Day 18 - 5 games (48)

Yesterday I lost the first three games I played, which I think made my losing streak reach seven or so games, not bad. The first one I played was against a 15 kyu, who decided to let me place some handicap stones as the game started (I realise that I didn't place them on the star points, but white also got komi which I think he doesn't in a proper handicap game, so whatever). He stuck around after the game to give some pointers, but unfortunately I couldn't see any of the moves he was making. One mistake that I saw him pointing out though, was this move:

The kosumi secures the corner, but it also traps me there. Extending towards my other stone on the left would have been better long term. There was a similar sequence later in the game as well:

Here I'm not sure what I should have played though. I'm thinking either C14 or K17. Eventually I played this cut, which I think was an acceptable move:

I then had to cut again at N13 to free my other cutting group:

However, I didn't realise that the stone #3 was dead until I played three more stones in an attempt to save it, so that was ~6 points lost. Even though I lost this game I was quite pleased with how I managed to reduce white's territory in the top middle. I just realised though that what I thought was a clever sacrifice gave no net gain:

White gets to capture one stone, but loses two points of territory, or so I thought. In fact he only lost one point of territory so it came out even, but I guess it was sente for me?

Towards the end of the game there was another moment where I could've gotten more points. This is what I played:

I think I could have played this instead:

This sequence gives four points less for white, and one more point for me, so in total it changes the result of the game by 10 points. I ended up losing 13.5 points, which means that those two (for me minor) mistakes could've turned the game. Not too bad!