The Heavenly 100 - Games 68-79

 

Game 68

Work got in the way of my usual weekend game so I picked up again the Thursday after and lost a close one to a fellow 13 who has played about as much as I would and had also hit 10.9 intermittently..

I had an early lead here and lost it mainly through not keeping groups alive i.e I lost a bottom group here and could have saved with this

Or a suggested invasion here

And the 3-3 should not have tried to join but to bottom creep like so

Game 69

Game versus a Vietnamese ? 16kyu? Wasn’t under much pressure and did my usual quote of silly mistakes (including buggering up a 3-3 defence I had deliberately setup - duuuuuuuhh).

I also was congratulating myself in going for the jugular at the bottom right (slightly different 33 defence variation) but after looking over the game realised I actually cocked up and gave black a chance to defend. As it stood they didn’t so I still got the kill but an important point to remember that this wont happen against better opposition as relying on your opponents mistakes is a bad strategy.

Here I played T4 under the mistaken assumption  he could atari there - but of course it would not get 2 eyes and he would still die. I should have played Q1 immediately. As it was my opponent followed up with R1 and I got to play it anyway. Though at least I was switched on enough to prevent the second eye after his next play was P1.

The 33 cock up was here

As you can guess this initially was the double hane followed by join and capture the 2 stones except you just drop the weaker side (S18) as it stood this killed my upper 2 stones and meant those 3 were alive - an 11-12 point loss?

The AI wasn’t bothered as I was ahead enough to make it irrelevant - curiously scoring it as slightly above an 8 point loss but obviously AI was expecting White to play the follow up move in end game

Which eats up the 3 of those points. Interesting how it scores that way.

Bits I was pleased with was securing then killing of a deep invasion just below the above and then recognising the Black walling units were weak and adding those to the pot

Game 70

Unusual Sunday game versus a very experiences 12kyu who has played 5k games over 4 years with peaks at 8kyu and normally what looks like troughs of 10kyu, had a dip in the last year though hence the 12.

The AI was amusing with this. I had run it over one of Ueno Asami's professional games the day before to it was set at 6 dan professional for mistakes so when this was loaded every move was a mistake…Switched over to 13kyu and the mistakes dropped to two each, though I had already lost by then..

I was trying to play for a 33 invasion practice with the help of a large knight so set up that way as Black. White wasn’t playing though and went over the stones immediately. By move 38 and just about to exit the opening and I was apparently 8.5 points ahead. I then made two average moves and was behind ever after.. The first was defending the cut at S12 which wasn’t needed and lost sente

The middle game had me 5 behind but I lost the other points end game. Some of the interesting play points were recognising weaknesses in my opponent like here

Ai suggested the following 

Which was an interesting way of cutting the white lead down to 1 point!

Nice game though and though I felt behind I had opportunities and a little more reading skill and stone safety would have seem a better chance of winning me-thinks

Game 71 

Started a short game against a fellow Black 14 whose had 400 games in   4 months and mainly in the first 2 then they have coasted for a bit. I resigned this one as my opponent disconnected early and I felt it was mainly even with both of us playing territorial early and tbh I didn’t want an undeserved win pushing me up against better opponents.

Since it ended just as we were both leaving the opening there's not a lot to the cover. I did get to handle a 33 invasion badly and I think the last move I made was a particularly bad push at my own weakness…

AI, as always, saw an attack I missed here

Which might have gone

Which is an interesting example of Sente and the fact the attack  made white need to secure the group with 2 and 4 allowing both the higher stone to be captured and also allowing the mid left moyo to expand

As to  my 'last' move before the disconnect 

With rubbish reading I played H3 thinking if white went H3 I could drop to H2 and if he blocked from below at H2 then I could join higher and threaten to separate. It looks fairly easy for white to control this though so the move sucked and even decent play 'just' consolidates both white and blacks bottom left and lets be honest.my current play standard isn't decent

