[KGS] Killing corners… my turn!

W+24.5; deom [덤, komi]

I haven’t played on KGS in a while… and for some reason my rank got listed as “14k?” from 19k when I last logged in… Something here doesn’t make sense. So automatch put me up against an established 14k, which was going to be an uphill battle for me. I ended up playing fairly solidly, and we established two moyang [모양, moyo], but my opponent started aggressively pushing in, and at this point I just became very defensive and got pushed around the board. There were a couple mistakes on my opponent’s side, which allowed me to catch up, but I still lost by 24.5 points.

Move 1 – 49

I decided to move for the orthodox opening, and started with taking the star point in the upper right corner; my opponent took the lower right star point, and at this point I wondered for a moment whether I should make it a cross by taking the lower left, but I decided that I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to follow through. So instead I simply finished my opening patter with a corner enclose on the upper left. My opponent also finished an orthodox on the lower side. When I reviewed the game with Sundaay, apparently it is more common for White to go either to A or B, and split, instead of finish the enclosure; so as it was my first move, I should have moved to C or the point above, splitting the orthodox of my opponent, but instead I went for an approach with 7. White went diagonal, and I extended; and then, instead of finishing the jeongseok [정석; joseki]; here I should either have finished mine by making a 3 space jump upwards,to E or D, or attach at F, attacking… I thought 11 was an attack, but it doesn’t pressure enough, and 12 is an adequate response, securing the corner, and still allowing the develop to the left. I jumped to 13, trying to develop some sort of framework, and White starts to make some sort of box shape with 14. The sequence after it is fairly plain, and probably not good for either, we’re just building a walls and dividing the board here. With 49, White tries to push into my, still developing, framework.

Move 50 -100

I didn’t really know how to respond, so I got defensive, and started blocking. White did a 3-3 invasion, which seemed to live, and at this point I was seriously behind; however,with White pushing harder and harder, it felt hard to just sonppaem [손뺌; tenuki] at any point. Here is where my weakness comes in… My increasingly defensive responses, and fear of losing too much territory, allows White to play aggressively; at this point my moves really had only one purpose, try and salvage territory that I thought would be mine. The thing is, it wasn’t, and by building walls in the beginning, it made it hard to simply invade anywhere in the left side of the board… Panick, panick, panick… That’s pretty much what happened.

Move 101 – 150

So we ended up with a seriously reduced territory for Black, and me rushing to respond to every move White makes. As you can see, I didn’t know where to push White; eventually I managed to box White in, and save points for myself, but they weren’t nearly enough. White ended up making points on the right side as well, extending from the corner invasion. However at this point I was eyeballing S9, this cut would possibly give me those three stones, and also perhaps give me the initiative for once. When White played 150, I decided to make my move; it seemed like I didn’t have to respond locally immediately.

Move 151 – 200

I decided to play 151 at S9, and was surprised that White responded with forcing me to capture by playing 152. I’m not sure, but I thought there were other big points on the board. It turns out, however, that White needed to respond, but not by playing T9… After I capture, White makes the mistake of playing 154 at T8, and I simply capture. White then tries to secure block by playing 156 at T12, but that doesn’t work; instead, White should have defended immediately at T16, and then secure eyes by playing S19 afterwards. So in the end, the sequence up to 169 kills the whole corner, and gives me some points; I’m still behind, but it is less of an embarrassing loss by now.

We ended up playing around on the left side a bit, I tried some things that didn’t work, in the end we settled borders and I ended up with 24.5 points, while initially I expected at least a loss by 50 or more. My KGS ranked turned into “17k?”, which sounds a lot more accurate.