Day 23 - 1 game (51)

Because I've been traveling I've been out of time to play. The other night I thought I'd squeeze in one game late at night, but I don't know if I got much out of it. I matched with a 12 kyu and I don't know if it was because he was so much better than I, or if it was because it was a game with a short timer, but it felt like every move I made was the wrong one.

Black played a strange opening move which I ignored and instead tried to take some corners. Maybe black simply wanted to give me a handicap:

I don't think this looks horrible for me, but I wasn't sure how to respond here:

I wanted to play #2 at C4, but then I would get the shape I mentioned having read about being bad. I then tried to break out into the centre from my corner groups:

To me it looks, at this point, like it might work in the top right, but in the bottom I think #28 should have been at M5 instead and it might not have been cut off. I then proceeded to throw away a bunch of stones on the right side:

I realised that it wasn't going to work much earlier than this, but I didn't have any better ideas so I thought that I might as well keep at it a bit longer. At this point it was clearly time to try something else, so I attempted to connect my middle stones to the group in the top right, which I thought might live.

That did of course not work either and I got utterly destroyed trying to capture some of black's stones. Throughout the entire game black was much better at keeping his stones connected, and like magic he would always have enough extra liberties that I could never capture any of his groups!

So, I didn't get to play much, but I did do a lot of problems in my new book. As I understand it you're meant to do them fully in your head and not look at solutions. For the most part I've been avoiding the latter, but I will check every so often to make sure I'm on the right track. There is one problem (#119) that I don't understand the solution for though, which has to do with counting territory. The goal is to count the points for this board position:

Now, I suppose there are a few different ways the score could be counted. This books says that captured stones should be placed inside the corresponding player's territory, so they subtract points from one player instead of adding them to the other, but it's of course the same in the end. By doing this and counting the territory I get 31 points for each player. The book tells me that it's still a draw (no komi), but 28 points for each player. It suggests that the board should be rearranged in this fashion:

This left me even more confused. First of all I'm not sure why the territory in the middle was filled in. Secondly black still has two prisoners, even though all prisoners were supposed to be moved. Finally, white has 28 points of unoccupied territory and black has 26. So it's not a tie and it doesn't even add up to 56. The point of doing this is to make it easier to count the score, so clearly I'm missing something.

Day 21 - 1 game (50)

I've attempted to play at least one game every day, however on Saturday I simply didn't have any time and my streak ended. The day wasn't completely devoid of Go though, as I did get this in the mail:

On Sunday I made sure to get up a bit earlier and play a game in the morning. The game started like this (I played black):

The shape in the top right seems to occur quite often in my games, but I've read that it's bad for black. In this game though it didn't turn out so bad for me.

The top left corner played out in a similar way, but because that corner was stronger I was able to get (I think) a better position:

A few moves later white slipped up and let me capture two stones:

He should have connected at H16 instead. After this I decided to go after the bottom right corner, but to do it in a slightly less direct way than I've been doing previously. So instead of attacking head on I tried to surround it and also build outwards into the centre:

#5 feels a bit awkward to me but N5 seems like it's too far away. I connected up and white tried to invade, unsuccessfully:

White then made the same mistake as my previous opponent, letting me crawl while making territory:

In this case he didn't have the hane, but maybe he could've played a one point jump or something to get ahead of my crawl, or played a tsuke/block (osae) at M7 instead of playing N8. Afterwards, when I invaded the bottom left corner, he didn't have any reason to let me crawl though. Here I wanted to stop white from connecting, but I actually don't think there was any way I could have:

The one big screw up I made in the game was this hane:

I knew when I played it that it was probably a bad move and that white could punish me by cutting, but I thought that I might as well try it since I couldn't read it out and crawling down towards white's wall didn't feel appealing. The result was worse than I'd thought, and I lost three stones and a lot of territory:

 

White then tried to kill my stones in the middle / right area, which could have worked if not for the liberty at O8:

I think this overplay (trying to cut my two stones off) actually cost white the game. If he'd just tried to take the corner he could have come out ahead on points.

Day 19 - 1 game (49)

Yesterday I decided to play some Go in the morning rather than in the evening, thinking I could get more games in. Boy was I wrong. The first and only game I played dragged on for nearly eighty minutes! By the time it was over I was quite drained.

