The Divine Move (Game of Go series) #13

Hello Steeamians !

Today is a day where I review my Go game, here is one that I played today. I wanted to improve myself and gain at least the rank 9kyu in order to be a simple digit kyu player. I hope you'll enjoy this game !

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Just know that this game is simply amazing ! If you like strategy game like chess, it's even a better game, simpler but deeper.
I made a post with the basic rules, you can find it here.

So I really encourage you to check out the game and here are more links that could help :
A site where you can easily play.
An amazing Youtube channel
Some playlists for beginner (FR)
A playlist for beginner (EN)
A post about Go vocabulary

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Now, back to the game !

This time I was white against a 10 kyu+ Japanese opponent. I’m not used to white as much as I am for black, I don’t have a standard opening I just follow my gut. Anyway, here is the fuseki !
I found the third movement from my opponent quite strange because it’s way too far from his corner if he wanted to close it and way too close if he wanted an extension.

After his strange move, I wanted to cut his two corners so I played R10 to do so. He did the same with C10 and then, I took a big extension for my upper corner which is J17. It’s the direction where the corner is looking forward, the most normal extension after closing it with C15.

Then, things get complicated when he tried to reduce my moyo on the upper side with F15. Since at that moment he got a weak group on the left side, cutting that stone seems like a good idea. I found D14 pretty nice so that’s what I played.

The funny thing is that I kept cutting until we reached the end of the goban ! I think I had never done that in any of my other games. I think the result is amazing for me because I got a huge wall across the whole board plus his group on the left is weaker now.
At that point I launched an attack on it, starting with B9 !

He managed my attack very well, sacrificing two stones in order to connect with his big stick. I was quite disappointed but now it’s time to use my huge wall ! I started with P4 to disconnect his two stones on the bottom right.

It was harder than I expected but I finally did it. Still, my group near O4 looked weak and he took advantage of that to jump out his two stones at M4.

Let’s take some time to look at the whole board here, black has almost nothing in term of points while white has a huge potential to make points in the middle because of his wall. Actually, the game is over for black if he can’t save his two stones at M4 and destroy white moyo. So that’s what the next 40 moves were about, how black is going to reduce white.

He created a living group on the right while cutting my group on the bottom right. It was a very critical situation because if he manages to kill my group, the game is now to his advantage.

Fortunately, I killed him before he kills mine so I’m winning the game right now but you’ll see that mistakes can happen...

My first big mistake was a losing shisho for me that I saw too late after my attempts to take the corner. More than simply giving him four stones, I gave him an easy life, no problem for his group and the occasion to take back his corner. Basically, I lost the tempo and all the initiative I should have.

After a huge reduction of my upper left corner, I managed to live with my group in his corner. (its fate depends on who played there first) Even if it’s a little success for me, it’s his turn to play and he had made a good use of it !

Here is my second big mistake, after his cut J16, I should have played L16 instead of K17 to protect my stones. I misread the sequence, thinking it was ok if he played K15. Actually, it wasn’t and I lost all the upper side.

After those 2 huge mistakes, there wasn’t a lot of things to do, only endgame moves. I just wanted to show you this one which is really huge for me.
You can see the result of my failure on the upper side.

Fortunately, I had gained enough points at the beginning of the game to compensate my 2 mistakes. I won by 16,5 points which isn’t that close but I wasn’t confident at all after all those bad moves.
So now you know, never leave a game even if you’re behind by a lot, everything can happen at Go !

 

 
I hope you enjoyed this little game review, tell me in the comment what do you think about this content.
Here is my profile page on OGS, add me as a friend and we'll do a game !
Check out another of my Go review here

See you tomorrow !