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 !
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
Now, back to the game !
I played this game again as black against an American 8 kyu opponent. As usual, I started with my Chinese opening and he made two Komoku, looking for a more territory strategy.
I think it’s the first time I saw a Tengen since I’m 11 kyu ! It’s considered as a bad move because you give to your opponent the information that you want to build a lot of influence. And since it’s your fifth moves, it’s way too early.
However, the good point for white is that, with his Tengen, he will win almost every Shisho.
Anyway, you can see that he didn’t answer both of my moves Q14 and G5 so he had two weak stones that I’m going to annoy.
First, I started to approach his upper corner asking for influence. My plan was to have a strong wall in order to play the move bellow, M17. It attacked at the same time both of his stones but he could only helped one of them.
The next sequence was about his invasion on the right side. There was still a lot of space so he managed to live there but I was quite satisfied with the result as I had a very strong wall facing the center and my lower corner. Another good thing was that I made all those moves while keeping the initiative. Now, his O17 stone is almost dead.
Since I got the initiative and he had another weak group on the upper side, I attacked it to gain influence. My plan was still to counter his Tengen so I wanted a lot of influence.
Then, I approached his other corner high, once again for influence.
After getting my nice wall, I attacked his other weak stone O3. (weak because it’s alone and I have a lot of friend near it) The objective here is is build points while threatening to capture his stone.
However, he fought really hard trying to have everything but I managed to keep the corner mine. After that exchange, he played really weird moves, forcing move yes but weird because they strengthened me while doing nearly nothing for him.
After helped me gaining strength, he tried to escape his group near O4 but left a cut behind that I immediately took. Now he had to live there with his group but also had a new weak group in the middle. You can see that with a move like H10, I can enclose his middle group.
Since I took a cut, a fight is about to happen !
After a big fight where every liberties counted, I played a very slow move M12. It was slow because I think I didn’t had to play it but it was so safe to do it, solving all my problems. At that point, I had a big lead in points while he nearly had nothing except weak groups.
Then,we did some exchanges in the middle but he didn’t seem to care about his almost dead group near O5. During this whole game, I didn’t understand the meaning of his moves and to be honest, I think he was drunk or something. His moves didn’t match with a 8 kyu player.
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 !