Hi,

this is a game I've recently played on Dragon Go. Im black. I resigned. The game is interesting for a couple of reasons:

a) I was emotionally invested in the game. I did not want to loose ... and did so anyways ... badly.
b) I stublmed very early on and then tried to come back through a series of desperate maneuvers. Some of them quite interesting (I think).
c) I believe it to be full of mistakes I could eliminate from my game very easily. It should be a good opportunity to learn.

I tried to document my train of thoughts as good as I could in the SGF. So here it is:

Working backwards:

110: Never surrender! First, as an 11 kyu, it is your god-given right to die in the last ditch. I don't notice an estimate of how much you're losing by. If you're not confident in your ability to count, how could you even know whether you're winning or losing?

Some ideas: (1) W has captured two nearby clusters in loose ladders. (M14 and H10.) That gives you a huge amount of aji to work with. Can you find moves that affect both loose ladders? (2) Mut fassen! E12 isn't dead until the stones are off the board. You have aji around F10, and you can aspire to capture C10 if W resists strongly. Try to look for forcing moves that offer W a choice between painful cuts/invasions and allowing B more options to live. (3) Even if you completely despair of rescuing your stones in the center, you should still be thinking about the most aggressive ways to use the aji to reduce W. Look for endgame moves along the sides, try to capture P9, see what damage you can do around E5...

109: A raw peep - yuck! A peep is a move that gains some advantage in sente, while encouraging W to fix a weakness. A raw peep is a peep where you could have exploited the weakness instead of using it gain a forcing stone.

Look into cutting directly. Note that W owes you a move at e15 very soon, and you have the L13 aji to exploit.

Even if you are sure that the cut doesn't work, unless you have a clear plan to make your center group live, you should save the peep for a forcing move on the *other* side, to strengthen that group. H16 is purely an endgame move.

107: Cut!

99: A wedge like this is better if you plan to extend from the atari (regardless of which side the atari comes on), and best if you then have the ability to cut on either side. If you just wanted d12 in sente, play d12 in sente, no?

95: Note that the prospects for your invasion would have been very different if you had not peeped at d16 first. You usually peep on the outside at the point where you've decide you definitely don't want to invade on the inside.

94: What happens here if you hadn't made the liberty-losing n15/n16 exchange first?

83: Block! Broken shape here is unacceptable unless you're sure you have enough to win.

79: A bit slow. G12 is a better connection, imho. If you insist on kosumi+ogeima, why not G11?

73: I don't think so... your territory on top was fine (and not necessarily safer after the peep). If you get thick in the center, on the other hand, you can start asking White where he plans to make eyes.

35: Try P18 instead.

29: What! I would play B. If you keep pushing, then soon you can make the pretty cut at m6, swallowing W in a big way.

Hello there Gegenzeit. I've tried to include a few ideas on how I might play instead at certain moments, and toward the end of my comments I tried to emphasize the importance of playing moves that reinforce your weak groups rather than your already alive groups. Overall, I think you were too pessimistic about your game though. Anyway, hopefully these comments are helpful.

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Thanks for the replies! I will go over them this evening!

Here is another suggestion for move 35.