Both I (white) and my opponent started with one 4-4 stone and one 3-4 stone. I'm wondering now if I should've played on the other 3-4 point (the one closer to black) as that leaves more territory for me to develop on the top side. The game proper started here:

I've learned by now to not play the atari at C11 without thinking, instead I played it at B10. The fight that followed was messy, with neither of us getting much territory. It looks fairly even, except that I have influence towards the lower side (black's side) whereas black doesn't have any towards my side. Black has a lot of stones on the right side, but they're all on the fourth line so it's not his territory yet.

I couldn't really jump in below the stone at Q13 though, so I decided to try to pincer (hasami) it instead. Black attached with a keima, which worked out very well for me, giving me territory on the right side:

I tried to see what he could've played instead and I'm not entirely sure. The black stone at Q13 is very weak, so he maybe he should've given it up by playing the keima from the other side (R11). I then invaded the bottom left corner, and black did a large mistake by letting me crawl on the second line, never playing the hane. In so doing he gave away a lot of territory.

Black wasn't the only one making mistakes though. When he invaded my top left corner this played out:

My reasoning in these kinds of situations tend to be to play the move that gives my stone the most liberties inside my opponent's potential territory. That way I maximize the amount of moves he has to play to kill it, and in the process he reduces his own eye space. The idiocy of #8 was that I thought to myself that this stone has three liberties, when it obviously doesn't. Playing at either of the two marked spots could have killed black's invasion.

After securing life in the top right, black tried his luck once again, invading my right side:

There are two mistakes from me here. The first isn't a big deal, but #4 takes away one of my own liberties and playing #8 as #4 would have been better. The biggest issue is #8, because it allows black to play T7, which he did. The reason I played #8 was because I wanted to make sure the middle group wouldn't run out of liberties, and putting black into atari means I can capture at any time.

Black did play T7:

At this point one of my groups is going to die. I can atari at S2, but then black ataris at S5. This is what I played, because my first thought was to save the group that was being attacked, but it was yet another mistake. Saving the upper group would have been much better, because that at least kills black's invading group.

This was the board position after thing settled. I don't feel too bad, because at least at my current level it wasn't trivial to read in the heat of the moment. I always get a bit nervous in these invasions though, because as shown here it only takes one stone for the entire house of cards to crumble.

Black let me crawl more with my bottom group for some reason, and I then pushed into his middle territory to reduce his territory by quite a bit. As that started to conclude, we got into a ko:

Of course, in this case it wasn't worth more than a single point, so I figured that when I played F9 black would have to respond, since each stone I play inside his territory takes away 1-2 points. Instead he chose to invade even more, this time at the top. My stones there were already alive though, so this time I didn't have any problem stopping it. In the final board position there were some dame black could have played to make me lose a few points. In a proper game I suppose those points shouldn't have been awarded to me (for example H1):

When all was said and done I won by about 50 points, but when I was playing it felt much closer than that. I do think my opponent made bigger mistakes though, so in the end it was fair.

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!

Day 17 - 1 game (43)

It happened again. I played black and decided to invade white's 4-4 opening because that's what I usually do. I decided to deviate from the joseki (the only one I know hah):

I'm guessing there's a reliable way to punish this that white didn't find; instead we got into a fight, which turned out to be a lot of fun. By move 30 I was thinking I could kill white's four "L-shape" stones on the right side. Move #37 was probably a mistake, since it let white capture two stones, but I didn't want him crawling too far on the second line and making eyes. Extending once more might have been correct though.

White didn't realise that he wasn't yet alive, and eventually I got to play this stone:

Now it looks like white is dead. With move #56 however, I misread it as my group being in atari, and I chose to extend. Giving white life in the process. It wasn't over yet though, and by playing out a pointless ladder white weakened his group (I actually read out the ladder because I still thought my group was threatened hah):

I sacrificed a few stones getting there, but I wasn't too worried about it. At this point I think it is dead for certain, though it took a few more moves for white to admit that.

After this I started securing the top side, while white took territory in the middle. I invaded white's other corner and made a few more points. Move #121 was pointless in hindsight, but I thought better safe than sorry. Now there was one interesting thing that happened in this game, and that was my first Ko. I will admit that it was caused by my inattentiveness rather than my reading. I missed this atari, played C14 and white captured. When I tried to recapture the stone OGS told me that it was an illegal Ko move.

