General Discussions.) What I've learned from this thread is that I have particular trouble with:

• Picking an appropriate joseki
  Figuring out the strength of various groups
  Positional judgment
  And now, direction of play

And I still don't really know how to improve any of those. Well, I try to pay attention to the joseki when I go over games especially when I feel I've gotten a poor position out of a joseki, but I still find it hard to understand the joseki to anywhere near the point that I'm playing the right one. One of my recent book purchases was the Fuseki Small Encyclopedia, which is nice as far as it goes, but obviously it can't help me figure out what to do if my opponent picks a joseki that doesn't fit with the paricular fuseki.

And as for the other areas, I'm still at a loss as to how to get better at them. I suppose you're all going to say, "Reading", but how reading is supposed to help with determining the strength of the various groups on the board is a mystery to me. Or positional judgment.

Fedya wrote: ...

• Picking an appropriate joseki
  Figuring out the strength of various groups
  Positional judgment
  And now, direction of play

And I still don't really know how to improve any of those. Well, I try to pay attention to the joseki when I go over games especially when I feel I've gotten a poor position out of a joseki, but I still find it hard to understand the joseki to anywhere near the point that I'm playing the right one. One of my recent book purchases was the Fuseki Small Encyclopedia, which is nice as far as it goes, but obviously it can't help me figure out what to do if my opponent picks a joseki that doesn't fit with the paricular fuseki.

And as for the other areas, I'm still at a loss as to how to get better at them. I suppose you're all going to say, "Reading", but how reading is supposed to help with determining the strength of the various groups on the board is a mystery to me. Or positional judgment.

What resources have you used, or books have you read or do you own regarding these subjects?

To be honest, I don't think a Fuseki encyclopedia, though I haven't read it, is really what you need, so much as more general principles. If you haven't looked at it, a book like 'In the Beginning' is a good start. For something more advanced, the Graded Go Problems for Dan Players book on the opening may be good. You likely will get a lot of the problems wrong, but the key is to think about the answers and their reasoning. 'The Direction of Play' is also a classic, but it can be a bit heavy-handed at times.

As another question, when you play your games, do you count or otherwise estimate the score a few times during the game, or at all? Do you distinguish fairly secure territory from potential in a moyo when you do so? Do you occasionally take a moment to evaluate the relative strength and weakness of the groups on the board?

Just making a habit of these can help a lot over time, since they are the basis of positional judgement. Your answers may be wrong again, but you get a better feedback mechanism if you think "I thought that area was 30 points for white, but it turned out to be 50, or 15" instead of just "White got a really big area there". Similarly, doing this at the right point can help you make a plan, since you can look and see "I'm up by 15, but they have a lot of potential there that I need to keep to 20 points max" or "They have 20 points more solid territory, so I need to make a plan to get at least 20 points out of this group here".

Finally, regarding joseki at least, forget about trying to play a joseki and think about trying to accomplish a goal. Once you pick the goal, you can think about moves or sequences to accomplish that goal, and how your opponent can frustrate them, and what you could get in compensation if they try to. There is reading here, of course, but following joseki doesn't lead to good results unless you play them in furtherance of a goal.

As another question, when you play your games, do you count or otherwise estimate the score a few times during the game, or at all? Do you distinguish fairly secure territory from potential in a moyo when you do so? Do you occasionally take a moment to evaluate the relative strength and weakness of the groups on the board?

I think I've been counting the wrong way. I usually try to count to see if I have a path to 181 (give or take komi, of course). But yes, I do try to count during games.

I think that the above example is mainly a psychological issue. As long as you had the option of connecting your three stones, they were strong, so you labelled them as strong in your head. Compared to that, the white stones were weak, so obviously you were looking for a way to attack the weak stones and it makes sense (locally) to push them towards your strong stones (the "making territory"/direction-thing is a separate issue).

I don't think that this mistake is cognitively different from letting your opponent revive a huge group during endgame because your killing stones lose liberties and you didn't noticed because the group was labelled "dead".

So, I think that you should not primarily ask how you can "learn" about weak groups but how you can train your perception. I am doing Guo Juan's exercices on Direction of Attack right now and my instincts are much worse than random choice (although I certainly understand the reasons why the choice is wrong), so I will go for a lot of repetition, until it starts to feel natural. I don't think that correct reasoning is enough as long as my intuition and perception is all wrong.

Stronger players say, "Don't be worried about the crosscut!" Indeed, it's already come up in this thread.

Well, wouldn't you know it, I get a game where my opponent crosscuts, and immediately everything goes sour:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Don't fear the crosscut?
$$ ---------------------------------------
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , O . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O X X . . |
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$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Black just played the marked stone, and needless to say, I picked a line that didn't work at all:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Don't fear the crosscut?
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
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$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . 3 , O . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . 4 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 O X X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

After , the game went in a direction where I wound up with one weak group after another, and resigned after Black killed one of them, although I probably would have lost even if I saved all of them. So, I think we can conclude that is a pretty big blunder. I'm guessing I should have played someplace like R9 instead, although all I was getting was struggling to get small life on the edge of the board, unable to get out into the middle.

As a result of that, I have a feeling the bigger problem was . My first thought was:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Don't fear the crosscut?
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 X O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O X X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

But after this it looks like Black is going to get a pretty big corner while White isn't going to get all that much along the side or in the center. extending rather than capturing doesn't seem much better. In short, I don't see any way to get a good position after the crosscut.

Think "safe groups" not "surrounded empty space". Reconsider the position. Reconsider Black 2.