Game 72 

Decided on a 2nd game today and had a 'new' player on his umpteenth account who had obviously played before. Unlike the last game this was a more standard back and forth especially early, but being allowed to set up my top left almost unhindered was an advantage and even though white gained a large middle a slight misplay allowed me to eat into the center causing a resignation - without that I was still 19 points ahead but that's not a lot of end game potential. It still had plenty of invasion space until half way through

Now even from there white decided to build the middle by pushing up that mid left group which allowed me to firm that corner and even the eventual suggested 33 invasion was less an invasion than an attempt to furiously force sente to allow the center to seal and to steal the bottom left

Fun game though. Plus as a new first it was my first game where there was only 1 14kyu error...Between the two of us.

The error wasn’t huge

But it basically allowed me to eat into the center. If L5 had been played then I was shut in..

Game 73 

After the last game which I enjoyed I had a thoroughly unsatisfying one where my opponent kept doing stuff that should have killed him but marginal misreads from me kept him alive and me further and further behind. What was worse was that the opponent was a long standing lower kyu player with 500 games this year

White territory building was just firmer than mine early game but I managed to swing things back to me being 6 points ahead by almost killing an invasion. It was the 'almost' that hurt though as I failed to seal him in with this move 

Which allowed the entire lot to live and swung back to 50 points ahead

Game 74 

equally sucked. My skill level is dropping or I'm just hitting some decent players.

 Once again it was space control that threw me. Oppo was 1 14kyu but a newly arrived one (5 games with 2 loses against a 3kyu and a 15kyu and 3 wins versus an 18/18/20 so who knows.

I did manage to pull off the large knight 33 trap

But tbh (and the ai agrees) white outclassed me steadily and even grabbing 18 stones when I pulled a late end game trap he hadn't noticed didn’t do much to the end score

Game 75 

My 3rd loss today and my 3rd suck game of the day. I was outclassed this time by a 16kyu but he was much better than that. I even said so at the end of  the game (that he was better than his rank and he replied yes) Probably sandbagging. 

 As has been common today I only just managed to fall slightly behind in the opening then lost more and more as the game went on

Lots of commonalities in these loses include close fighting and coming in close which I am proving bad at handling.

Game 76

With due sense of fear and dread I returned on the Saturday and was disheartened to face a 16kyu who instantly started attacking (past the corners so not 'mad' attacking) Post game opponent check it looks like he's been playing for 3 years and gained 2,972 games in that period - for the first few years his rating hit highs of 8! Kyu with most of them being around 10. Big drop off since April this year though. Explains the similarity to all the other unusually strong 16 kyus I've been failing against.

This time I was white with both players playing opposing star points. A very aggressive invasion early right side I miss handled (though I'm getting more used to them).The AI gave a different variation that used it to take the corner

As it was I just built for outside influence. I'd lost too many games recently to 'must kill the attacked play' trying to follow the Elder Pliny's logic 'Optimumque est, ut volgo dixere, aliena insania frui' - or the best plan is to profit by the folly of others.....

Things were fairly even by move 59ish with Black 2.4 ahead just as he launched a second 3-3 invasion. Now this one was into my current favourite large knight defence. Not entirely unexpectedly he did behave unusually in the invasion but I was pleased that I was firstly able to trap a cutting stone whilst simultaneously strengthening my bottom and in a rare moment of tactics and a ko I used a suicidal throw in to give me Sente to steal his corner in a 3-3 of my own.

Here's the sente moment - 

And when he took the 3 bottom stones it allowed me to play at E17 (almost) taking the top corner. So I lost 3-4 stones for a gain of apparently 9 moving from 0.9 points behind to  5.7 ahead ? Anyway I expected he would reinforce the upper left now (As the AI was keen for him to do) but instead he played bottom left at D5 - now the trap wont work now as I had given black sente down there and both my groups were split but neither group was at immediate risk so he carried on reinforcing making a nice capture

I then netted G6 for further strength.

