Your opening was fine -- I do not think you got hammered in the fuseki at all. You did fall behind in the middle game fighting. My main suggestion would be to adopt a tougher attitude. Resolve not to let your opponent push you around; reject passive answers which slowly give ground to your opponent; try to find more severe sequences.

at P18 would be very large. W can live only through ko, and W needs to make the first ko threat. Did you read this out? If you are not confident starting the ko now, then waiting is fine. Depending on circumstances, capturing the S16 stone in sente might conceivably be better than starting the ko.

Switching to the invasion at R8 is an interesting idea. There is a middle game joseki here which you might want to study. is not one of the joseki continuations, and W got a better result here than he deserved.

At I would almost certainly block at P18 and start the ko. Now that B has captured a stone at Q12, losing the ko would be small, as it would not affect the safety of the B group. B has a nice ko threat at O9 atari. Simply getting two large moves in a row, say in the lower left corner, would be good compensation for losing the ko.

The exchange - helps W more than B. There is not much territory to be made around P14, and it is a shame to strengthen W like this. Imagine that B blocks at P18, then later gets to play H17. Now the W stones are quite weak, and the game exchange would be very bad. The thickness around P14 should be used to attack, not to make territory.

is an important move, which has a surprisingly large effect on the balance of power in the center. B could have played here in sente! B could even continue to press down after that, building quite a bit of center strength, making the W right side over-concentrated. Switching to a large point like instead of this is possible, as long as B is aware of the consequences. However answering at is hopelessly passive. This means B allowed W to make a big gain in sente, which should be intolerable. Either B should take the atari himself in sente, or he should be prepared to ignore a W play there.

feels too close to W thickness. Given the aji at L3 and H3, B will not be able to keep all the lower territory. Now might be a good time to decide between C3 and D2, rather than leaving the play in that corner up to W. If B chooses the C3 invasion, W must choose whether to cut it off and fight (losing all the corner) or let it connect (losing part of the corner but retaining sente). After that decision, B will have a better idea where to continue on the lower side. Or B can play something like D2-C3-L4, attempting to make the lower side into territory.

seems ambitious, but I am not sure. If B does not kill W, the resulting B thickness may not be enough compensation for losing the lower side territory. Note again the importance of . An alternative option for B would be to bump at K3 and attack, intending to build strength and invade at C3 or C7 in compensation. Or B could simply invade at C3 directly.

is risky for W. I think W should atari at G3 and get a good result. With the game sequence, B should get compensation for the W invasion. (Since the game is still continuing, I will not say more, but think about this carefully when forcing W to live.) However B should at least have considered playing at G2 for a kill.

All in all, this was a pretty good game, considering the strength of your opponent. Even at the end, you are not hopelessly far behind. Just try a little harder not to let your opponent get more than he deserves, and play a little more aggressively in areas where you have a strength advantage.

Thanks mitsun, I'm starting to play more. Tonight I had a very lucky win, my opponent should have won by 20+ but they made an error in a capturing race at the top towards the end of the game.

I made a complete hames* of the bottom right.








*synomym in Hiberno-English for mess

You seem to tenuki from your weakish groups and dare the opponent to try and kill them, which works here but may not at higher levels.

This is an overcorrection from a long period of playing "one move too many" far too often.

An unfinished game, since I can count the number of 19x19 games I've played since May on one hand and I haven't been keeping up with my tsumego studies, so yeah I'm not playing well and making more serious misreads than I remember doing. Also thanks to KGS's rating system not having reasonable ceilings for inactive players I'm giving 2 stones to a 5k. Which is nice practice for me but must be terribly boring for them.

Anyway, unfinished game, it may be resumed I don't know, so no comments please on future moves but any comments on serious errors would be greatly appreciated:

Your play has matured.

A few comments.



Main focus: Avoid strengthening your opponent's stones or weakening your own.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Another unfinished game, this time from a live match. Issues noted by both of us were a few timid/slack moves by me at crucial times and a general unwillingness to stick the knife in. There was a misread in there too but eh, that's less of a problem.




I'm not getting much study done at all, though my interest in the game is still there. I can lose myself for an hour in a game and not have any non-go-related thought enter my mind, which is nice.

Edit: The final move is an error. It ended with white's previous move.

A few comments.



Main focus: Look for plays that attack or threaten both sides, especially if they strengthen your own group.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Interesting game. You made good use of your initial advantage in the early part of the game, but then made too many slack moves later. Still, you were ahead until the "oops" blunder.

Bill already covered many of the early points of interest, so without duplicating too many of his comments ....

has traditionally been considered the wrong direction, approaching from the narrow side. When I was a kyu player, I would have been strongly criticized for a move like this. In response, a pincer is tempting, but I think I would happily extend toward the more open side around R14 and let W make a narrow base on top.

through is a fantastic result for B, strongly punishing the W overplay. Now W is split into two weak groups, neither of which has room to make a base. B just has to run out to the center with his weak middle group and keep W split to take control of the game.

was a clever move. If W was already planning the L15-M15-M14 continuation, he is quite strong. In the result up through move 37, W got out of trouble, but B got a very strong ponnuki in compensation. B still has a commanding position.

