I had two horribly disappointing games today on KGS where I didn’t read far enough at all and focused way too much on influence with weak groups (versus a 9kyu, I was bound to get punished). I lost by 40 and then 20, and got pushed down to 11kyu again because of it since I haven’t played all that many games yet to stabilize my rank. I was feeling really bad about how I played, and started reading a book called ‘Shape Up’ to learn some new things and get my confidence back.

A few hours later… This game took place only minutes ago on KGS, versus an 11kyu in an even match. I usually really dislike playing white, since black gets sente (initiative) to start the game off, and I always feel like I’m on the receiving end in the opening (not quite true realistically, but that’s how I feel)- so yeah, I didn’t exactly go into this with a great feeling. I thought about it, and felt like the key to my losses was being too focused on influence and not enough on ‘strength’, so this time I turned all of my attention into making really strong groups that would be difficult to attack. Well, that was my intention anyways, but as it turns out I only got to make ONE strong group in the opening, because the bastard just kept attacking it (if you can call that attacking). While pincering his weak stones between one space jumps and my strong upper right group, I made wicked influence in the process of destroying his eye-space and threatening to cut him off from life entirely… but then he kept it up anyways and didn’t tenuki (ignore the local area and play elsewhere) to areas where I had less strength. Just to show him the error of his ways, I didn’t let up until he was entirely sealed in.

I made two obvious mistakes in this game, one being a life/death problem, but thankfully my opponent misplayed as well and allowed me to form two eyes anyways- destroying all of his prospects for territory in the middle of the board. After that, I got to play all of the big moves in sente, and he was on the receiving end / defensive for almost the entirety of the second half.

The result? He resigns, though he should’ve resigned long before the board you see here. I win by roughly 120 points! That’s even assuming his small black group on the left actually lives.

Talk about destruction >_< I have my confidence back now, and I regained a 10kyu rank, though it certainly feels like I should be 8 or 9kyu after this. Maybe if he’d played through yose and the full score had been tallied by the server, I would’ve jumped up further than 1 rank, but I’m not sure. All I can say is DAMN.

I’m black (my current rank on KGS is 10kyu btw), while white is The Many Faces of Go bot set to 12kyu level. Just played to see the difference now, since I estimate I’m probably between 8 and 9kyu by strength, I just haven’t played enough on KGS to verify yet. The result is obvious, my victory by quite a bit ^_^;; It’s tough retaining an aggressive victory like this, since the opponent will play in your own territory in a last-ditch effort. I kept a careful eye on the number of liberties the white groups had, and when he played move 180 to try and kill one of my black groups I acted- killing by 1 liberty.

In reviewing this game (this was speed Go btw, 10 seconds per move), I notice a way for white to get life for his white group in the left/middle (the group around move 82) by playing a forcing move to threaten those black stones (63 and 67). If white responds, it’ll lead to a chain of forcing moves (or seeming forcing moves) that could lead to black even losing this game. If, however, black sees this and lets the two stones go, then white’s group has still achieved life by linking up with the group above. The difference between white and black at that point would only be 25 or so points, instead of 70 as it stands now >_>; That leaves aside the possibility of killing the white group on the bottom left too of course.

Played again an 11k on KGS. This guy was awesome, and played moves that would’ve killed me pretty badly were I not in top form tonight and read everything out. That said, although I read it out the shape in the bottom was different than I was expecting and black came out ahead in the exchange when I deviated from the joseki. That was my only real mistake though IMO, at least as far as I can tell.

The end result is his resignation halfway through the match- my win by about 12 points I believe (if his black group actually lives), but it’s hard for me to tell since we were still in the mid-game. At the very least, I’m at an advantage since both of his groups on the top are cut off from making new territory. In fact, aside from his right side moyo he doesn’t have much room to expand without giving me more territory than he’s taking. I could still attack the black bottom group, expand with my center group into the right side and eat like 20 points in one move, etc… He might be able to keep me from making much in the center but chances are that I’d come out ahead in the exchange. Still, I never would’ve resigned here- the difference in territory is rather small and I used twice as much time to this point as he did. It’s quite likely I’d screw up when byo-yomi hit and he could take his time with yose and never allow me sente- that could make up the difference right there.

One of the most entertaining games I’ve had in a long time, and the strongest opponent I’ve ever faced in an even match. Quite happy ^_^

This is a game I played just now on KGS. I’m white, and black is a 13kyu. Despite my rank being (12k?), since I figured KGS is still overestimating me as I haven’t played many games on there in awhile, I requested and was granted an even match. Am I seriously this good now? There were plenty of times over the course of this game that I thought “why are you playing there?” or “why use this joseki instead of -that- one in this situation?”, wracking my brain because I thought there had to be something I wasn’t seeing. The result is as you see it, I was winning by at least 50 points when he resigned, and honestly had it kept going I probably would have won by more by expanding my moyo attacking the left and top groups (another 30 points maybe).

Based on this game, and a few teaching games and such I’ve played in the past few days, I can only assume that I’m actually around 10k now. HOW?! I’ve been doing joseki and tsumego almost exclusively in the past week, and not really playing real games more than once a day, and my strength has jumped from 15k to 10k?! My goal of being a single digit kyu by summer was apparently underestimating myself a lot, maybe I should aim for 5kyu…

It doesn’t really feel real yet, or maybe I’m just kidding myself and this guy really sucked for a 13kyu.

