The result, of course, was going to be predictable. There would be 60 moves of the 9 kyu crushing the 23 kyu and I would call the game off before it got too ugly.
Instead, something totally unexpected happened... the 23 kyu kept up and even won a big fight.
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This afternoon I went to a go study group with a couple of friends. One of them, Nick, is around the rank of 9 kyu - I play him at 4-5 stones - and the other, Elyse, is ranked 23 kyu on the KGS. The Elyse has only been playing the game for a few months while Nick has been playing for a few years. They have played before, with Elyse losing to Nick after being given an enormous handicap - 9 stones plus a sizable reverse komi.
When we began this study group I thought I could spend time teaching these players what I learn from books and online lectures and we could review professional games and such. But Elyse prefers to learn from playing, so it seemed like a good idea to have the two players play a brief even game and then review it. My thought was they could each play about 30 moves and then I would discuss the opening with them. Elyse feels lost in the opening fuseki and Nick feels lost during joseki, so I figured this would be ideal.
I thought 30 moves a piece would be about right and I was sure Elyse would fall behind fast. But Nick made some big mistakes - possibly from overconfidence - and Elyse, while of course making her own errors, played a fantastic game considering her rank. It was the perfect storm and by the end of it I was baffled, Nick was in shock, and Elyse was thrilled. We agreed to stop the game at move 63. That turned out to be a bit premature, but it wasn't supposed to be a full game anyway. And it was not supposed to be close.
Here is the game:
All of this just goes to show that you never know what to expect when to players sit down at the go board.
Afterwards the two played a second game, and that went much more like how I expected. Elyse made mistakes and I called the game before 50 moves.
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I would like to know what stronger players think of these games, particularly the first one. It ended up being a bit too complicated for me to evaluate accurately - which surprised me considering that one of the players is a beginner. I'd like to give her some really solid advice about how to improve and I want to make sure I'm accurately telling the 9 kyu what went wrong.
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is a bit smaller than the right, but if you're going to follow up to a 3-3 stone, this is a normal way to do it.
through 
would be better used (for black AND white) by playing on the right to either make a white extension or black pincer. 
looks quite small. The 3-3 point can ignore most approaches other than the shoulder hit.