[OGS] A giant Tygem fight on OGS

Well, I’ve never played a game on Tygem; however, judging from how people have described it to me, this game would have been right at home there: 266 moves of sheer terror.

B+66.5; 0.5 deom [덤; komi]

I’ve never done this before, usually I end up in very territorial games where the opening moves and the initial middle game (when not a handicap game) kinda decide who wins. But here, after a typical three-star-point-on-either-side setup, my opponent just tore right in, no regard for territory… attack, attack, attack, nuclear attack, biochemical attack, and eventually a suicide attack. At one point he was clearly ahead, and if he just defended and marked his territory he would have won, but he just continued on the offensive while I sniped off pieces off what could have been his territory. So lets look at some of what went down in this showdown…

In the white corner, taking one stone handicap, at 20k OGS rank, all the way from Chile: LevLynch, The Mauler! *applause* And in the black corner, at 21k OGS rank and an ELO rating of 82, from Korea and/or South Africa… HeJin, The Obsessive Blogger! *applause*

Round 1

Black goes for the star point, followed by white doing the same…Both sides are following up with Black going for the high Chinese opening, while White is opting for a version of the sam-yeon-seong po-seok [삼연성 포석; sanrensei fuseki]! Clearly they are moving to secure influence on their respective sides, and this will possible turn into a very influence based game with some nice scrapes in the middle for the centre territory… It surely will be an exciting game.

Black approaches, but wait… White is not responding as expected, moving to perhaps secure something on the upper side! Black 9 is trying to secure the upper left corner, and white 10 attaches… White 12 is making a diagonal move from the occupied star point on the right upper side. Black 13 again defending the corner. White 14 attacks and Black 15 extends. It looks like a fight is erupting there, and yes Black isolated the stones, but white doesn’t give up… After a few exchanges it looks like the fight turned into Blacks favour, having surrounded White with only one definite eye.

But wait, white is continuing the fight, going around into the corner… No! Black’s three stones died! What a simple reading mistake by Black, surely White is alive in the corner now! Black makes a dash for safety with 37 at L14.  But white is not giving up, he’s going after the rest of Black’s stones… It is a harsh fight, a tough fight… No! White 56 kills almost all of Black’s stones on top!

Round 2

Black is at least 82 points behind now… This will be an uphill battle from hereon. There are a few exchanges, and White kills the remaining three black stones at L14. Black starts to make territory on the bottom, and white does likewise on the right side. It looks like Black needs to play aggressively to even catch up, let alone win.

Another fights brakes out on the lower side, spilling towards the right… Black tries desperately to protect what little territory she has left, while White relentlessly moves forward… It is turning into resignation time for Black, slowly but surely…

But wait… Black 129 at L9… this might save Black’s stones around N7… And yes! It does! Oh but what happened? White 132 at K8 is suicide for the 9 White stones at L8! And yes, Black takes them! Still this isn’t enough, Black has 80 points to catch on.

Round 3

White will clearly defend; a quick count shows he’s still ahead, and defensive play will secure him the territory he needs. But wait, Black is going on the offensive, using her secured stones as a base of attack, keeping connected through diagonal and one point jumps… He’s surrounding the white stones on the left! But white isn’t defending there, or making eyes… There at most is one eye now! Ah! Black 187 kills the group… At this point it is unlikely that the required eyes can be made… A black eye for White in this ferocious game… Black has almost caught up…

Black marches on… Oh look, a skillful sort of semi double dansu [단수; atari] appears as Black plays 205 at E9! And White loses four more stones… But Black manages to force another such trap with 209 at D7, and White this time chooses to sacrifice two stones rather than lose the four on the left side. Now Black has caught up… As long as he doesn’t lose the corner, this game is Black…

…

It was actually exhilarating… and I felt more confident about my reading and fighting skills afterwards… So I’ve decided to pay some attention to my Tygem account, and go have a few epic slaughter-fests on baduk boards over there.

[OGS] A game of under 160 moves

This game I played on OGS, it was suppose to be a correspondence game, but ended up being finished very quickly: we played out the middle and endgame out in one day. My opponent here is 20k, so there was only a 0.5 deom [덤; komi] instead of a handicap; I am ranked 21k right now.

B+72.5; 0.5 deom [덤; komi]

The scene by move 13… And as usual I had no clue why I used the Chinese opening…

The game itself started out fairly basic: I used the high chinese opening, though I still have no clue what to do with it, and he took the lower star point on the left side, the 3-4 point (C17), and K3 (just below the lower star point). I decided to play on the left side, and took the star point – my thought was that if he responds on either side I could still make a base with a two or even three point jump; however, he just protected by playing G3 and I thus created my base by moving to D14. He took J16 and I decided to strengthen my influence in the upper right side by take M17… So we had a fairly equal opening.

The the game got very territorial… We started building walls, and a diagonal one started running from the upper left corner to the centre of the board; together with a small wall three quarters down the board, it gave me a “slice of the pie” kinda territory. At this point, I had fairly secure territory, while white had bit more but less secure (I think). But then, when he moved to M11 with 54, I expected him to go rambo and start attacking my influence, because if that turned into territory he’d be short.

I see lots of space between black stones… it’s almost an invitation

His move baffled me a bit, after 54 (marked) I made an elephant’s jump from one of my stones (1), and he followed with a diagonal jump (2), and I simply blocked… I expected him to play 2 at one of the points marked A to E; in my lowly DDK opinion that would cut into my influence. In fact, if he played B or C, I think he could have threatened to cut off the two marked stones above, and possibly kill one of them. Basically, the cautious response meant that from this point onwards, I simply could just defend and remain ahead on territory. He tried a corner invasion in the upper right corner, which I managed to kill (for a change), but part of me felt that if it had lived, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the game, so I was merely fighting out of sheer pride. Overall it was a nice game, a short one (only 150+ moves) but still sweet.

