The Divine Move (Game of Go series) #16

Hello Steeamians !

Today is a day where I review my Go game, here is one that I played today.
My main objective when I started playing Go was to be a single digit kyu player, in other word, become 9 kyu. After nearly two years of playing, I managed to do it but I’m not stopping there, now I look above at the 5 kyu rank which is pretty symbolic too. Wish me good luck !
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 !

I played this game against a 9 kyu opponent but this time as white ! It’s pretty rare that I’m white and to be honest, I prefer black. My opponent did the Chinese opening, my favorite one, while I took two hoshi to be really flexible.

After a short exchange in the upper right corner, he approached my corner with F17. Since I had that K16 stone, I thought it was a good idea to push him in that direction so I played E17.

Here is the result after a short chase, I didn’t expect to kill it because he had a lot of space but a chase is always worth it. You can see that I have a lot of stones on the fourth line at the left of the board so his C6 play is really great. At the same time, it’s an approach move and a kinda invasion.

I chose to pincer him and by so give him the corner. I think it’s a good trade for me because, in exchange for a few corner points, I closed my territory on the left while kinda captured his initial C6 approach move. I managed to find time to play in his corner, it was starting to look like a black ocean so that’s why I played there.

When I made that move my objective was to destroy his influence so I played that way. He seemed to be ok to take territory so we agreed on that. I was starting to have a lot of influence and I was aiming at making some central territory.

At this point he pushed a little in the bottom left corner, I let him take some of my stones to enclose his group on the upper side. I thought that was a good idea and at this point, I was very confident in this game.

Unfortunately, I didn’t look well enough at this cut, actually, it worked. At one point, I had to choose between taking a huge risk and have everything or give up some stones and end up with a bad but fair result. I chose the risky way and I know now that it was a bad idea. First because it simply just doesn’t work but also because I was winning the game so it wasn’t a problem to give up some points.

You can see how it ended up for me in that corner. When I saw that I couldn’t do anything to save it I played elsewhere Q11 to reduce his a little while building influence according to my strategy, make points in the middle.

He fought really hard for that, my group looked strange and with a bad shape while he had a strong corner and side. I considered his stones near N11 dead so my strategy worked pretty well, I had a huge middle. At that point, I thought that I may have enough points to recover from my mistake.

After that, he kept fighting really hard to destroy my middle point but I didn’t let him did that so easily. Basically, if he managed to live there or capture one of my group, the game is for him. That fight will decide the whole game.

Then, I found time to invade his corner which was still open. In order to do so, I had to ignore one of his move in my center, I didn’t think I was forced to respond. Now that I see the game, I should have responded to it because I think I’m winning and I didn’t need those extra points. But during the game, I was still feeling like I was behind because of my huge mistake in the corner.

The result is disastrous, he cut one of my group apart with K15 and by so connected his group in the middle to his other group. That means he destroyed all of my middle points and by so he won the game.

I resigned soon after because there was nothing else to do. With that capture, he won way too many points and since he is solid everywhere, I couldn’t do anything to come back. Well played by him !

 

 
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 !