The Divine Move (Game of Go series) #15

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 against a new player on IGS. I know that because he didn’t had a confirmed level or even a flag indicating his country. As I was black I started with my favorite opening, the Chinese.

After a strange approach move R4, I gained a strong position which allowed me to attack his group. He tried to stabilise but I got the shape point R6 to deny his life, forcing him to run out.

Here is the result after the run, he had another weak group on the left while I was quite strong everywhere. So we can say it’s a good result for black even if I could do it a little better I think. I was not too focussed on this one.

However, he tricked me with P13 a special move which trigger a snapback. You can see that if I play Q13, he plays Q12 and even if I capture his cutting stone, he can recapture it back !
I was quite disappointed knowing that I had been tricked so I attacked him again, taking advantage of his other weak group on the middle left.

When you attack an opponent group like that it’s not killing your objective it’s more taking profit while forcing him to live. Here is the result after the chase and it basically ended up with his move J2 taking away points from me. As he played elsewhere from the chase, he told me that he was alive.

After some exchanges, we arrived at this situation where he asked me if I was interested in my corner. Since I was, I tried everything to kill this invasion and that ended up in a ko that you can see in the next picture.

Here it is ! I got some threats but unfortunately he got more than me so I had to give up something for my corner. For those who don’t know what a ko is, it’s a special rule which implies to find threat so our opponent responds to it and by so we can take back the ko and so on. It’s very logical once you did it by yourself one time.

I decided that his move E9 wasn’t as big as the corner so I didn’t respond to it. Of course now he can cut my two stones from my solid group. If I didn’t do that I would lost the ko and by so gain a lot of problems for my group near R15.

I invaded his corner with a sacrificial stone B5, he took it in exchange for his corner and the death of his F3 stone. It was a really good trade for black as you can see. After that, there only one side left to play and it’s the upper one. I didn’t really know where to play so I made a classic approach with F17.

After a short sequence, he connected with F18, it’s another tricky play but I assure you that this shape is connected for white. Once again I was pretty disappointed but I thought that I was winning the game. As we say, one battle lost but not the war.

There was still some space on the left so I made a living group. I gave up some stones to do so but it was worth, the game would had be much more close if I didn’t live there.

After that, there was nothing really big left, only endgame moves. I don’t show you that part of the game because I think it’s the less interesting but if you want to see it one time tell me what you think in the comment.

I still won by 33.5 points, which is a good win but I don’t think my opponent was 9 kyu, maybe more like 10 or 11 kyu. I say that because most of the game was about me attacking his weak group and you usually don’t want a game like that.

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 !