Greetings everyone, I’ve lurked on this forum for some time and now want to get involved in the conversation! Thanks for all the knowledge, opinions, and personality that you’ve shared so far!
Here’s a game I (5k, white) recently played with StanRay9 (3k, black):
My gloss on the match is below. I’m bringing this one in particular to you fine people because of the dramatic sequence that took place towards the end (Moves ~118–130) and I am curious how other players interpret this situation, and how they would play it. I suspect there could be some existing theoretical knowledge about this type of capturing race.
I’m certainly open as well to any other advice or thoughts about other parts of the game.
Let me just add that I am keen on playing teaching and learning games with players of any rank, particularly correspondence games with very slow timers to accommodate my erratic schedule and desire to sometimes ponder moves at length.
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The first 20 moves or so were not so extraordinary. Maybe it is notable that Stan on Move 19 extended his 3-3 stone in the upper right with a 4-4. I approached at a distance and in the resulting moves ended up with a great formation in the bottom of the board, while Stan was looking strong in the upper right. We each played another move in our strong areas and then I tried to move in (Move 32).
This invasion soon got pretty uncomfortable for me (white) and I’m curious how other people would have handled it. Nevertheless by Move 49 those white stones seem to be alive and I played G14 to break up the top left/middle. Here I think Stan really outplayed me and turned that extension into a heavy column that was flailing to connect on either side.
Move 84 was a small extension (trying to escape) which relied on the fact that, if black played F13, connecting at E14 would force black to play E15 and then give me an extra move. This was a mistake which Stan exploited well. KataGo also doesn’t like this move.
I then played L9, probably thinking I could continue to run with the upper-right group back to my base below. In hindsight this was a mistake as well since black cut logically with L11.
But then, with the bamboo joint and cut at J11 (Move 92), I thought I had redeemed myself and evened up the game a bit. (I am surprised to see now that KataGo doesn’t think so.) Suddenly it seemed possible to capture the black stones cutting my too big groups on the top, and thereby decide the game.
I closed in on the stones and everything seemed to be going well — they weren’t going to be able to make two eyes.
Then comes the sequence of critical moves (118–130) in which the left group is threatened and itself reduced to only one eye, so that it becomes impossible to capture the black stones in the middle. With the giant white group on the right cut off it is only a matter of time before both groups are captured.
Move 130 is the game-losing move according to KataGo. I must have thought I needed another stone to prevent that group from being captured immediately; in retrospect perhaps that’s not so and I could have lived if I had immediately played J9 or thereabouts.
Instead Stan got the first move to protect his enclosing group and the rest is history.