Life In 19x19

Hi peyton,

Find a sequence to kill something locally.

Bill already mentioned --
I don't know how many moves ahead you currently try to read ;
one of your immediate projects, if you'd like to give it a shot: try to read at least 3 moves ahead.
( If you can do that, then you wouldn't play and in the game. )

dmpeyton wrote:If I can't fight, then I can't win.

If you want to fight, try tsumego/tesuji problems! Graded Go for Beginners, volume 1, 2 (personally recommended), Level Up series (heard good things), then on to harder tsumego like Tesuji, Graded Go for Beginners v3, 1001 Life and Death, and Get Strong at Tesuji.

One big plus: solving tsumego problems are virtually stress free, since there is no competition/human component. And as you get better at tsumego/tesuji, your skill at fighting increases significantly.

I recommend you try to play out the game much longer, you'll learn so much through each game, and you'll also learn how to aggressively fight when behind on points. Plus, your opponent will likely make a LOT of large blunders, too, that you can take advantage of! There may come a point where its time to resign, but move 22 is too soon.

For the game, you can also ignore and take another corner. (Edit: See EdLee's post below)

dmpeyton wrote:The information on go strategy has not helped me at all.
If I can't fight, then I can't win.

Hi peyton, you're correct on both counts.

For the game, you can also ignore and take another corner.

Yes, he can; both tenuki and replying locally are OK.

The good thing about staying local is peyton has to learn what's wrong with and --
he must learn it, eventually, if he wants to improve; the sooner the better; might as well be now.
If he tenukis on , then yes, he'll just postpone the fighting.
Black can continue to pressure upper left corner, so he still has to fight, eventually.
Either upper left corner, or the new tenuki location, or elsewhere on the board.

Peyton is correct: we cannot avoid fights forever (in Go);
if we want to improve, we must learn to fight; and yes, this starts with all the fundamentals.

dmpeyton wrote:OK, you can now enjoy looking at one of my games!

Hi dmpeyton,
The first unusual thing in this game is Black E16. Usually, the 4 first moves must be played around the 4 corners.

There can be NO better move on the whole board, for any player of any level, than taking an empty corner !
There may be moves that are EQUALLY as good, but it requires already a good knowledge of the game to spot them. And they are the exception rather than the rule.
Hence, move 4, ignore Black and take another empty corner.
If Black insists and attacks your stone, keep ignoring and take the last corner.

Then, Black may finish your stone with a third move. In this case, you have two corners, Black has two (including one with a White stone inserted inside), and its your turn to play. The result is correct.


The game ended with Black capturing two white stones. Stones that were in the center and securing no territory. You could afford to loose them without problem.
Actually, according to go strategy, Black's move 21 is a mistake. He should have taken one of the two remaining corners instead. That's bigger. You are resigning when Black takes the little and leaves the big for you !

In a 19x19 board, the basics are:
1-Take empty corners by playing on, or immediately near the star point (only exception: avoid the 5-5 point, that's a bad opening).
2-If a corner has been claimed with a stone on the 3-4, 3-5 or 4-5 point, make an enclosure or prevent your opponent from making one (enclosure shape : c4+e3 or c4+e4, prevent by playing the other point yourself, like Black 3 in your game).
3-Extend from your corners to the edges playing on the 3rd or 4th line from the edge. Minimum distance between friend stones : 2 empty interesection, minimum distance between stones of opposite colour : 1 empty intersection). Exceptions in the corners : stones can be closer that that. Make large extensions (the distance from one star point to the next) if your new stone has room enough to extend further or back 3 intersections (2 empty ones in between) without getting too close to the enemy (cf minimum distances).

Securing the life of your stones is the principle that comes just next. It has the same priority as the principle 3 above. In your game, you applied it before principle 1 (take empty corners).

Bill Spight wrote:Well, there are a couple of lessons here.

One is that is bad, and now you know why.

Another one is that it is too early to resign. Your opponent is capable of any number of large errors. Remember the battle cry:

Another is to count your liberties (as well as the liberties of your opponent).

I'd start with , as Ed suggests, but wants you to find on your own (many people believe that if you struggle to find solutions on your own, then you'll learn and remember them better, but I'm not against giving you the answer straight out the first time, since you probably don't know where to look or why yet, in order to help you along better for the next time).

With black has double hane'd and has a weakness and liberty problem.

You've atari'ed the stone. Good. You see his liberty problem. But there are two directions you could have pushed black. Do you see them?

You pushed the wrong direction. Your stones on that side get cut off and surrounded by black. Even before you add another stone to it with you're out numbered. And still out numbered with it.

What if you atari'ed on the other side at ?

Then when black answers at , you're in position to kill the stone as Ed hints at. Do you see it now?


So when you have multiple options, try to think about how your opponent will respond to each, and then what possible responses you might have after that too. All before making your move first. Count your liberties. Two liberties, and you're one away from being in atari and being captured. Three liberties (and not your turn), you're one away from being reduced to two and will have to run (if you want to live). So you'll also have to make sure you'll have enough room to run.

Hope this is helpful.

Thanks again for the helpful comments! Yeah, I can see what I did wrong in that game. As you can probably tell I was....well...frustrated. I'm trying to learn from my mistakes. I actually just played a game in which I won a fight. I could hardly believe it. I was trying to post it, but it won't download yet because I guess it's too new. I'll try to post it tomorrow because you might find it amusing. This person likes to fight...a lot.

xed_over wrote:You've atari'ed the stone. Good. You see his liberty problem. But there are two directions you could have pushed black. Do you see them?