(At move 32, B could just connect at M16 to keep W separated and maintain the attack, but then W could run out at M13 and start a complicated fight. Giving up the attack to take the ponnuki and simplify the position seems like a good decision.)

should block at R9. Yes, the books all say to use thickness to attack, but at some point you really are allowed to make territory. Actually, blocking would make territory while attacking. Compare that result to the result where W extends to R9 or S10, making W territory inside the B moyo while living. The territory difference is enormous. Also, blocking this side will force W to move in the other direction, which hurts the O3 stone. B would get a perfect splitting attack.

is another slack move. It looks nice, but it allows the W group to the right to live easily by sliding into the corner. B should still be aiming for a splitting attack, starting by preventing W from making a base. Make territory while attacking; prevent your opponent from making territory while living.

is terribly slack. You cannot win a handicap game this way. Blocking at R9 is the only move. This position makes a good full board problem -- spot the vital point.

I haven't been ignoring this journal, I've just been doing poorly health wise and my concentration has been very weak which meant that I was playing games that really weren't worth wasting people's time with reviewing. Depression returned me to my old passive, not paying attention to the big picture self and it felt like I'd regressed by 5 or 6 stones (mainly the issue was, for the first 50-60 moves I could make a game of it but due to a lack of mental stamina due to depression/sleep disruption I quickly lost focus after that and things would start falling apart). Eh, crap happens. I'm starting a course of sleep therapy (it's going to take at least a month to get all the initial tests done before we start on any treatment) so hopefully that'll pay some dividends.


So, why am I posting? Well, the Irish Go Association is having a turn based tournament and I thought, what the hell, I'll give it a go and see if I can feel a spark for go and work on my concentration a bit (poor concentration is a vicious feedback loop, you stop doing complex mental activities because you can't concentrate well but your concentration naturally starts diminishing if you're not using it!).

But, in one of these games someone did something and my mind went, oh, no, that isn't what you're supposed to do...

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . 6 . . |
$$ . . . . . . 2 3 . . |
$$ , . . . . . 4 5 . . |
$$ . . . . . . 1 . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ --------------------+[/go]

Not a big deal, ok this guy is 2 stones stronger than what I claim to be EGF wise (I actually think I'm weaker than EGF 10k but whatever) but joseki error/basic shape error not such a huge thing. The thing was I'd built up this dialogue in my head that I was getting weaker, that I'd forgotten everything, that I shouldn't play this game because I get sick so often (i.e. eternally playing catch up after the regression during each depression). Yet here was something that I just knew should be played. Ingrained my sleep deprived mind a bit was shouting, oh no Sir you don't want to be doing that!

Then this happened in a different game against someone a bit stronger than the last opponent:



Now both of these are games that I could very easily lose. But in play against people somewhat stronger than me, to be able to exploit errors made me quite optimistic about go. I'm rusty definitely, my reading has gotten worse sure, but I still seem to have enough basic shape knowledge stuck in my head to spot these things. At the ranks I was imagining myself as having fallen back to I'd not have spotted the second one I'm pretty sure. Or I'd have not followed through etc.


I know that these are trivial things, but they were important for me to see I think.

I assume these games are ongoing and shouldn't be commented on for the moment?

Definitely. Thus the snippets.

So, Cork Tournament. I've thought about these games but I'm tired so I won't write down my thoughts on them. I've left some of the variations I went over with people though, so this should give some ideas about what we were thinking.


Game 1: I hadn't played him in a year. Being unsure about my own strength and his made for an unsure game. The game got marked as a loss for me due to an error in counting (my opponent forgot to put my captures on the board, I was too tired to notice, we reported the game result as B + change and only noticed the error later). I didn't feel in control in this game as much as I'd have liked to.




Game 2: One of the local lads. He entered at completely the wrong rank.




Game 3: I made some very large errors on top. I could claim tiredness etc but I was very much outplayed here. I didn't drag the game out, I didn't see any reasonable path to evening it up or starting a large enough ko to make a difference. And after Game 2 dragging on for almost the whole 50 minutes maintime each I was tired and just wanted done with it.




I don't know, it was fun, I should play go more often.

Final two games of the tournament.


First, 9 stones against a 3 dan. I got into byo around the time the recording stopped and got far too rushed and careless. I lost the ko and most of the top right from O to T died. Ah well, did ok for a while at least.





Then finally an even game. We'd played each other before and have known each other for a fair bit from tournaments, so it was very interesting. We basically got trapped in a overly large, silly fight on one side that got too big for either of us to ignore and ate up most of our main time. I could have played on but I was exhausted, couldn't see a way back realistically. The final moves were a result of me missing the liberty at Q4. A very enjoyable game but mentally exhausting.



Anyway, good fun despite the two losses.

Edit: Mixed up the games first time around, tired.

Some comments on the 9 stones game.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Thank you very much Bill. So much to work on and think about.

In the first game of post #833, at move 199, white wins the capturing race if he just cuts and black defends, I believe. Start at the first line atari, follow up with the second one, and then descend to the second line, and white's one liberty ahead.

EDIT: Also, back at move 101, I believe white can clamp instead of hane and connect.

Black wouldn't answer the second one surely. I mean, they really don't have to. I think it's a ko actually if white descends and black descends to B7, but it's not a nice ko for Black so yeah cutting is a lot better than the game move.

I'm not looking for a review, merely using this as an excellent example of me turning a good game for me into a very tough or lost one simply because I didn't read something out. If I could get the discipline to read when I needed to and the wisdom to figure out when that is I'd probably gain a fair few stones. Something to improve on anyway.



The game is still in progress, so please no continuations or anything like that. I'm 16k there due to the account being inactive for quite a while until this Irish Turn Based Tournament started. Everyone else seem to be using their EGF rating, I probably should have just created a new account but I was attached to the username.

A couple of comments on the opening.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.