[DGS] pae fights and maek

I have always had trouble with the concept of maek [맥], the “vital point”; I think this is best considered to be similar to the Japanese concept of tesuji, but if you want to have a fight in the comment section about the finer points of discernment between these two concepts, go right ahead; for the the purpose of my blog, maek equals tesuji. Anyway, I always had trouble with it, I knew in theory what it meant, but applying it needed a serious amount of reading ability (my opinion), so I rarely engaged with this. I did play a few maek in an earlier game, but in the one here, I really managed to use it in a decent way.

W+35.5; 9H & 0.5 deom [덤, komi]
135 at C10; 138 at C9; 141 at C10; 144 at C9; 147 at C10

Jeongseok fail…

This game is a 9 stone handicap game with a 9k on DGS, I played a game earlier with her but that ended up in my resignation. The game lasted several months, so I started out not really knowing the basic jeongseok [정석; joseki] for attachments that I was playing in response to knights move approaches in the corners; it’s funny how I can see my own progress in one game, but at least it shows I’m progressing (in the right direction). She started with a knight’ s move at C14, I attached, and she extended with 3; instead of moving to F15 or F16 to finish the jeongseok off, I extended to B15… mistake… the following sequence, gave me some of the corner, but gave her two stones for breakfast and influence in all other directions… So to start off, I wasn’t at my best in retrospect.

So we mucked around the board for a while, and by move 128 I was kinda ahead…

The first 128 moves… and snatch the lead!

 

Overall, I had the potential of large territory in the lower right corner, the middle (a little to the right), and I had the upper left corner. The four white stones around P5 were under pressure, and with 128 at C9 I was moving to kill three of white’s stones, and potentially make more territory there.

Pae-fight-club!

However, 129 to 134 set up a pae [패; ko] fight, which I was dreading… After 134 white took by playing at A, I created the pae by playing at B, and white made the pae bigger (I think) by playing at C, after which I retook the pae by playing at C9. I wonder if I could have avoided the pae fight, as usually that is my preferred way of doing things; somehow pae fights are scary to me, I never manage to assess pae threats correctly, and often lose because the threats I play aren’t big enough to warrant a response.

Left jab, right hook, uppercut

So, into the pae fight, I the following threats were played: white played at A, and I had to respond at B; then I moved to C, and white responded at D; then white played her next threat at E and I responded by taking the white stone at A7 with F. I could have responded by connecting my group instead, but I somehow decided that it was better to take, not sure what the best response would have been. So I was settling in for a long fight, and went looking for my next threat.

Near orgasmic elation at reading this out

I played my next threat at B4 (marked stone), because it threatened to capture the two white stones, but also threatened a follow up at A… I personally thought this was a huge threat as white had to respond to keep her corner, and the entire corner would be worth 20 points or so for me. This little maek made me swell up with pride, this was truly the vital point, when I read it out, if I played A, I should be able to kill the entire corner! so the follow-up at A for this threat would be assured. But somehow, white decided to end the pae fight with A10, and I took the corner… Perhaps it was a calculation on her part, that she decided that the territory around the pae fight was worth more than the corner, and she might have been correct… probably 30-40 points against 20? I’m not entirely sure… Still, this maek made me happy, I would never have seen this a few months ago.

Invasion… into the heart of the enemy

So after this, we started moving into the endgame, and slowly started solidifying our borders. White tried an invasion with 151, right inside my biggest territory, but I responded and I managed to stifle the invasion. I played a one space approach with 152, which is a different response than I would have made months ago, back then I thought that the best way to defend was to attach; now I know better. White made a knights move, but then I decided to attach… the sequence up to 161 might not have been the best way to deal with it, but it kinda did the job. I blocked white with 162, as I was scared they’d connect.

Monkey see, monkey do

After a few more endgame moves around the board, I decided to put something into practice that I recently had learned: the bima [비마; saru-suberi], also known as a monkey jump. I moved with a large knights move to A12, and sequences after that would be standard, and steal away around 6-7 points from white. Again a moment of pride – applause, applause – and we moved to finish the endgame, and started filling in the neutral points… But here I miscalculated.

The fall of an empire…

As we were filling in the gongbae [공배; dame], my opponent finds a maek at A… it put the entire group (marked with X) in dansu [단수; atari]… my only option here was to connect at B, after which white can play C, which resurrects the white stones like Lazarus from whatever pit he was stuck in (in a very dead way)…  also the stones marked with a circle were having some sort of duitmat [뒷맛; aji] effect… and thus my opponent gained at least 6 points, and took a whole lot away from me. Up to this point the game was close (within 5 points or so I think) but this maek swung the game decidedly in white’s favour…

Overall, I think I learned a lesson about vital points, and I applied a monkey jump for the first time; I also survived a pae fight, and managed to (initially) stifle an invasion… My play by the second half of the game was good, I think, but I also learned to read carefully, as maek can be used as easily against me as by me. I did really enjoy this game, and I’m playing a rematch with her; though, she asked to reduce the handicap to 8 stones this time… 8 stones might be enough, I’m not sure, but we’ll see.