I really can’t believe how well I did in this game. This is versus the 12k computer in ‘The Many Faces of Go’. I’m black and went with my 3 star opening, followed by a gutsy close invasion of 3x2 at 2x3. I wanted to try something new and see if I could live there, and he surprised me by protecting the corner rather than pincering. Second picture shows the opening, and the third shows what my escape looked like. I really thought it was only going to help white as he made walls in pushing me out, but my 3 stones on top made all of that influence rather worthless for him. By probing for an invasion of the bottom with my running corner, and making him waste a move to protect it, I managed to get quite enough area for eye space. After that I tore him up in the mid-game, making only one obvious mistake. In the end he resigns, and I win by roughly 70 points I think.

Today’s igo match on KGS. Played against a 15k and won by 49.5! What’s more ridiculous is that it was actually a great game, and I only just won because of a group of stones my opponent mistakenly thought were living until just near the end. Fooled by three false eyes. No matter, even with this large win I think I seriously screwed up the opening, along with making 3 mistakes even a 20k shouldn’t be making. While I was recovering from the most severe mistake, my opponent struggled to get a previously dead shape into a living group, and my attempts to restrain him had the side effect of pushing me into his own territory. I said before the match that I’m probably around 14k right now, and even after winning by 50, I don’t change that opinion.

Still, lots of fun.

Black is ‘The Many Faces of Go’ computer program, set to 12k, while I took white. KGS still shows me lingering between 10 and 11k, but I rather easily destroyed this bot, winning by something around 30 points. About halfway through the game black played an interesting ploy that split my stones in the upper right, which worked (in that sense) because I let it work- his corner group wasn’t well protected enough, and had many less liberties than my (then) unconnected white groups on either side.

He resigned only when it was blatantly obvious that he couldn’t kill any of my groups and take back the lead. So sad, that the bot worries so much more about influence than ‘strength’. While there’s theoretically nothing stronger than a living group, TMFG should’ve made sure that the upper right actually WAS living before splitting me. It only hurt him in the long run.

A handicap game at 7 stones I played against a 2kyu on KGS. I’m black (obviously ^_^), and I won by 8 points. Normally this would’ve been an 8 stone game, and the fact that I won puts me at least at 9kyu by most standards. I messed up and lost the lower left side, which was a huge blow, but I was complimented on many of my moves on the upper side by a few much higher ranking players who were watching the match. Very happy with this game all in all, but I’m still beating myself up about not running fast enough when white made a living group inside my stones on the lower left. >_< In hindsight I had two real possibilities for getting away to safety, but instead I didn’t see that the shape wasn’t killable and spent many wasted moves trying to aggressively destroy the group and make life that way. *sighs*

Just played my best game yet on KGS. Well, I’m always getting better, so I guess most games are my ‘best game yet’, but this one was truly great. I played a 6kyu in an even match and, at the point in the game shown in the picture (pretty late), I’m only 1.5 points down! (Yes, that’s a decimal) Here’s where my mistake happened though- I should’ve played at ‘B’, but I played at ‘A’ instead. To me, ‘A’ looked more dangerous not to close off right away, but he showed me that I was wrong >_>; I ended up losing by a pretty ridiculous amount after this, in the final 50 moves of the game. *sighs*

After that we discussed the game at pretty good length, and ended up going over opening strategies and such. I think it’s pretty funny that he felt the need to teach me about openings when the only thing that differentiated our strengths happened near the end… or rather, if he was only barely winning this close to the end-game, is it really a ‘teaching match’? He’s lucky he didn’t give me a handicap before we started! lol

I’m not arrogant though, I know that this game was probably a little skill and a lot of luck- I don’t doubt that I’m still 10kyu and wouldn’t dream of taking on a 6kyu in a rated game just yet, but it’s still been a pretty great day.

Played a 14k on KGS, giving him a 2 stone handicap since my rank said ‘12kyu’ (thus I’m white in this). I was getting tired of getting rejected for games when I select ‘even’ for the match type against 13kyu and 14kyu players, so I accepted this handi game even though I wasn’t confident at all in being able to win it. This is the first time in awhile I’ve given someone a handicap, and I misjudged one part and lost the upper right corner. I was considering resigning right then, black had a huge advantage, but I played on in the hopes that I could come back.

Well, I did ^_^;; He invaded and I cut off the invasion from all living groups, read further than my opponent, and kept him from making eyes. The end result: I win by 34.5 points. My new rank is (10k?), I haven’t played enough games for the rank to solidify yet, which is why it has a question mark still, but my sudden increase in ability is pretty ridiculous to me. After every match I can’t help but ask myself “seriously?!”.

I’m really loving the game of Go, and I have no doubt I’ll continue with it for quite awhile yet.

This tsumego was given in the Teaching Ladder room on KGS for fun. Nobody could figure it out, even amongst the single digit kyu players, so I worked on it for like an hour until I ‘think’ I got the answer. Move numbers 1-32 here are unimportant, I was only recreating the shape, the first move here starts with 33. Note that the O5 / N4 exchange, and the R7 / R8 exchange are both necessary responses for white- there’s no choice in the matter. I can’t see any response to black’s S8 afterward that doesn’t end in black being able to live. The various images I’ve posted here are examples of the sequences in which black lives based on where white #38 is played.

Of course even if this is the correct answer to the problem (and I’m 99% sure that it was, unless there’s something I’m just not seeing), it’s impossible for me to solve something like this in the middle of a game. It’s good reading practice though.

A speed game against The Many Faces of Go (14k level). I’m white, and he resigned here; can you say ‘owned’? If I can play this well in a speed game (beating a 14k by at least 30), maybe I am 12k like KGS tells me. If so that’s a huge jump, I was 15k just like a month ago.

BTW, rather than my normal star point, 2x4 3x2 shimari enclosure to start the game, or the 3-star opening, I approached all 4 corners as black played them and beat him down in the fights directly. It wasn’t an intelligent way to start a match granted, but it was entertaining as hell.