Day 8 - 6 games (28), 23 kyu

Fortunately last night was a more positive experience than the night before, and I got a whole six games in, staying up too late in the process. Among those games was my first handicap game against a very nice 9 kyu player. Heeding the advice to play defensive and take advantage of the handicap stones, I ended up winning. I know handicaps are accepted in Go, but I don't believe the potency of the handicap scales linearly with the number of stones. On the 13x13 boards my six stone handicap is approaching was it unreasonable.

I can't write about all the games, so I'll focus on the two that I lost. The first loss came against someone I believe was a smurf. He was a 25 kyu with zero games played, but he's now sitting pretty at nine straight wins, including one against a 17/18 kyu. I was white, and after we each took our two corners he played a shoulder hit (katatsuki), and I responded by extending:

 

Black then played K11, and recalling the proverb hane at the head of two stones I did just that. I didn't really stop my opponent from taking territory on the upper side, at the time I was content to contain him, but perhaps I should have attached at K11 instead of L10 and pushed him away from my second stone. In any case, I think my first real mistake was this stone:

 

When I played it my thought process was that it prevents black from cutting at J10; playing H11 instead would have made a ladder, but C3 is a ladder breaker! However, when black inevitably plays C11 I am in atari, and am forced to connect. This puts me one move "behind" and I think it gives my opponent sente (my understanding of this term is still not perfect). I tried to make up for it by doing a one point jump, and then black hane'd at M10:

At the time I didn't think this was such a bad situation, but in hindsight it's where things turned bad.  I meant to play K9, but I misclicked at L9 while trying to read out the ladder, which again had a ladder breaker. I've looked over this position several times, but I cannot find a play that ends well for white. Extending instead of playing the hane at #20 would have been better, but even then I'm giving up a ton of territory and my main group might not even live, because I don't have any supporting stones in the center, or access to the edges of the board. Clearly I lost the game at an even earlier point, and like I said move #5 at H10 could be it. Extending instead could have let to this:

Here the ladder is good for white and the stone at M11 contains black's top group. However, my gut instinct is that black comes out on top in this exchange too! White still hasn't even started making territory anywhere. It's interesting how things go bad so quickly. Maybe the hane at L11 was the biggest misstep. I also noticed now that my opponent played the 3-3 opening, which secures the corners much better. Perhaps this is the better way to go on the 13x13 board.

The other game I lost mostly came down to small stupid mistakes that put me behind, however the mistake that finally made me resign might be worth pointing out:

Defending the atari takes away one liberty from a group that can be cut! I didn't see that until it was too late. Near the edges it's easier to run out of liberties and I should be more mindful of that.

Thanks to rarandomra who reviewed one of my games, and also videotape500 who was gracious enough to let me undo a move when I misclicked.

Takeaways:

-Maybe don't play the 4-4 opening on the 13x13 board, I don't know how to defend the shoulder hit.

-Be more mindful of liberties around cutting points near the edge of the board.

I'm wondering if I should move on to the 19x19 board, because while the 13x13 board is less fighting oriented than the 9x9 board, I still feel like the center plays a larger role than what feels right.