[DGS] On stupid mistakes

W+17.5; 6.5 deom [덤, komi]

This is the first game from the DDK division of the Dragon Round-Robin tourney that I’m playing in. We finished this game in a matter of days, and it was an exciting game. My opponent seemed to be ahead by move 52, at least in terms of influence, so I tried to invade and rip the developing diagonal moyang [모양; moyo]; we were both developing those essentially, but his was clearly bigger. Also after he took the upper left corner, I took the lower right one… Or at least I thought I did (this will come and bite me in the lower buttock region soon). I was a bit scared that we’d build a wall in that only open space, and I’ll end up losing by quite a bit. So it was time for some decisive action.

Move 53 to 60

I moved to take the cheonweon [천원; tengen] point, it seemed to be the right balance: not too far in so he can cap it and potentially make it hard to live there, and not too far out so that even a reduction would have some effect on the balance of the game. Also I love taking the centre point, I really do. The sequence up to 60 turned into an invasion; with 59 I defended, in order to not isolate my three stones, and he pushed in with 60.

move 61 to 103

So I pushed an invasion after I defended with 61; and overall I succeeded in seriously reducing his potential territory. My aim was, however to kill the stones to the left that were getting squeezed by the Black stones that were already there and my invasion. However, as I tried to find a balance in invading and staying connected, he managed to connect with 98 to 102… Still at this point, I seemed to have a slight edge over my opponent.

But then disaster struck… After we danced around on the board, moving towards the end game, and I was solidifying my – roughly – 10 – 15 jib [집; moku] lead, he moved to the lower right corner that I had left precariously open earlier. 134 shouldn’t have killed the corner, but I clearly wasn’t thinking, and I made a very basic 130k level reading mistake… I should have played at A instead of playing 135 at O1… His response at Q2 killed the corner; I calculated the that this cost me 22 jib, and thus the game swung around… I actually considered resigning at this point, because so close to the endgame it is hard to catch up that many points; at least for me it is… I ended up playing it out… and the result was W17.5, which shows that one mistake can cost you a game that you pretty much had won already.