Life In 19x19

1 more victory against a 9 kyu - and this time Hikky (who is around 1k/1dan) helped me review this game in extra detail!
He also agreed to give me more frequent lessons/tips which I am very thankful for

I didn't look at the game in detail, just pointing out a few details.

@12, approaching at f3 is the wrong direction. Black should deny white the extension from his wall, ruining his future prospects and taking a very nice lead in the fuseki. That joseki is for when white already has an extension near the start point on the left side.

@16, playing at the suggested place of 2 is bad for black, even just jumping out is better. The kosumi is the right kind of idea, except you might want to attach on top of the white stone.

@24 Backing off with the small knights move is probably better. since black's stones on the right side are low his prospects for developing a moyo with the influence is kinda low. Black is also playing more territorially and the knights move both takes territory and reduces the potential of white's upper left side wall.

@37 D8 is bad. You are helping white build another wall. Two huge walls facing eachother is a very good territorial moyo. It would be much better if you pincered at C11.

@52 your idea is better than the suggested move of simply solidifying. It is unambitious and weak spirited to do that. Black should expand his influence and force white to invade. If u want to continue here maybe play a knights move instead of the slow push. I might descend in the upper right to threaten white's corner, then extend as far as possible to the left. That also increases the moyo and strengthens the upper right group. You don't actually need to play where u did in the game. Imagine if white pushes there, he will force you to enclose a huge territory on the right side which would be very nice

@56 You don't need to kill this invasion. You can use it to get benefits at the bottom and at the left side if u want. A simple move is to cap it at M9. Try to force weak stones against your strong position/wall. Your move in the game 012 is almost redundant. It makes an absolutely tiny amount of points and doesn't attack white properly. It's the opposite direction of what you need to do.

That's all for now

OtakuViking wrote:I didn't look at the game in detail, just pointing out a few details.

@12, approaching at f3 is the wrong direction. Black should deny white the extension from his wall, ruining his future prospects and taking a very nice lead in the fuseki. That joseki is for when white already has an extension near the start point on the left side.

@16, playing at the suggested place of 2 is bad for black, even just jumping out is better. The kosumi is the right kind of idea, except you might want to attach on top of the white stone.

@24 Backing off with the small knights move is probably better. since black's stones on the right side are low his prospects for developing a moyo with the influence is kinda low. Black is also playing more territorially and the knights move both takes territory and reduces the potential of white's upper left side wall.

@37 D8 is bad. You are helping white build another wall. Two huge walls facing eachother is a very good territorial moyo. It would be much better if you pincered at C11.

@52 your idea is better than the suggested move of simply solidifying. It is unambitious and weak spirited to do that. Black should expand his influence and force white to invade. If u want to continue here maybe play a knights move instead of the slow push. I might descend in the upper right to threaten white's corner, then extend as far as possible to the left. That also increases the moyo and strengthens the upper right group. You don't actually need to play where u did in the game. Imagine if white pushes there, he will force you to enclose a huge territory on the right side which would be very nice

@56 You don't need to kill this invasion. You can use it to get benefits at the bottom and at the left side if u want. A simple move is to cap it at M9. Try to force weak stones against your strong position/wall. Your move in the game 012 is almost redundant. It makes an absolutely tiny amount of points and doesn't attack white properly. It's the opposite direction of what you need to do.

That's all for now

Thanks for the review! is 12 really the wrong side approach? Ive heard people say to stay away from opponents strengths when approaching a corner. can you also explain why 16 is bad as suggested? Hikky's explanation made quite alot of sense to me.

Another win against a 9kyu! i think this is my longest win streak yet

i'm particularly happy with how i used the aji of the dead stones to kill his corner in the lower right which gave me the win. I got a bit too cocky during the game though thinking I had killed his largest groups when in fact i had played it out wrong xD

If anyone could help me review the game (in particular the lower right corner in the beginning) that'd be great. I'm terrible at the 3-4 point openings and i think my start was pretty bad.

Overall, I feel White had the advantage right until the middlegame blossomed but your fighting saved the day. My advice would be to try to play some calm moves when you have multiple follow-ups and do not strengthen your opponent's stones needlessly.

Though, I am also a weak player, so everything I say could be wrong : D

Have fun!

Thank you for your reply Sodesune - i'll be going over your variations later tonight

btw your guide to getting stronger at Go is fantastic - i'm loving the book recommendations and study methods in them.

Some comments on the bottom right corner.

hl782 wrote: Thanks for the review! is 12 really the wrong side approach? Ive heard people say to stay away from opponents strengths when approaching a corner. can you also explain why 16 is bad as suggested? Hikky's explanation made quite alot of sense to me.

The rule is very good to follow, but it doesn't mean play on the other side of the board and give your opponent the perfect move to build a moyo
In this case white has played a wall without an extension. This white wall usually has an extension in place at the star point or just below it otherwise you wouldn't choose that joseki. If there's such a wall, you shouldn't approach it, but since white is aiming for an extension you should consider taking that away from him by splitting the side under the star point and ignoring the corner approach for the time being. Also, if white doesn't extend from the wall he doesn't have a base for the group.

*Basic rule of walls is that they aim at a side extension. Taking this extension away is usually always a good move.

Alright screw it, I'll take the bait and show a few variations @move 12, 16 and 51-52

Bill & Otakuviking, thank you for your variations/replies! I cant believe i missed the pushing up on the 4th line - shows that I have to expand my horizons and keep thinking harder when reading.

In the meantime, finished my first runthrough of 'Making Good Shape' by Bozulich at 55% accuracy. This was by far my lowest scoring problem set, but I think i picked up some valuable concepts from it that will help me in the long run and I plan on going over this again soon after I finish 1001 L&D problems (at #600 now), and GGPB Vol. 4 (just started and it is fantastic).

