sholvar wrote:
ethanb wrote:
In the end? I'd say move 10 won you the game.
I can not express how much I hate the expression "move x lost the game". There is no such thing. A move can give a huge advantage to the other side, but not lose the game. Maybe if the game is close and you fail to play the last big endgame then you can say that. But otherwise please, please, please only think of positional advantages/disadvantages, not win/lose.
(Also this game surely proves my point, because white is way ahead for most of the game, even after that early mistake. Did you actually look deeper into this game?)
@chef: Well, I personally think that it is very hard to gain from that kind of opening. It is nice that you experiment though. I admire that. From now on try to experiment more successfully with not saying "I play that opening to win" but to say something like "I play that opening to give me a shot for center territory later." or "I play that opening to get a huge moyo." or "I play that opening to gain a lot of territory early on to happily invade white later on."
You see, a good plan always has some "later on" part. Because you never win a game just with opening, just with middle game, or just with endgame. A strong player connects opening, middle and endgame to help each other, depending on what he knows and how he plays best. I for example like fighting invasions more then invading myself. So normally I play an opening that will lead to a big moyo, like the chinese opening or sanrensei. And because I like save territory more then all or nothing games, I often end up playing chinese. This is how you chose an opening. Of course experimenting with different openings is good and important. But as long as we are kyu players I also think that it might be good to read according literature to that opening while experimenting with it. Because we lack basic knowledge we need to learn from other people which move has what meaning in that opening. It is unlikely we find out by ourself (like what is the difference between high and low chinese) or through playing people in our strength. And yes, that means if an opening has not much literature to it, it might be a bad opening to study for us noobs, because even if we can win some games, we hardly can learn anything important and thus can not improve our game.
So I say it again, because I am not sure I expressed that clearly enough yet: Finding an opening is not about how to win the game, but how to connect to a middle game you like to play.
And that opening surely didn't win your game (to answer your question). After only making one big mistake at move 17 you fight against a big white advantage nearly the whole game and only get back to even after your opponent kills himself very, very big TWO times in the end. You won because of suicide, not because of the opening. Even after killing himself once big, he still got back to an advantage of more then 40 points. In this game I saw at least 2 points where I would resign to play a more meaningful game next time.
In the game review I hope to show that there are a lot of basics you need to learn before you should decide to move to openings who are not played by pros at all. And secondly I'd like to show you why your opening had nothing to do with your win (what hopefully gives you better judgement in your next games).
I have to disagree a bit with the commentary you gave, honestly. I agree with Joaz - this looked like a win for black for much of the game. But, even had it been a miserable failure, you only get practice by doing.
The thing that makes playing from central power difficult is that it takes lots of practice and a strong grasp of whole-board strategy to know how to use it. You don't surround territory from it (unless you're sure that will win you the game easily, of course) but you attack. You split things up and force tough decisions on your opponent. And black was perfectly set up to hammer on white's weaknesses. At move 25 you say it's easy to see that black is overconcentrated, but in my opinion white has the tougher field to hoe. Could the technique be better? Sure. I agree that C7 wasn't far enough. But white's invasion is a MUCH worse mistake (compounded further by the black wall to the south, which is why I made the tongue-in-cheek remark that White 10 lost the game.)
Look at the situation at move 25 again: the power of the stones on the 11th rank is unquestioned, the stones to the south of white's are unconditionally alive, white's bottom side has no way to expand anywhere, and can even be crushed tiny into the corner. White will have to struggle hard to gain any benefit from saving these stones... I completely disagree that white is at an advantage here.
In essence, I agree with many of your tactical comments, but I feel that maybe you don't weigh the advantage of thickness heavily enough when evaluating a strategic overview of the situation. And the only reason I disagree with some of the tactical comments is because of this difference in evaluation of the power contained in black's thickness.
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chef
The only problem is that you didn't notice that your strategy had worked. 
