Life In 19x19

In chess they have the concept of pieces being "en prise" when the piece is left "hanging" so that it is undefended and can just be taken. This is a common fault with beginners.

Is it common for beginners in Go not to even see that they are in atari or is just me?

I am amazed at the number of times I don't even see that a particular stone is exposed or even worse that my opponent has circled around me with his/her stones and is now able to eat up a whole set of my stones. I am aware that part of the problem is that I get so fixated on my own plans that I don't even notice what is happening in terms of the overall strategy of the other player.

Is this common for beginners and if so what are the techniques to rid yourself of this? !!

Yes, it's common. In go, you have the advantage that groups of stones are "alive unconditionally" if they have two eyes, or can make two eyes easily without a fight. If your stones/groups don't have two eyes, you need to keep an eye on what's happening to them and how surrounding they're getting.

Other than that, practice by playing more and more games

Yes, as topazg said, it is common. And not only for beginners. Even professionals sometimes miss it, albeit extremely rarely.
As you improve in Go, you'll be amazed at the number of things that you previously miss or don't see (similar to chess?).
And as topazg said, one solution is study & practice, study & practice, study & practice.

As a beginner, I can speak to this directly.

This was happening to me a lot, and I started counting liberties at first in hopes of avoiding it. But what really helped was actually reading some beginner pages on Sensei's Library and getting game reviews from stronger players.

The reason this helped was that instead of just counting liberties, I was learning to do things in a way that made getting captured less frequent because I was playing according to more sound principles.

You never stop having groups captured, but you can get past this problem pretty soon.

It is common. I've been playing go for 20+ years, and I still do it now and then.

Have a look at this game, starting around move 125: viewtopic.php?p=109226#p109226

When I learned go it was customary to say Atari when you placed a stone or group in atari. So I did not have that problem as a beginner. However, when I was around 4 kyu I once tried to remove a group that I had only placed in atari.

That practice seems to have died out, at least in Western circles.

Years ago, at the Los Alamos go club, saying atari was still the custom, although stronger players often omitted it. But if you did not say atari and your opponent left his stones in atari, the custom was to point that out and let him take his play back. (In fact, when I learned go, allowing take backs was the norm. ) But there was one dan player named Courtney who would sometimes come to Los Alamos as a visiting scientist, and would play at the club when he was in town, who never said atari and never allowed take backs. There was another player around 2 or 3 kyu who was careless about noticing atari and relied upon his opponent to say atari or allow a take back. When Courtney was in town, from time to time we would hear the anguished cry, "Courtney! You forgot to say atari!"

Putting on my chessplayer hat, your friend Courtney is completely right. Saying atari and allowing takebacks belong to the class of bad habits that seriously impede your progress. The other common one I see is placing stones (or in chess, moving pieces) while doing analysis.

These bad habits are bad in a similar way. They encourage you to stop paying close attention, and to play on a kind of autopilot.

When you start playing, your autopiloting skill is terrible. That's why you simply must disallow takebacks, and play without your opponent helpfully pointing out ataris, because if you don't you'll never develop your autopilot.

Each game you play seriously, suffering the loss after missing obvious moves, you train yourself to pay attention subconsciously. When you pay attention, you understand what your opponent is doing and what his moves mean. Eventually you start seeing stones in atari automatically, because you are following the moves and you see it happen.

NPW wrote:...Is it common for beginners in Go not to even see that they are in atari or is just me?

Yes, not only that. I resigned games, after I failed with an invasion while my total score would have been still enough for a win. In another KGS game, my opponent resigned, because I "killed" a big group, which turned out to be a hallucination, when looking at the game afterwards. Kyu-games can be a lot of fun...

schawipp wrote:

NPW wrote:...Is it common for beginners in Go not to even see that they are in atari or is just me?

Yes, not only that. I resigned games, after I failed with an invasion while my total score would have been still enough for a win. In another KGS game, my opponent resigned, because I "killed" a big group, which turned out to be a hallucination, when looking at the game afterwards. Kyu-games can be a lot of fun...

I certainly remember some embarrassing incidents when we'd finish a game thinking everything was done because the borders were all closed up, when there were several groups in undecided states of life and death. It's probably one of the more frustrating parts of starting to play, but you do figure it out. As you will no doubt be told, doing life and death problems helps.

I have lost more than a game by not seeing that my wonderful sequence of moves didn't work because one of the involved groups was in atari at some point.

I don't usually reach the point where the group gets actually killed but when something you expected to live dies, the result is almost the same.

yes, many of us "more experienced" players still miss an obvious atari from time to time.

but I think the kind you mean are the kind where there's hardly any other stones on the board, and you still don't see it.

my observations from teaching beginners, I think they are too focused on trying to surround and capture their opponent (even after I just told them that they probably won't capture me), that they forget to look to the safety of their own stones/groups (and are creating more weaknesses in their rush to surround and capture).

Don't try so hard to capture. that's just not the most efficient way to win the game anyway

don't forget to constantly re-evaluate your own stones/groups. each and every move has the potential to drastically change the whole board situation.

How about a pro that self-ataris?

(probably made the rounds already)

How about my current game with Skydyr, where I destroyed all and any strength I had in one move:

Happened to me yesterday. My 9-stone to 8-stone promotion win turned into a resign when I wasn't even paying any attention at all the the liberties on the vital group that was killing all of my stones.

I felt like Charlie Brown sailing feet first through the air...

But, such is life. There will be more games (and that is a good thing in the end).

Bruce "1 lib bad; 0 libs worse" Young

DeFlow wrote:How about my current game with Skydyr, where I destroyed all and any strength I had in one move:

$$Bcm31 Prisoners: White stones:0 ; Black stones:1
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$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6 . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4 O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 X 1 2 O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . X . X . X O O X . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . X O . X O X 3 . |
$$ | . . . , O . . . . , . . O . X O X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O X X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . O X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bcm31 Prisoners: White stones:0 ; Black stones:1
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6 . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4 O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 X 1 2 O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . X . X . X O O X . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . X O . X O X 3 . |
$$ | . . . , O . . . . , . . O . X O X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O X X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . O X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Actually DeFlow, there is a good learning opportunity there. Your move removes one of your liberties needlessly. Sure, it takes away a potential eye for white, but white wasn't close to being enclosed in the first place. Playing removes a liberty from your group, which ends up costing you big time in the upcoming moves (if you hadn't played the double hane would work). In the future, try to avoid moves like which, while being forcing, also remove liberties from your group.