You pushed the wrong direction. Your stones on that side get cut off and surrounded by black. Even before you add another stone to it with you're out numbered. And still out numbered with it.

What if you atari'ed on the other side at ?

Then when black answers at , you're in position to kill the stone as Ed hints at. Do you see it now?

Yep, I sure do. So obvious a 3 year old could have seen it right?

So obvious a 3 year old could have seen it right?

Usually, 5 is considered quite precocious; 6 seems reasonable.
However, there's no comparison between children's brains and adults'.
The atari-atari combo could be non-trivial for some people.

Which is one reason for reviews.

dmpeyton wrote:Yep, I sure do. So obvious a 3 year old could have seen it right?

It seems you want to present this as a matter of stupidity. It's not. It is a matter of not knowing what is important in a particular situation. In a fight, it is liberties that are primarily important. While this may at first appear to be trivial, it can quickly get complicated when reading out potential moves as each played stone can affect the liberty count of several separated strings of stones. This means that in a fight, you need to take the time you need to figure out how many liberties remain after your opponent has responded to your move and you've responded to that etc., and furthermore determine at each stage if the moves result in one player getting an overwhelming advantage, and if so check if this advantage could be prevented if the short-sticked player tried something different.

I can empathize with the feeling that this is too difficult. Most of us do not do it very well, but the fact that we are better at it than you is not due to our being super smart, but rather because we have had more experience. Some of us will profit more from our experience than others due to having a greater knack for go, but many of us on the lousy side of the spectrum (poor experience to learning ratio) still enjoy the game.

This brings me to my main point. If you are losing *all* of your games, your opponents are too strong and of course that's no fun. I see you posted a game from IGS, where the starting rank is 17k. This is not a homogoneous group of players, and in my experience, many seem to keep that rank for the sole purpose of trouncing newbies. Give OGS or KGS a try. Find people your level (yes, they exist) or stronger players who will give you an appropriat handicap, and I think you'll have a better experience.

dmpeyton wrote:I actually just played a game in which I won a fight. I could hardly believe it. I was trying to post it, but it won't download yet because I guess it's too new. I'll try to post it tomorrow because you might find it amusing. This person likes to fight...a lot.

Congratulations!

dmpeyton wrote:If I can't fight, then I can't win.

That's correct, as far as it goes. You played the wrong atari, which is a standard sort of mistake. "Orthodox" mistakes like this can just be corrected, normally.

Hi everyone. Well, things are getting somewhat better now. As it turns out, the secret to fighting is very simple: count liberties. This should probably be the first sentence in any book/website introduction for beginners. I think it's way more important than approach/enclosures/extensions/invasions and stuff like that. Of course the books and websites said that, but I think it was not emphasized enough, at least in my opinion. For a beginner, that is what you are going to spend most of your brainpower doing: counting liberties and deciding where you need more and where you can safely reduce your opponent's. Unfortunately for me, there's not much leftover for long-term strategy (at least at this point). I was going to post a game, but the google translation of the error message on IGS did include the word "server." So, yeah...

I checked out OGS, but I didn't like the matchfinding interface as compared to IGS. IGS is the biggest one right? Is there a reason I should switch to another one? I'd rather just stick with one, at least for now.

dmpeyton wrote:I checked out OGS, but I didn't like the matchfinding interface as compared to IGS. IGS is the biggest one right? Is there a reason I should switch to another one? I'd rather just stick with one, at least for now.

Everybody's got their own opinion, but fwiw, from at least somewhat of a similar place in the go-learning curve: IGS has a bunch of grumpy people, OGS has a bunch of people who like playing really fast games without talking much, and KGS is a good place to find really awesome teaching games.

(Later addition: to be clear, my comment on OGS isn't meant as a slam--if I have a bit of time at lunch and I want to get an interesting 9x9 game or two in, OGS is totally the thing!)

OGS also has the weird culture of not using handicap stones. I think the "reason" in the past was too few members to have reliable ranks? That I understand, but shouldn't handicap stones be default now? Just...weird.

dmpeyton wrote:As it turns out, the secret to fighting is very simple: count liberties. This should probably be the first sentence in any book/website introduction for beginners. I think it's way more important than approach/enclosures/extensions/invasions and stuff like that.

On a 19x19, it is equally important. You can learn everything about fighting, if you don't know anything about global strategy, you may secure 100 points with perfect fighting while your opponent, using only global calm moves such as enclosures or academic shapes, gets the 261 remaining ones beyond any hope of being fought back.

That would be true on a 9x9, where the whole game is just a local fight, and the goban has no center. The notion of power just doesn't exist in a 9x9 space.

Four things are necessary to improve at go:
1-Learn the theory (fuseki theory, attack, defense, bases, ko fighting, sente etc.)
2-Practice life and death problems (the "fighting" part we are talking about: capturing races, shapes, sacrifices, tesuji etc.)
3-Play a lot, to develop your go intuition. You have to "feel" when a move is overplay or not. This only comes with trial and error.
4-Have your games reveiwed, this is the only way to get rid of the bad habits that prevent any progression.