Life In 19x19

I wonder how you would play it? Should black first jump out and attack the lone white stone, then turn back to white's weak group on the right?

The key thing to realize here is that the pincered stone isn't under much threat, as white simply can't take care of both the corner and the pincer stone at the same time. Just jump out simply, And white will suddenly have 3 groups in trouble and unable handle them all. White has placed himself in a situation where as long as Black takes care of his own groups and deny White useful forcing moves, his own position automatically crumbles.

The biggest trap for Black here is to panic and either strengthen White unnecessarily trying to "make life" or to be overaggressive and try to kill. Please simply, thickly, and maintain access to the center for both Black groups and White will spend the rest of the game running with his groups and playing dame. He will not be able to take another big territorial point for a long, long time. White is trying to compensate for his previous overplay with another overplay, and he should pay for it.

Something like this seems possible? Honestly it looks so much uglier than even I thought for White, I can't possibly have found the strongest play. I just don't see how White can even continue.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . 7 5 . 0 . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 2 . . . 3 4 . 8 9 . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . 1 . . 6 . X . O . . . X . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . O . , . . . . O , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . X . O . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Edit: Maybe W can do this. He connects, but Black central thickness is overwhelming:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . 7 5 . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 2 . . . 3 4 . 8 9 . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . 1 . . 6 . X 0 O . . . X . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . O . , . . . . O , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . X . O . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Cont.
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . X X . 3 . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . X O 1 O X . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . O . X O O . . . X . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . O . 4 2 . . . O , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . X . O . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

If I hadn't made the mistake of approaching his shimari, I would have played something like C6. I felt I HAD to pincer and be aggressive. Was it too aggressive? Maybe. Overplay? Definitely. However, my gut said that I had to do something aggressive. I'm still developing my Go intuition, so I wouldn't recommend trying my pincer in this situation if you got into it yourself.

Then again, Mikhail Tal got away with such bold, brash attacking moves in chess and all too often they were sacrifices, so I personally have hope that it can work with Go and me.

Here's a link about Tal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tal

I'll know more after my opponent's move how I want to deal with things. I have a gut feeling that he won't get the optimum result here, since we're both about the same level. I'll get a better result than I deserve. However, the game is going to be littered with these overplays, at least on my side depending on how badly I need them and if I want to make the game imbalanced.

Tal said that his results improved when he realized that not only he was scared, but also his opponent. My new philosophy in this game, "If Tal can do it, I can too."

Here's my favorite game by him, too http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1259999

Two wrongs don't make a right.

The spirit is good in your move, but the problem is that you have to make sure you have the strength on the board to sustain such aggressiveness. Before playing a move like this, you absolutely need to read ahead - because usually when playing like this your opponent can get away with an okay result even when not playing too optimally, but one mistake from you and you are done. Furthermore, positional advantages aren't erased by aggressive fighting and or "blowing the board up" - often they manifest themselves most strongly in these scenarios. You admitted that you played your original approach to the shimari out of fear of giving Black too much - are you making this same mistake again? Was this move made out of fear or rational reading?

I am suddenly less confidant about my position here having been cut in three but I feel my groups are probably in a position to at least make this a difficult fight or fights. The whole south side looks quite messy and I suspect at least one of us will have to make some sacrifices to get out of this alive.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Move 12
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . c . . . . X . O . . . X . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . O . , . . . . O , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . a . . X . O . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . b . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

My very first thought was a connecting my two groups and looking to build a bit of life and maybe invade the corner later but whites hane on the right scuppers that idea and leads to a fight I'm not sure I profit from. So my next thought was b similar result but less confrontational and still not entirely satisfying.

The only other option seems to be the one point jump to c. It is the standard response to a pincer and it threatens the white stones either side. Should really have been my first thought. I'm still nervous about the whole situation, my positions are rife with weaknesses and I worry I overplayed with my approach. Still, no use crying over spilt milk, it's time to grit my teeth, fight this out and hope I don't come out to badly.

Kill you Suji? I'm just glad you're still alive.

The corner is more important than my stone. Again, I really don't know what I expect him to play, so no variations. I'm going to go with the flow for now.

I also have to figure out how to save my square stone.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Move 13
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . X . O . . . X . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . @ . , . . . . O , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . X . O . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Aphelion raises very valid and interesting points.