After i finish those 2 books I plan on repeating the cycle of
[GGPB Vol. 3 -> LCH Tesuji Vol. 4 -> LCH L&D Vol. 1 -> GS At Tesuji -> Making Good Shape -> 1001 L&D Problems -> GGPB Vol. 4] twice with the problems i missed from them.

Hopefully when I am done with the three rounds, I'll be hitting solid 8-7 kyu, and I'll move on to heavier theory and more difficult problem books such as the later volumes of LCH Tesuji/L&D books, and the famous Fujisawa Shuko Tesuji Dictionary

No problem! You seem to be pretty good at reading for your level, so If you can find them, consider reading Otake Hideo's Opening theory made easy and All about thickness by Ishida Yoshio, extremely good books. I especially like All about thickness because of the simple almost textless diagram format. Brilliant and quick to go through several times for some very nice principles. Couple that with Opening theory made easy and you'll easily gain a couple of stones.

OtakuViking wrote:No problem! You seem to be pretty good at reading for your level, so If you can find them, consider reading Otake Hideo's Opening theory made easy and All about thickness by Ishida Yoshio, extremely good books. I especially like All about thickness because of the simple almost textless diagram format. Brilliant and quick to go through several times for some very nice principles. Couple that with Opening theory made easy and you'll easily gain a couple of stones.

I've actually read OTME when i was around 13-14kyu and that easily bumped me up to 12. I'm reading In the Beginning now for my poseok book and it's pretty good. I've never heard of All About Thickness but I'll def check it out!

So I was digging through old boxes in the laundry room at my house and i hit a goldmine - i found the box containing all of my dad's old books

Some of the books include Maeda Tsumego Series, Sakata Eio's Go Series, Segoe Kensaku Tsumego (1000 problems), Hashimoto Utaro's Time&Wind Tsumego Collection, Genran, Kata Katsuji's Tsumego series, Chunryongdo (by Kwon Gap Yong), commented games of the following Pros - [Go Seigen, Cho HunHyun, Lee Changho, Cho Chikun, Rin Kaiho, Fujisawa Shuko, Sakata Eio, Koichi Kobayashi, Masaki Takemiya, Nie Weiping], and many more books!

I think the only book that I can use at my level is Maeda's tsumego series, and the commented pro games but I hope to be able to solve these sometime soon in the future.

On another note, I can't help but marvel at all the content that my dad studied back in the day - all the tsumego books have marks in them - he literally solved all of these problems. Thousands of them. Its unbelievable. i have a long way to go.

I have also added a goal of studying 2-3 Pro games per week. I'll go over Lee Sedol, and Fujisawa Shuko first for the following reasons.

Lee Sedol - Classic, aggressive Korean baduk. Quite possibly the most fun player to watch since you don't know what he's going to pull out of his ass next! Going over the tip of the iceberg that is his aggressive play, i think his opening and endgames are very underrated - he sets up the board to stage a fight and he ends the game by cleaning up all the blood that he spilled on the board. Overall, his game is based on deep reading and accurate positional analysis which i think are the two most critical skills of go. Plus he's my favorite player. heh

Fujisawa Shuko - He's probably the opposite of Lee Sedol. His shapes are almost always solid, and is great at utilizing thickness. Shuko was also very creative but was also fantastic at just playing the only proper move. These are my absolute weaknesses in my game right now - and my dad recommended me to study him after analyzing bits of my game saying Shuko will be most helpful. He's probably right!

My dad also recommended me Hideo Otake (perfect for sense of shape) and Cho Hunhyun (great for seizing initiative and attacking n the beginning) but i'll take it one step at a time for now.

hl782 wrote:btw your guide to getting stronger at Go is fantastic - i'm loving the book recommendations and study methods in them.

Thank you! I guess, I should update it again : D Especially concerning overlearning problems and my take on pro game studying.


OtakuViking's split is good but when White is faced with two bad directions, I guess he should play somewhere else entirely and leave the choice to Black. Later when the middlegame begins White may have other means to deal with the split, like 'a' for instance.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ +---------------------------------------+
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X X . X . O . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . b O O O . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . c . . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 1 , . . . . . , . . . . . , 2 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ +---------------------------------------+[/go]

I also wouldn’t go so far as to say White's stones are floating, when Black extends towards them. They are weak-ish but have some resources due to 'b' or 'c'.

hl782 wrote:So I was digging through old boxes in the laundry room at my house and i hit a goldmine - i found the box containing all of my dad's old books

Some of the books include Maeda Tsumego Series, Sakata Eio's Go Series, Segoe Kensaku Tsumego (1000 problems), Hashimoto Utaro's Time&Wind Tsumego Collection, Genran, Kata Katsuji's Tsumego series, Chunryongdo (by Kwon Gap Yong), commented games of the following Pros - [Go Seigen, Cho HunHyun, Lee Changho, Cho Chikun, Rin Kaiho, Fujisawa Shuko, Sakata Eio, Koichi Kobayashi, Masaki Takemiya, Nie Weiping], and many more books!

Man, jealous!

SoDesuNe wrote:

hl782 wrote:btw your guide to getting stronger at Go is fantastic - i'm loving the book recommendations and study methods in them.

Thank you! I guess, I should update it again : D Especially concerning overlearning problems and my take on pro game studying.

I also read your 'guide' a few times and really enjoyed it. When you don't have a lot of time to spend, it is good to know how to use it most efficiently. I look forward to an updated take on your guide.

Also, hl782, your fast improvement is really something. I'm rooting for you to keep going higher and higher!