[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.

[DGS] Rematch, and progress

B+Resign; 6.5 deom [덤;komi]

So I had a rematch with someone who I’ve played about three months ago; back then it was only the 3rd game I finished on DGS. That particular game I had played with a 4 stone handicap as black, and lost by resignation. So, when he joined my even game, I was quite excited to see how much I had caught up to them. Turns out that I definitely caught up the 4 handicap stones in those months; though this isn’t that hard, at the high geup [급; kyu] levels ranks are very volatile. Anyway, my opponent resigned at move 98, when I had a clear advantage in influence in the rest of the board.

Personally, I would have played on; I’m not entirely sure that they had lost this game by this point, the upper side might have more Black influence, but white could definitely pull off at least the 3-3 invasion in the right corner, and also work to create territory by trying to isolate some of the stones; the influence on the top does looks a bit thin. The middle White territory, if he defends at J6 to solidify it, and the side is larger than Black’s in the bottom, despite the dead white stones there. Also the right corner is quite big for White. I think it could have easily been a close game… Actually I would love to play this out with someone, though I’m not sure on how to go about it online… I guess we’d have to play out the sequence of moves up to 98 and then start play… Any takers?

For reference, the game we played three months ago is here. In that game I resigned during the middle game; I still think that there is no way I could have won that game.

Dragon Round-Robin 2015

So I’ve entered the Dragon Round-Robin  2015 Tournament – 19×19 – DDK Division; it consists of several rounds, with the first one seeing the 247 participants divided up in 27 pools. Pool 3, where I ended up, looks as follows:

Name	ID	Rank
FIRAT ASAR	Enigmight	10k (+46%)
a space	apollospace	11k (+36%)
Aimé CARON	stonerider	12k (-9%)
selbstlaut	selbstlaut	13k (-19%)
Adam Brown	Hylidae	15k (+9%)
Benjamin Hillier	CaptainSumo	16k (-22%)
W. Spencer Clark I	DoubleU	18k (-25%)
HeJin Kim	yearsago	20k (-5%)
Hanspeter Schmid	hanspi	25k (+36%)

As you can see, clearly the odds will be ever in someone else’s favour. I mean, there are 2 stones between me and the next higher ranked person, and 10 between me and the top player in the pool (if only it was a swimming pool). Though I didn’t think I’d have a chance of winning when I entered; I find that tournaments on DGS or OGS are just good ways of getting serious games. Also, the timeframe is often perfect for me, fast paced but still correspondence. The settings for this is Canadian, 1 day main time and 14 days with 14 stones; this is quite fast, a lot more so than the games in the ladder, but in order to get this tourney finished, I guess it makes sense… otherwise it would be the Dragon Round-Robin 2015-until-the-better-part-of-FOREVER. My aim is to just see how high I can get in the pool, only the top player of the pool moves on to the second round, so no chance I’d make that; but we’ll see how it goes.

[DGS] 2 wins, 1 loss…

Let’s start with the loss: an even game on DGS with an opponent ranked at 16k by the end of the game (compared to my 24k); I lost the game by 2.5 points, basically I lost a pae [패; ko] fight that decided the game…
White forced the pae with move 166 F3, and I had no choice but to take it, as otherwise 4 stones at D4 would be in dansu [단수; atari]… And this fight was the game decider, as I was just a few points ahead at this point, but only just…

W+ 2.5, even with 6.5 deom [덤; ko] ; W168, B171, W174, B177, W180 take pae [패; ko].

The pae fight was worth 2 points, and combined with a play I made at M16 in my own territory (admitting: out of sheer fear for the baduk equivalent of the invasion of Normandy…) I ended up losing 3 points, which was enough to secure the victory for my opponent. However, looking back at the game, I’m not entirely sure if I would have lost the fight if I continued it, I basically chickened out of with B181; I usually give up in pae fights because I’m not good at judging pae threats… But here, looking bac, I wonder if I shouldn’t have just continued… Also at what’s play at 72 (triangle marked stone), I think I responded wrongly, and allowed him to take away a chunk of my potential territory… My response with B73 was a mistake here, I allowed him to come underneath and push towards the stone the white stone he had previously thrown there; perhaps a response at M1 instead of M2 would have been better, if he goes over it, playing M2, I can extend to L1, and the stone at L3 will make it easy to stop him… I think…