[OGS] Loss by resignation (or by invasion?)

I played this game yesterday on OGS, well I finished this yesterday; a crushing defeat to say the least… I resigned by move 24, after I ran out of liberties in a fight ans was about to see my entire side of the board slaughtered. I chose surrender over death… I’m sure the samurai would think me a coward, but I would like to remind them that I am, in fact, Korean, and unlike those warlike feudal dictators, Koreans valued scholarship over war. Anyway, take a look here:

W+Resign; H7 & 0.5 deom [덤; komi]

Actually, look it up on OGS it is game number 119857… I tried to keep things connected, with 7 handicap stones that should still be the best strategy, but his invasions were skillfull, and somehow he managed to sneak into places I thought even a hollywood version of a katana couldn’t cut through… But it was amazing to watch… I thought I should be able to win at 7 stones against a 14k, but I overestimated him, and at time got drawn into fights I should have left alone. In the end, it seemed like I’d lose by around 10 points, which is somewhat close, but I played wrongly in a neutral point, and he cut at the right place… his group that I had deprived of a second eye in the beginning rose up like a zombie samurai to cut this humble Korean to pieces… I haven’t properly reviewed it yet though, I’m still mourning for my stones, but I commend my opponent to a very skillfully played game!

[OGS] A win, and an experiment with conditional moves.

I played this game on OGS, with 3 stones handicap; initially our ranks were 3 stones apart, but since I ranked up during the game it was – even if the ranks were accurate reflections of our strength – “rigged” in my favour. This is actually one of the things at OGS I have noticed, my ranking has gone up to 21k, but I’m still winning games; mostly that is because I play games where the handicap is automatically adjusted, and because I’m probably not at 21k strength, it ends up being skewed in my favour… this probably will stop once I reach the rank that is more accurate for me.

B+30.5; 3H & 0.5 deom [덤; komi]

But back to the game… I won by a fair margin, though it was an interesting game… With only three stones handicap, my usual “run and stay connected” strategy didn’t apply, so I had to get into a few fights. We even started off with one in the upper left corner, as you can see… And had a few up and downs on the lower side. A wall emerged somewhat diagonally from just below the centre to the lower right corner (plays 97 to 115) and then I decided to jump with 116 at O8; I thought that we were fairly even: he has the two upper corners plus territory in the middle, and I have the lower corners and some territory on the upper side and around one of the corners.

The little wall of China…

Instead of playing out the corner area, and solidify the wall after White plays 116, I decided to make a jump and try to claim territory on the right side of the cheonwon [천원; tengen] point. This is kinda out of character for me, as it isn’t a safe move, but a big one… there are no supporting stones in the area, just two walls: white above, and black below; it could go either way, and I was expecting a fight. But no fight erupted… perhaps he played it safe because his wall had gaps in it that I would be able to exploit if a fight came about (and I was better at this game); either way, we build another wall right in the middle there. I almost misread after he played, 129, as the white stone (marked) was there from earlier in the game… if I played 130 one higher, the resulting dansu [단수; atari] would have me connect, and he’d reduce the territory I could make.

In the end we danced about in the endgame, exchanging small points here and there, but it was very much decided, and I don’t think he would be able to have caught up. But what was truly interesting is that for the first time I really made use of the conditional moves option; of course it helps you visualise when you try and read things out, but what was interesting is that I managed to accurately read where my opponent would play in sequences of up to 10 moves sometimes! There was a time when I couldn’t read ahead one move, let along any sequence of some sort… but the sequence 137 to 144, part of the sequence where we made that wall in the middle and the end game sequence near the upper left corner, all read out perfectly. Of course endgame sequences are easy, there is very little variation; but in sequences of three to five moves I managed to accurately read and set out some of the smaller fights during the middle game as well… This is what I like about OGS, it helps me learn reading through its conditional moves option… And I love it…

Turning the tide in a game!

Remember the gremlin on my board? I fought back, I battled, and I won… I thought I was merely saving face by continuing the game, hoping to limit my loss to about 20 points or so; many a time I thought about resigning in shame… But by 0.5 points I claimed the narrowest of victories… You can see the game here on OGS, not sure if you need an account though; I’ve numbered the stones on the diagram below, though. In any case I am immensely proud for not giving up; and also, if you look at the diagram of the final position, clearly I can’t properly count because those two lost stones (A & B 11) on the left side show my lame attempt to invade, which turned out to be unnecessary.

B+0.5; game setup: 6.5 dum [komi], Fischer 14d+1d

However, what won me the game was actually my opponent passing premature at move 246: the bottom right wasn’t secure yet, both P and Q 1 were not played, so the fact that his pass gave me seonsu [선수; sente in Japanese] and I played Q1 before he could play R1 won me the game… So while I am proud, I must be very honest in saying that it was a tiny slip up on my opponent’s side that gave me this game.

Overall it was an interesting game, and I think I learned the value of thinking when you play, I mean that is really really important. But seriously, it was perhaps two slip ups on my opponents side together with managing the grab the initiative quite a few times. If you access the game, it was (according to my humble DDK opinion) move 97 that started shifting the game around to… well not my side, but the middle-ish. Then, when I played move 241 at L19 , I think if he responded O18 instead of K19 then he’d kept the three stones at P19, thus securing the a win.