1st Ogf Rengo 19x19 Tournament šŸŒ

General Go Discussion
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This was my first time playing serious rengo, and I had a lot of fun! It was interesting to play with someone right at my level since I could usually assume we saw the same things. I was confused about a few of the places you were playing, though looking back now itā€™s hard to remember what I was confused about - so I hope it wasnā€™t just me messing up!

I did always tap back-back-back to get a review of what I had missed and tried to figure out what everyone was thinking. Is that not easy with the app? Of course if the last four moves were always numbered it would be a lot easier.

I tried leaving a few Malkovich comments and at this point am not sure Iā€™d have anything reasonable to add in a review. There would be a lot of ā€œI remember thinking very hard here, no idea how I got it so wrong.ā€ One point is that the opponent following me seemed much stronger except in 6 vs. 5, which made that one uniquely interesting. In that game I tried to always give the more complicated move to @Gia, hope she appreciated it! :smiling_face:

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Yes, itā€™s the same in the app and I had to do this more or less on every move but for a normal (fast correspondence) game I can usually recall the last few moves just on seeing the board so donā€™t get this kind of disjointed sensation and need to check back and catch up each time.

Certainly this is true! Although I also feel that my OGS rank is not really a reflection of my ā€œtrueā€ strength/ability but is somewhat inflated so had a constant sense that I would be letting you down!

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Congratulations to :1st_place_medal: Team 2 (@martin3141 and @Conrad_Melville) for winning the 1st Ogf Rengo 19x19 Tournament, and undefeated if I may add!

Well played :2nd_place_medal: Team 3 (@jlt and @yebellz)!

Third place :3rd_place_medal: goes to Team 1 (@a8090 and @OnoKakafeniks)!

Teams 4 (@_Sofiam and @proxy1), 5 (@teapoweredrobot and @Feijoa) and 6 (@ Jon_Ko and @ Gia) share the dubious honor of not getting into one of the first 3 places :slight_smile: .

Thank you all for playing and making this a successful tournament, and special thanks to my team mate for being so cool :+1:.

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Please kibitz away :smiley: .

I would love to see this tournament become a tradition! :heart:

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Special mention, because thereā€™s a limit of 10 mentions per post. Thanks, partner. :slight_smile:

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And big thanks to @Gia for organizing this!

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Thank you too, it was my first rengo and really fun!

I think I should be able to offer some useful insights for you, so let me know if you want to investigate anything in particular.

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Thank you for organizing this @Gia, It was a lot of fun!

Looking forward to the next one! :grin:

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Other than my usual problems (life and death), I think I struggled specifically with following up urgent moves. I couldnā€™t find the proper move, so I thought I could try forcing an opponent move and bring back the proper move to your turn. But, more often than not, I chose some really bad exchanges.

I think rengo has the unique advantage of forcing players to read the current board, instead of getting stuck to their strategy from previous moves. As in ā€œnow the board is what it is, how should I respond?ā€ My humble opinion is that it could do wonders for someoneā€™s reading abilities. Iā€™m not yet ready to learn that lesson, it seemsā€¦

I welcome and appreciate all comments :slightly_smiling_face:.

(I donā€™t usually review rengo games, because I canā€™t bring myself back to my thinking when it was my turn, but honestly I believe Iā€™m missing out and I should definitely do that from now on)

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I havenā€™t looked at all the games, but I thought you did an excellent job of holding up your end of the team. I kept waiting for some bad moves to help us out, but they were very few. I thought we would lose for more than half the game, and I still donā€™t know how we won.

I have been saying in other threads that I think rengo is even better than a teaching game, but I couldnā€™t pinpoint the reason why. You have put your finger on the reason. Thanks.

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For reference: Game 1, Game 2, Game 3, Game 4, Game 5

Okay, hereā€™s a tsumego I think you might be able to solve. Itā€™s from Game 4 (our game against team 4). Black to play:
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Then there was a 60 points mistake regarding the life and death of our group on the right side in Game 1, but white didnā€™t answer perfectly, so we could save the group and only lost 10 points. It was a complicated position, so I just want to say, that O15 only connected three stones, but didnā€™t build an eye.

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Apart from those I didnā€™t notice any mistakes, which means everything else was at least okay regarding life and death. :slightly_smiling_face:

I can only guess which moves you meant as (what Iā€™d like to call) rengo threats, so if you want to discuss some of them, feel free to point them out. But I did write down some forcing moves today, which you couldā€™ve played but didnā€™t. I can disclose them if you want, but I wonā€™t do it now, in case you want to find them by yourself. Most of them are ataris.

Further I went ahead and categorized some of your moves regarding:

Other categories I might look into are proverbs, shape, small gote moves and endgame. Those may even be more important for you, but the moves above (aside the joseki mistakes) were really surprising to me (I tend to die big instead of not cutting or giving up on cutting stones), so I focused on them first.

I hope you can get something out of all this, but donā€™t try to understand or fix it all at once, that would most likely be too much to handle.

Edit: I removed two moves from the categorization, because I forgot about removing them when OGF tricked me into rewriting the post.

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I guess I should take up chess. :stuck_out_tongue:

seriously though:

For the first tsumego, O19 seems obvious but I have trouble visualizing the continuation, so I donā€™t know. Iā€™ll work on it and try to ā€œseeā€ it.

The second one, I checked the AI sequence but I donā€™t know whatā€™s going on, they seem so random to me. My thought process was basically ā€œif itā€™s all connected somehow it will be a big dragon that wonā€™t dieā€, iirc. I couldnā€™t see (and still canā€™t, tbh) the eye space, is AI suggesting to connect underneath and find the eyes near the border?

Iā€™ll look into the mistakes one by one tomorrow, probably (oh boy thatā€™s a lot), but I think this whole category

is basically bad reading. I canā€™t see the continuation. I really need to work on that.

Note: Maybe not important, but I havenā€™t watched pro/ dan/ tournament game commentaries lately and I think my games have been getting worse. Until I can improve on doing it on my own, it really helps my brain to keep visualizations fresh if I see other people do it live (not just as a variation).

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I know that it looks like I donā€™t, but I really do read all the reviews, and the comments, and the suggestions that come my way. I deeply appreciate the effort that goes into replying to me, looking into my moves and my games and taking the time to help me. :heart:

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Thereā€™s a possibility for an eye near the border, yes, but as I said, itā€™s complicated. At that point in the game (before O15) I donā€™t even see a safe way to live myself, just enough aji to stay hopeful. I just wanted to show you that after O15, R15 black doesnā€™t have two eyes, because there is no eye at P15. If you can see that, thatā€™s enough for that position. What we shouldā€™ve done earlier in the game was play a certain move, which I think I didnā€™t play because I wanted you to have it as a rengo threat, but Iā€™m not sure.

You can look at them on one day to see the pattern, but looking into all of them (as in trying to figure out why they are mistakes) on one day is a lot. Maybe three moves are enough for one day, maybe even one move, depends on how much time it takes you to analyze (and maybe discuss) one move.

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About cuts: yes, some of the moves pointed out by Jon Ko need a little reading, but some moves should be ā€œobviousā€, like responding to an atari. I know that responding to an atari is not always correct, but if the result is that by capturing a black stone, White gets a ponnuki (=30 points) and connects a weak group with another, then Black should save the stone.

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