So the two wins I was referring to were against the same opponent, but we played those before this game. In fact, those were some of the first games I played on DGS, and I won both of them; of course with handicap, one with 4 stones and one with 5 stones. After I won those I suggested a game with less handicap to even it out, and make it more challenging, so we started the even game above. I think we’re actually fairly evenly matched, despite the difference in DGS rankings, and I think we play very similar… Anyway, here below the two previous games…

B+57.5, H5 & 6.5 deom [덤; komi]

B+6.5, H4 & 6.5 deom [덤; komi]

An interesting loss

B+12; game setup: 6 dum [komi], Fischer 10d+1d

This is a game that I finished on DGS a few days ago, it was a challenge on the DGS 19×19 ladder tourny. The game was against a 19k, and I ended up with white and a 6 point dum [덤; komi]. I lost the game, however I truly enjoyed playing this. At first, I was playing it like any usual game on DGS, between breaks at work and on the go; the result was that I wasn’t counting liberties properly, and en entire group died… Black 153 was where 11 of my stones were doomed, a pointless death it was… The sequence actually began at White 142… which I should not have played at E13, but rather at F13… I voluntarily gave away seonsu [선수; sente] and thus set up the death of those poor, unfortunate stones… may they rest in pieces. At this point I wanted to resign, as I could not see a way out of this…

I felt like Frodo… climbing the slopes of Mount Doom with gardener and a psychotic addict on my heels… It seemed impossible

As you can see, it looks like a clear win for Black here: two major groups are surrounded in the middle and have no eyes, or eye potential… But in the end I decided to muddle on; I knew I’d lose, that was a given, but I wanted to see how far I could come back from this. I moved to cut two stones off from his group with W154, which essentially saved the lower of my dead-and-buried groups, resurrecting it from the dead (kinda like Harry Potter in the last book.) My opponent secures the death of the upper group by connecting, though I’m not sure if it was necessary, it was fairly dead already. Then I we had some up and down, securing the borders on the upper left side and the lower right side.

The reverse situation has happened too many times to me…

Then, grabbing the initiative, I threw in a stone with W202 at H3… Which put the 6 stones to its right into dansu [단수; atari], but also threatened a lot more… if he connects, I’d go down to H2, creating a double dansu, that would take the thusly formed B2 bomber; so then he’d have to connect at G3, and after I capture immediately has to connect at F6. I felt pretty good about reading this out properly. It is one of those things that I usually get done to me, losing groups left right and centre; doing this to someone else, felt kinda nice. He played things exactly out as I spelled out here. Since I had the initiative still, I decided to do something similar again, since he hadn’t protected all the cutting points in his territory on the lower right side.

I was just hoping, truly hoping, that I could kill his entire corner! Too often such was taken away from me with violent invasions! It was time for payback!

I threw in with W208 at R2 (marked 1)… he has to connect by playing Q2 (marked A) in order to prevent me from capturing, and I knew he’d lose one of the two B2 bombers flying around in that corner – I mean, one without a nose and one with a disformed wing… I played W210 at R4 (marked 2), and how he has two choices: if he plays B, I’ll play C and his stones above would dead; or he plays C, and I’d play B, killing his group to the left. Actually, if he played C, I think I might have had a shot at killing the entire corner; my three stones would have one extra liberty.

If only… if only… 😦

I read out the sequence marked 1 to 8, and it basically would give me the corner, and the game. Unfortunately, he played B instead of C; I probably had read this out as well. Thus I took 5 stones and 5 extra points of territory… But unfortunately it wasn’t enough to catch up, I lost by 12 points… If only he had played C, I’d have won… Or, if only I had not let that group in the middle die in the first place, I could have won. But I loved the game, I felt I managed to apply some of the lessons I’ve learned over the past few months.

First time taking white!

So I entered the 19×19 Ladder on DGS, because I thought it would be fun; I have no illusion: if I manage to keep out of the bottom 100 I will have achieved the impossible. Right now I am at 595 on the ladder, after winning my first game. Now, what makes that a surprise is that I actually took white in this game… I’ve never taken white in a 19×19 game, so it was really strange; constantly I had to remind myself of this fact, because I almost accidentally played in the wrong places a few time thinking that white was getting too much territory. The ultimate result was a very comfortable win, and I thoroughly enjoyed it; while winning is always great, this game gave me quite a few reading challenges that could have cost me the game.

W+52; 6 dum [komi], Fischer 10d+1d – Black 191 at R9

160 at J3 was one of those moves that put a smile on my face; with the response at H2, I extended to J4 and managed to deprive the two black groups at H2 and E2 of life (163 and 164 could have been played the other way around, but to the same result I think), I killed them, murdered them, mwhohahahahaaaa (=my evil laugh)… or so I thought. After Black connects with 165 at J7, I move to F4 , realising that I if Black had played there he could have made those groups live (I think…).

