After the Elf commentaries, assuming area scoring and a 7½ pt. komi, give one player a winrate estimate of 88½% with 29.6k rollouts. Which player is it?
I pick black. Immediately, white has to take gote making the top group not die, and it's not going to be pretty - black still will have a local advantage in efficiency.
After that, we can compare the bottom left with the bottom right - 3 against 1 for each side, who has it better?
Black has it better. Black will get sente to play in the bottom right. After that, the one white stone on the side at R10 can still be put under pressure, due to the black thickness on the top. That's different from the left side - the one black stone at C9 cannot be put under pressure in the same way, because white is still weak nearby. You can't attack if you're weak.
The last difference is in the upper left - whose stone are more efficient? Black's, by far. W's weakness will come back to bite him later. So black is obviously ahead on board. Is black ahead by more than komi? I say heck yeah. I'm doubling down - I can't even spot any major inefficiencies for B, from a game reconstruction standpoint.
- Should White play immediately?
- How important is A locally? And B?
- Is indeed the biggest point on the board after settling the upper right?
- More in particular: how important is C?
- And how painful is D?
- Who is ahead?
First I thought: Black has the better position. But then I didn't see how he's overcoming the komi. And he really needs to spend another move in the upper left to stabilize.
If we add the exchange of - as here, then Black's inefficiency comes to light. The marked White stone is negating his influence and there's a peep at A.
Currently leaning towards black. First guess was white because my feeble human intuition says that white can take the last big point of the fuseki on the lower side. But we've had enough arguments about that recently!
On a closer look, I think N17 is urgent, and the top is about to turn into a big mess that will favour black. Overall white's stones look superficially more efficient, but a bit thin.
$$Wc
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . O . . 2 1 O O . O X . |
$$ | . X . , . . . . . , . X 3 X . , X . . |
$$ | . O X X . . . . . . . 5 4 . . X . . . |
$$ | . O O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
[go]$$Wc
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . O . . 2 1 O O . O X . |
$$ | . X . , . . . . . , . X 3 X . , X . . |
$$ | . O X X . . . . . . . 5 4 . . X . . . |
$$ | . O O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]
Not sure what happens next from here, but I think black's thickness at the top left (*) will come in to play.
(*) And these days I'm also quite nervous about using words like thickness or influence...
Re: How is your positional judgement? Game 27
Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2022 11:47 am
by dhu163
R17 seems misplaced when W is crawling on the top as B adding a move can make it bad. Locally S18 was the shape, but that is inconsistent with the crawl.
On the rest of the board, the lower right corner is very big after which R10 extends slightly too far. Most of all the upper left seems better shape for B as W is cramped playing too close to thickness with B14 for D14. M16 is interesting. I didn't think of it. It makes J17 and R17 look worse.
the Elf commentaries, assuming area scoring and a 7½ pt. komi, give one player a winrate estimate of 88½% with 29.6k rollouts. Which player is it?
immediately?
indeed the biggest point on the board after settling the upper right?
as here, then Black's inefficiency comes to light. The marked White stone is negating his influence and there's a peep at A.
while threatening to clamp at A.
with 
and gives Black a firm advantage.