The Heavenly 100 - GAMES 19-22
After the clusterf**ck that was games 11-18 I decided to chill for a bit and not take things so intense (if 3 games a week and study is 'intense') I don't have the time to enter that rabbit hole so if I want to enjoy playing then less time required is a requirement.
So after a brief hiatus I found a game with an opponent I had played once before (in 2020 back when I was a 13 kyu and lockdown was hitting the planet). I had lost that game by 0.5 points. That game black this game white. My oppo here has played a lot (over five thousand ranked games in the last two years and seems to fluctuate repeatedly between 12 and 10 kyu but never above or below. A master of consistency then?
Anyway I finally got to follow my rules from my lesson and to 'try' to play light. I would say my opponent here seemed cautious and toom several preventive moves that even I thought excessive (and when I think 'hmm I can ignore that entirely, 'sente!'' then there's a pacing trouble..
The game involved lots of territory. I let him have most of the top left and top right and I secured the bottom left corner and started gaining a huge moyo starting bottom right and stretching up through almost the entire board. This obviously unsettled my opponent who launched a successful 3-3 invasion. I knew I should have been able to kill it but I'm just not good enough at reading. The key mistake was here
I turned the corner but he would have to go there anyway and I should have blocked expansion instead. The most logical ending being
and Black is dead.
Anyway. I was weakly confident in my moyo so wasn't particularly worried. I used the rough sente from sealing of the bottom to secure the top and from then snuck 4-5 points in end game. End position below.
The question now is whether I have improved over those two years? I think I have because that invasion was killable and I knew it was killable so if I manage to correct that then that would be 12-20 points more even allowing for 8 points to my oppo who would have played elsewhere earlier, and a much more comfortable 25 point win.
In keeping with my new 'slightly more chilled' approach it's been almost 10 days since the last game. My next opponent was a German whose account arrived November last year. He's played a decent amount in that period with 549 ranked games and is showing a steady improvement.
The game was defensive in nature, which I tend to prefer though of the two of us my oppos play was better (his positioning was). He did allow an early invasion to get surrounded in the bottom with some weak points I thought I could attack later but by move 70 when I made a horrible defensive mistake I should have been ripped apart for (he didnt take advantage but here is the fail move for those who want to see the way to destroy my position. That would have put him 17 points ish ahead and even without taking advantage he was still 7-8 ahead. Things were going badly..
I did have a strong position in the bottom left but that was open topped to could turn out to be tiny and soon after he did shut it down though the rather confused fighting from move 100 up could have hurt either of us. As it turns out I slightly had the better but with the nasty proviso that I was trapped and his own upper area was looking big. I also missed a nice chanced to rip the upper black area apart by playing a safe joining move I didnt need at C10 on move 110 (marked with the red circle). The AI plays what might have happened to open the area in this spread.
Move 156 I launched my attack to stress his bottom group. Now he saved the single stone which allowed me to drop and take the 2 to the right
end position
the ai recommended he ignore the single stone and solifiy the position
We could have moved to end game now and a conservative play has black at 90 points with white at 86 with komi 91.5 when I tried to get something out of nothing in the upper center. The result did not change much as I still ended winning by 1 point but probably was pushing it a little far. Eyes too big for my stomach.
This was a weird one. The opponent was a French player who has played a lot of games since April 2021 (1,088) . Rank seems to steadily fluctuate between 10kyu and 12kyu so like me really... The game though started like a defensive battle. I approached his bottom corner, he backed of and I took an extension. I then tried to repeat at the top corner. Here though he pressured into the stone then tried to threaten my corner. I wasn't bothered by this and instead stabilised my upper group expecting him to hop into the corner allowing me wall up the top left (allowing me potentially take a side moyo).
This position here.
All so standard no doubt and the AI was happy with both players moves. But then on move 19he threw into K17. I capped but he doubled down and the fighting up top spread and spread until 7 stones were at serious risk of death (and were essentially killed).
I then took a big move while he attacked my 3-4 stones around the N and O lines but he then launched another two furious attacks. The first against my bottom left corner then pincered my question stones.
This led to three battles. He won one (taking 4 stones) while I threw those stones away to capture a larger bottom group.
He then realised things were going badly and resigned. If you look at the board there are plenty of points in play but if you assume average protective play (and no deep invasions) white has around a 23 point lead so Black would have to perform exceptionally just due to the amount of stones lost in fighting.
Actual end position
Conservative AI play through
The next opponent was someone who has been playing since October 2021 though only pushed through 332 games in that period. Ranked up steadily to 10 with a very brief visit to 9 late last year. Consistent up and down since.
The start was fairly gentle with me taking three corners but whites play was basically more solid and by move 47 I had managed to get 4 of my stones trapped in an unadviseable cut attempt not read through and the AI had white 16 points ahead
Here. At 47 I didn't flog the dead horse and gave up the 4 stones on the N column
I was pleased with the next two stones. I threatened to pull my left side group out to the center with K16 and then H13 which would trap his upper right group so my oppo reacted and blocked first with J48 and then E50 preventing the surround. This though had a double purpose and I now had a ladder breaker in play so I could rescue those 4 stones again.
Whether advisable or not is a different matter and resulted in a very confused central fight that I wasted a lot of stones on. On the other hand it also soaked up a lot of what was looking like white territory.
Around 92 i launched another 3-3 and got the last corner and though not elegant I was pleased I managed to live (as I usually die). I did lose though my mid left group which was killed off but the key thing was I managed to threaten whites eye less right side group whilst solidifying my large right side moyo and that proved the key to the win. Fun game.
Comments
Post a Comment