So we move to elsewhere on the board doing some typical endgame moves (move 167 to 175) in the upper left and the upper right areas, and I secure some cutting points with 176 at G7.  Then Black proceeds to play 177 at G17, and I pause (luckily) to make sure I respond correctly to prevent his stones from going all zombie apocalypse on that particular area and depriving myself of 25 points; luckily my head was clear for once and I play at F1, going all serial killer on the same corpse… which is a weird visual that you should just forget.

179 and 180 are just minor moves to secure boundaries and cutting points. But then, black plays at O2 before I could secure that particular point… and I panick a little bit (a lot)… So I run with 182 at N1, black chases with 183 at N2, I run harder with 184 at N3… I’m thinking I’ll just run, and suddenly that previously twice killed group is threatening to rise from the dead, and this time take away a lot more than 25 points! However, instead of following me, he played M3. So I managed to read it out properly, because there was only one way to keep my stones (and basically the entire game) alive. I actually wrote a note in the private notes section spelling the sequence out and adding: THINK AND READ THIS THREE TIMES BEFORE PLAYING YOU DUFUUS!!! which helped. I played 186 at M2, knowing that he’d have to play at L2 if he continues playing in that area, and I read what I wrote 15 times and read it out again before playing 188 at N3… And I breath… and do a dance… literally… I did a actual dance…

He tried to invade at another cutting point at P8, but I knew that I could prevent him from living; the sequence 189 to 202 maintained the status quo. I tried to do some funny stuff with 204 at R17, but that ended up in nothing and the game was done…

I knew I had won… and I felt like Frodo after he had just deposited the One Ring in the fiery chasms of Mount Doom… I beat a 26k with white on DGS, and jumped up to 26k on that server myself, while moving up to 595 on the ladder.

Two losses, one bad and the other worse…

W+15.5; game setup: 6.5 dum [komi] and 5H, 30d + 1d Fischer.

So these are two games I finished on DGS recently as well, I played both simultaneously against the same opponent, and lost both. I played black in both games, and both with handicap (5 and 4 stones respectively); again, I forgot to set the dum to 0.5 so there is a 6.5 dum in each game despite the handicap. I haven’t uploaded them on EidoGo, but if you want the game ID for the first one (see image on the right) is 928882.

W+69.5; game setup: 6.5 dum [komi] and 4H, 30d + 1d Fischer.

While the first one was a reasonable defeat, the second (game ID 929260) was closing on “humiliating” with a 69.5 point victory for my opponent. Even if I take into account the one handicap stone less, it was still pretty bad. Although playing the game was fun, it definitely was a challenge, and I hope I’ve learned something; I’ve sent both games for review to a friend of mine, and I’m eager to get an objective opinion on my mistakes. Of course my rank plummeted after these two games, but that is inevitable. In the mean time, I’m having a rematch, with 6 stones handicap and 0.5 dum. Both games we played started at the same time, and ended on the same day; my opponent was 21k when we started and 20k when we finished.

I’ve also “won” a few games by time-out but that doesn’t count in my book, and I’ve ensured that my settings don’t count them as ranked.

Reflections on my game on DGS

B+17.5; game setup: 6.5 dum [komi] and 5H, 30d + 1d Fischer.

I finished a set of games on DGS, which I will be uploading here a batch at a time. This game I won, playing black with a 5 stone handicap and 6.5 dum [덤, or komi in Japanese]; I know normally in handicap games there is no komi or only 0.5 to break a tie, but I just didn’t set that properly up on DGS when I created the game. I can’t embed the actual sgf here, but if you click on the screenshot of the final position you can find it on EidoGo… or click here.

Overall, it was a good game, I think it would be more equal to have played at 3 or 4 stones and 0.5 dum, which is what I am proposing for in a rematch. I found it an interesting experience, playing on DGS, initially I though it would be easier since there is so much more time to think over a single move. However, it felt very different, it was more like strange snapshots that were strangely disconnected; every time it was my move I had to go over half the game to figure out how to proceed, and it wasn’t easy to recall the full reasoning of why I had made a previous move. It probably doesn’t help that I mostly play my moves during breaks at work either…

The initial ranks were 28 geup for me and 19 geup for my opponent, but considering the we played it over a total of 35 days our ranks had shifted to 30 geup and 17 geup respectively; and with the game my rank shifted to 26 geup (and his to 18 geup). Geup being the Korean term for kyu, which I use because I play baduk, and because I’m stubborn (according to certain people). In any case, ranks are weird as it is; on the SAGA system I am 23 geup, while on KGS I’m 21 and on IGS I am 17 with question mark.