To his question, 1. "Am I making the same mistake again?", and to his other question, 2. "Was my last move made out of fear or rational reasoning?"

Answer to 1:
Yes and no.

Answer to 2:
Both.

Let me clarify both answers, and for this I'm going to have to go back to my chess references.

One of my favorite chess books is, "How to Become a Deadly Chess Tactician" by David LeMoir. In this book, he goes through and looks at some of the priceless, beautiful games of chess that contain at least one sacrifice. He starts by going back to 1851, the year that chess legend Adolf Anderssen played the 'Immortal Game'. He then looks at the motivation of various great players to see why they sacrificed material.

I hope it's ok posting this because it illustrates my point beautifully. He gets to Tal, and here's what he said, "In the middle of the 1950s, along came Mikhail Tal, a man who needs no introduction. He was something of a throwback to the bygone days, the New Romantic of the chessboard.

Tal's love of sacrificing was so strong that he felt compelled to make a habit of it. I once decided to count how often he sacrificed, so I took Thomas's book the Complete Games of Mikhail Tal 1960-66 and counted up the games and sacrifices that he played from the first event after he won the World Championship in 1960 to Reyjavik 1964, the tournament before the Amsterdam Interzonal. I discounted the 1962 Candidates tournament at Curacao on the grounds that Tal was very ill at the time.

The results? The book gives 231 competitive games, of which 96 feature at least one Tal sacrifice. That's over 40%. Many of the sacrifices were in combinations that finished off games, but plenty were played to grab the initiative or open up attacks. Some were unsound, fewer failed. We must ask the question: why could Tal find the excuse to play sacrifices in nearly half his games when few other players, let alone grandmasters playing in the top flight, could manage it in a small fraction of their games? It was said by Reuben Fine that Alekhine "... would almost literally shake combinations out of his sleeve", but even in his young days his efforts could not compare to Tal's prolific output of sacrifices.

The comparison with Alekhine is worth taking further. As Alekhine progressed, he refined his positional play in order to cope with the leading players of his day. He still played sacrifices, but more and more they formed the keystones of combinations that merely completed the work that his fine positional play had started. The first objective was to create a winning position; sacrifices could finish the job.

By contrast, throughout his life Tal would play sacrifices in ANY phase of the game. Sometimes they were played simply because he wanted an interesting game.

...

Tal's success as a sacrificer resulted from both his personality and his mental faculties. He loved a fight. He had great intuition, a rich imagination and a love of beauty. He was able to calculate at great speed and visualize future positions with remarkable clarity. He had an uncanny judgement of the effects of strange material imbalances. He had a great sense of humor, one effect of which was to help him see paradoxical ideas."
(Emphasis mine.)

This illustrates my point beautifully that I kind of pointed to in my last post.

Aphelion wrote: Before playing a move like this, you absolutely need to read ahead - because usually when playing like this your opponent can get away with an okay result even when not playing too optimally, but one mistake from you and you are done.

Here is where I disagree slightly. First of all, I strongly agree that reading ahead is mandatory in situations like this. I read a couple of variations, saw that it was going to complicated, for example, I knew my opponent was going to jump one space to F5, but I didn't go into a lot of depth. Why? Because I felt the position was too complicated for me to read anything out accurately and completely. Now I know that I'm going to take heat for that comment. So let me elaborate.

Here's a story about Tal that illustrates my point, again, beautifully: (from Wikipedia)
Journalist: - "It might be inconvenient to interrupt our profound discussion and change the subject slightly, but I would like to know whether extraneous, abstract thoughts ever enter your head while playing a game?"

Tal: - "Yes. For example, I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight. The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.
And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanovic Chukovsky: "Oh, what a difficult job it was. To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus".

I do not know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out: just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh? I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder.

After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: "Well, just let it drown!" And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on ... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it."

Journalist: - "And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately-calculated piece sacrifice".

This points out that intuition is just as vital as calculation, and it would be foolish to completely ignore intuition. I suspect that Aphelion knows this and trusts his calculation AND intuition, but calculation his backs up his intuition.

Aphelion wrote: Furthermore, positional advantages aren't erased by aggressive fighting and or "blowing the board up" - often they manifest themselves most strongly in these scenarios.

I believe that this is one of those half-truths, that if you grab the wrong half you're in a world of hurt.

