The Heavenly 100 - Games 8-12
I got black again. Woot. Feels like ages. My opponent this time was an 11kyu whose been playing a while -911 ranked games since April 2021! And over that period has hovered between 9 and 12 kyu. From the start they were quite aggressive. Rather than take their 2nd corner point they instead tried to attack one of mine and by move 12 was 3-3ing one of my corners and then launched no less than two cuts. One was killed and the other escaped allowing me to build territory in the bottom which put pressure on his only corner stone which eventually died with another dragon being pushed to the center. End result for White was 15 points center and right with a further 6 points top with black picking up 15 top right and 27 in my assault of whites only star point. So the 3-3 invasion and only 1 corner taken resulted in 21 points versus 42 for black. I was pleased with the game as I was trying to play less auto reaction and to try to read out other alternatives and in this game (at least) it worked well.
The two white cuts in a row (after R15 I extended to S14) that, I think, probably cost White the game.
Strange game this. My opponent was a 12 kyu who started playing Dec 21 with a very small drop post sign up so is probably an experienced player with a new account? Anyway they played briefly in December that year with 2 wins one loss post seeding and then played one (lost) game in the period between Jan and late February. After that they played a lot more and jumped quickly to to 11/12.
Now the game was strange because after it had started with a fairly standard beginning he launched an invasion of my left bottom side that looked vulnerable. At which point I started to pressurise it so I could expand my left moyo and on the right to eat into a chunk of his central/upper space. I hoped that by ensuring I had a lot of points to the left my win condition was to prevent him getting a lot in the center. Now he didn't like this (to put it mildly) and started moaning in chat trying to order me to play somewhere else as I couldn’t kill it and he was finding it 'not fun'. Now to my mind there is no rule in go that says you have to play the way your opponent wants or even moves they want. Seems to defeat the object somewhat. Plus if the move was so brainless then he can just play elsewhere and 'win'
The enemies invasion looks weak so this is when I launched my attack. Note the small knight to both apply pressure and to start increasing my left.
and here is the point he started moaning I should play somewhere else. Now you will note that black group is still a misplay from death and I have marked with a red line my increasing moyo and the arrow was where I wanted to just push a Dragon to soak up Black points.
At Black resign. You can see how much my central Dragon soaked up and the fact my left moyo is large and I got all three corners. There's still a few points to play for but not much.
That’s what 29 points black cant control because I'm sitting there and 30 or so black stones trying to seal the Dragon in.
My tenth opponent was a Japanese player who seems to have consistently around 8 kyu since starting this account around November 2019. They had three long hiatuses during that period punctuated by short spells of furious playing. Currently has returned in the last week and gone on another spree which seems to be going badly for him apart from this game and to be honest it was one I should have won with slightly better reading.
Up to move 33 it was a nice (no unexpected 'attack! attaches) with both players drawing out prospective zones. By move 68 Black was in the lead slightly (I was white) when he launched an invasion near my thickness. I tried to kill it off (and if not kill it off to grow my two areas) but failed. From the AI playthrough I needed to block higher up and let him run (and maybe get an eye which would have the double purpose of blocking him and giving me a second wall facing the upper half of the board along with bugger all points for him in the bottom.
Even with my initial approach I missed several later opportunities to trap and kill. I really need to have some ground rules for killing dragons in mind as my style of play (and always getting White) seems to leave me particularly open to them.
An early way to entrap (at least)
This was likely to kill
This though would have been an early win but I made three cock ups in other areas that each stopped me catching up (and all should have been doable). My uupper group had been trapped but I managed to break it free but through misreads got trapped again. . Here is how my escape should have lived. I though (why? played the nonsensical C13 and allowed Black to hit B8 killing the lot (and after that mistake I could have played G1 and re-saved)
I next tried an invasion top right that only could succeed with an opponents mistake. That was probably a point neutral mistake due to the amount of stones sucked up.
My last big blunder was I managed to rip into his top left corner (with due honesty it needed a mis-read on his part to let me in there) which would have bought my dead huge group back to life but again mis-read. I'm not used to going into tight areas like that and my life and death is obviously still weak.,
Here is the AI celebrating a key point and next defensive mistake by black.
Here is how I should have played to kill them. As it stands I went after B13 which caught 5 stones but still lost all mine.
Phew. Fun game though because I was aware of what I wanted to do it's just me execution is letting me down. With improved life and death and a better understanding of dragon killing (stopping) and this was easily winnable without much extra improvement. Though only a small thing at one point I managed to deliberately set up a snap back which pleased me as most of mine in the past have been accidental..
Not sure quite what to say about this game. My opponent was both a site supporter (nothing about skill but shows a certain degree of commitment to playing) who had 637 games played and who had reached 7.2 kyu ish around 2017. After a long gap not playing (all 2018?) and not much 2019 he/she started again in mid-2020 (lockdown?) but then seemed to fluctuate quite wildly between 12 and 9 kyu.
This made the game a little more bizarre as it was no newb. I was Black (woohoo!) and White did a good job of trapping me into a corner and then attempting to push me down on the central top.
A cap on my K17 extension I answer without a non connection really to M15 (I wanted to grow the right so was less worried about K17). Anyway my opponent diagonaled in to the gap so I squeezed both sides until the following position arose.
Now I was not bothered by the atari as I had an obvious close ladder breaker and it would be strange of White to try to capture. Yet
So the end result is I can probably kill 4 white stones on the upper part and double atari more on the lower to death. My oppo instant resigned which seems reasonable but did leave me wondering why launch the attack in the first place. I think logically they must have thought R13 was a ladder breaker when it wasn't and it was only when it was obvious they realised their position was not swiss cheese.
I was having some difficulties getting a game on OGS (including 2 games with some poor sod with a horrific internet connection that ended in double cancels) so I looked at foxy account which I have set up and never used and played a couple of games there. Since Foxy has decided I'm 18 kyu or 18kyu was what I was at OGS when I set the account up years ago this meant a couple of very easy games which aren't worth including. That server is fast though as in bugger all time to play before timings kick in. Anyway the same day I eventually got an OGS game and then suffered due to the lack of opposition. My oppo here was another 12 kyu whose account has existed since December last year but who has played a decent run of ranked games in that period (358). Not much to say about the game except I started well but then got to bogged down in fighting and forgot to expand space. which led to the loss. I think the ease of the foxy games led me to be confident in attacking and though I killed one large group I could have lost that capture and in return lost a smallish group myself along with some very suspect invasions.
Group Comments?
I seem to be hitting a brick wall slightly. I may try to level that Foxy account up to 12kyu as well then I will get a wider possibility of games. If I do do that then I should avoid playing with this until back up to the same technical level. It does have the advantage of helping me deal with some wacky invasions of my own and even stranger behaviour than where I am now where the players have some idea of what they are doing. Anyway thanks for reading.
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