To my credit, I did see that I could atari at B13, and this would be a good exchange for me. In hindsight C14 was kind of a Ko threat (maybe not in the strictest sense of the word, since the Ko hadn't started yet), even though neither I nor my opponent realised it. Since white ignored it I got to capture his three stones and even win the Ko itself. At this point the game was pretty much over, but white decided to try one last thing, to save his large group on the right side:

I was taken aback by this move, but eventually responded with #2. Now, this was not the optimal move, it would have been better to play at S11, but I thought both would let me live there. White then played this:

Here I had to stop and think once again. I thought that if white captures my stone then he gets a second eye and lives. Well, he doesn't. The marked spot is where I was intending to play, but S11 would again have worked fine. What happened though was that I once again ran out of time in a game that I had won. Yay!

I don't have time for any more games, but this screw up soured me enough that I don't want to play more tonight anyway. I also decided that I should just ignore my rank, because the rank only serves to amplify the frustration of moments like these.

Day 16 - 2 games (42)

Even when I try to play fast my 19x19 games end up taking quite some time. That's why despite having a lot of free time last night I could only fit two games in. I could give blitz games a try, but my worry is that I'll just end up making the stupid mistakes I've been unlearning slowly.

The first game I played was another handicap game. I don't know what the right response to #2 is, maybe I should pincer from below instead, because I ended up feeling cut off from the centre and not long thereafter my handicap stone advantage seemed to have evaporated.

I also think I mishandled my invasion in the lower right, because I didn't get as much space in the corner as I needed, and white stopped me from breaking out into the centre or right hand side. Though I'm not sure exactly where I went wrong:

In the end I lost by 2.5 points - my closest game yet.

At the start of the second game I deliberately tried to play faster, so as to not make it a 40 minute affair. Less than 10 moves into the game I decided to start a fight, and because of my fast play I managed the impressive feats of missing (and getting caught in) two ladders in the same move; you don't see that every day. 30 moves in I had already lost 6-8 stones and I was almost ready to throw the towel in, but I decided that was too rude and kept playing instead.

I managed to take some territory in the top left corner, and eventually got a small break when white played this move:

He opted to save the two stones on the left, which let me break out into the centre (by reading out two ladders actually):

However, I screwed up by letting my top cutting group get disconnected and not realising it was dead soon enough. On the right side of the board I played better, and managed to take quite a lot of territory, but in the bottom right corner things didn't go as well as they should've. Move #119 might've been the problem (open triangle that accomplishes nothing). Playing at N3 would have been better I think.

White also made some mistakes, like this move, which took away one of his own liberties and let me capture three stones when he didn't connect:

In the end white won by 13.5 points, but that was an okay result considering how far behind I got in the opening.

Day 15 - 1 game (40), 21 kyu

Yesterday I only had time for one game, which I ended up losing in an unexpected and annoying manner. The first mistake I did was failing to kill white's group here:

I played D1, when I should have played something like B1. It's not a terrible result for me, because white only got two points even though he played 8 stones in that corner. Move #21 was also stupid, because it accomplished nothing but giving my opponent sente. I was unsure about this exchange:

I remember seeing the middle shape (excluding #2) on sensei's library, but I can't recall who it's supposed to favour locally. Unsure how to handle white's growing influence in the middle / right, I ended up getting into a fight. White, too eager to atari however, made this blunder:

Later in the game I stupidly lost some stones too. For example with #107 I wanted to stop white from connecting, but I didn't and I even lost a stone. At least I saw that saving the one stone in atari would kill the stones at H13 and J13.  Move #127 was a bigger mistake, because if I had atari'd on the opposite side I might have been able to kill white's huge group:

Move #167 could also have been a mistake, if I had played it at L18 instead then white couldn't make a tiger's mouth (kaketsugi), however he was already alive at that point. The real problem was this:

The marked stone is where I wanted to play, since I saw that N19 wouldn't work. However, I completely missed that I was in my last 30 seconds of byou-yomi, and I lost the game on time out. One mouse click and I would've won. Those are the rules though.