I was fairly pleased with things at this point but needed to reinforce the upper section and middle left as always I missed nice kills like this one

Nice to actually win one. Though the big advantage to playing stronger players is that you learn more and at the same time your rating drops so your next game should be (sandbaggers notwithstanding) have an easier game next time..

Game77

Another loss to a 14 this time whose only had 69 ranked games but seems to hover around 12-13. Another decent opening and I again suffered a midpoint invasion - I need to read up on the correct defence which I think is a contact play - as it was I used a diagonal.

Irritatingly the AI had me ahead most of the game with my lackluster end game killing me at the end.

I did carry out a tight 33 but overplayed by one point when I didn’t need to (thus losing a sente play which could have won me enough to win the game)

For some reason I played R2 here and it wasn’t needed

What was interesting was that I was a clear 18 points ahead yet lost the lot at the end.

Another annoyance was that I saw a weakness but wasn’t able to pick out how to attack it and chose wrong. The AI suggested ignoring it

And just eating black points but I could just have taken

Here

As it was I joined with M17 hoping to play the attack the next turn , muppet

It looks like I pulled off the impossible losing here…..

Game 78

Rare Monday game and once again I was against a 16kyu who was competent. Maybe I should just realise that perhaps when I last played years back loads of new players had started with lockdown and kyu levels were more inflated than they were. It  might be that 16-15 is where I live now….

This player was another aggressive new account. 288 ranked games in 6 weeks with steady improvement and a best rate of 14. As per usual they attacked fast after corners but they were not in the same range as other opponents. 

I managed to firstly pull off my large knight defence and then stole a corner off of them before invading myself. It was on this second invasion I started to pull ahead (bar one particularly stupid mistake). Anyway even up to move 90 it was still level pegging and anyone's game with  horrendous ai mistakes from either player.

If you re-read the game above you'll note I had mentioned I need to re-read up on the midpoint invasion between a high and low stone and I did - and it happened this game

Here is the start point

You can see that that Black 83 stone is a smidgin unsupported. Anyway the AI was broadly supportive of blacks approach but 6 moves later and three black stones were trapped with the obvious counter being to push up at the bottom which was now looking much weaker.

Black tried to join up causing the first mistake of the game to go to me in sealing as opposed to playing elsewhere (I'm still weak at reading when something is safe/dead). Black attempted to join up the top but B17 was open to taking which effectively sealed him in.

Black was now 25 behind and making increasingly mad attempts to trap and kill most just helping bar when he did try to break out at the bottom and almost succeeded mainly due to me self ataring 5 stones. Thankfully he didn’t notice allowing me to join up and then take 6 causing resignation.

So a win but an unsatisfying one really..Out of curiosity as the center was a total mess at the end I played out the AI best move for the rest  of the game and it looks like white could dominate up to 107 points with the entire bottom left being eaten up as well..

Game 79

Lost a close one to a fanatical playing 15kyu (5k games in 3 months is some aggressive schedule) Best peak a recent 13 then back down again and tbh I was ahead all game (and ahead 15 points when I lost)

I was fairly happy in the beginning when I actually killed a 3 3 invasion (rare to pull that off) and then stole my opponents corner along with squeezing him flat. I didn’t manage to use the strength up top to make anything and the eventual mess of the center was confusion.

Here for example I am 30 points up

The Ai was flipping out at the end as I had an easy attack in the center which I failed to recognise

And here it is

So threaten the bottom with 1, white joins, then threaten the blob with 3 - white moves out with 4 otherwise dead, black extends one - if white protects the upper 2 stones the '4' group is  dead with a play at 6 so white has to protect at 6. Black then plays 7 to kill the upper 2 stones - white cant save due to the snapback so plays 8 to contain - white takes 2 then forces white a little back. So an extra 14 points right there.

I didn't see it though and would love to improve so that I could see such things ;). I might start reading a tesuji nook I have that I never manage to absorb....