Positional advantages are some of the most permanent advantages in chess and go. That I won't dispute. However, you still have to know how to exploit the advantages in order to profit from them. Does SinK know how to use certain advantages? Probably not, but that is not the issue here. In fact, I'm going to assume he does in order not to make mistakes. If I "blow-up" the board and make the game sufficiently complicated then one mistake by EITHER of us might end the game.

Tal made the game complicated at EVERY opportunity, and he was playing his strengths. If he could do what he did with chess what says I can't do it with go.

Basically, Tal feared no one, so he'd sacrifice against anyone. I'm not going to be afraid of SinK just to because I screwed up. Also, I want an interesting game thus my move.

Suji wrote:Tal made the game complicated at EVERY opportunity, and he was playing his strengths. If he could do what he did with chess what says I can't do it with go.

Well, Tal was a genius and you're 14k.

It is great to have fighting spirit and it will serve you well as you progress. Having Tal as a model is super, but be careful about thinking that it gives you license to play crazy moves that you don't really understand because hey, a world chess champion got away with it too.

By the way, Tal was a much better calculator than you probably give him credit for.

P.S. You would probably love his book The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal. The hippopotamus story comes from there.

Wrote this up proper with about 5 diagrams then lost it thanks to the internet being rubbish.

Here's the crib notes. I want to attack his single white stone and this looks like the best way to do it. I expect him to attack somewhere else to start a fight that strengthens wither his corner or the right hand group before he tries to cut me up and kill from the inside as it is anything he does with the single stone acheives nothing exept forcing me to strenghten my position which will make attacking his other group easier later.

dfan wrote:

Suji wrote:Tal made the game complicated at EVERY opportunity, and he was playing his strengths. If he could do what he did with chess what says I can't do it with go.

Well, Tal was a genius and you're 14k.

Gee, thanks, dfan completely ruin my motivation...

In all actuality, you're right. Even in chess I can't get away with what he could. I'm a mere mortal compared to him, but that won't stop me from at least trying even if I don't succeed.

dfan wrote:Having Tal as a model is super, but be careful about thinking that it gives you license to play crazy moves that you don't really understand because hey, a world chess champion got away with it too.

Yeah, that's always the danger there having a stronger player as a role model. I'm not too, too worried about it since as far as I'm aware Tal never played Go, and so I can't copy any games or moves.

Then again, I don't understand Go that much so that may hold true. I am looking at this game as a serious learning experience, so I'm not too worried about losing the game. I'm more worried about learning all that I can from this game than actually winning. That, however, does not mean that I want to lose.

dfan wrote:By the way, Tal was a much better calculator than you probably give him credit for.

So true.

There's no way that we could know exactly how good at calculating he was. I'd be willing to bet that if you could rank all chess players who have ever played by ability to calculate, Tal would be near the very top if not at the top. He'd probably be one of the top 3 calculators in history. And that's probably giving all the other chess professionals too much credit.

Yeah, since we have no way of knowing how good he actually was, I probably don't give him all the credit he deserves. Some people think that his chaotic sacrifices were all intuitive, but I personally believe that there is no way that they were all intuitive. I personally think that it was a mixture of his intuition and calculation.

P.S. You would probably love his book The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal. The hippopotamus story comes from there.

And yes I think I would enjoy the book. It's on my list of chess books to read.

I have sente. How should I use it? I think black went for the easy cash instead of the pressure. At least it feels that way.

I still have the bottom pincer stone, and as long as I have that he has to be worried about it. But if he wastes too many moves capturing that stone, I'll be able to build up an even better position than what I gave him on bottom. Another scenario good for me is that he forgets about it and the stone lives and severely cramps his position.

Most likely, he'll kill the stone and be quite happy.

Its good that you are not automatically thinking of running with the stone, and realize that there is value in it even if it is dead. However, as long as we are talking about a possible sacrifice, note that you could have done it earlier with something like this. Note: I am not necessarily saying that this was the best move then, or that leaving your current stone to die is the best move now. Its just that this diagram was something to consider a few moves ago:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc White some moves ago
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . 3 . 2 . 1 . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Yeah, that move did cross my minda few moves ago. I didn't like it since Black has the one space jump, and I didn't want to have to reinforce both sides. The sacrificing of a stone didn't occur to me then.

When I play online, I usually end up with stones that I should sacrifice but don't have the guts to do it. At least in this format, I have enough thinking time to make hard decisions like sacrificing stones to actually do it, if necessary.