This game is over! Teaching Game
Review was in a private conversation:
[22:33] mark5000: For starters, you could have fixed the wedge right after one-point jumping. The AI suggests some good moves, but they’re all around your weak group rather than defending points on the right side. Now, that’s not coincidental. Defending a weakness is often more valuable than territorial plays. It’s the difference between urgent and big.
[22:40] mark5000: This principle also relates to your question about reducing. Since you made a weak group, reinforcing it is never wrong, especially if you can keep breaking in at the same time. Instead of that, you switched to the upper side. This stone was weak, and the stones below it are weak as I mentioned. So you doubled your weak groups with that move. I gave you some chances to fix it. But when you played for territory at r17, I could play between them and make something happen.
[22:44] mark5000: One solution is to secure your weaknesses before making another. But the more basic principle is to prefer reinforcing your weaknesses over taking territory. Doing this is hard for kyu players in my experience. You need to consider weak groups as liabilities and assign them some negative point value in your mind. Or credit some extra points to your opponent. The reason for this should be clear enough. But in case it isn’t clear, weaknesses invite attacking, and you can’t make territory while run
[22:44] mark5000: ning away.
[22:46] mark5000: So that’s my advice to you: Prioritize tactics to stabilize or destabilize stones more than you prioritize territorial grabs. Trust that having a more powerful position will let you make up the points later, and then some.
[22:51] mark5000: Be sure to do this in the opening, too. You lost many points early by playing joseki-ish moves like r14, r5, r3, and r7 when other plays were semi-urgent. Try to notice that.
November 22, 2021
[21:59] mukashi_mariner: That “urgent play” was filling the hole you left at D16, right?
[22:00] mukashi_mariner: And thanks for the pointers on stability of stones! I never quite thought of joseki moves in terms of “territory”, but it certainly makes sense that ignoring joseki in favor of group weakness is the right thing to do
[22:00] mukashi_mariner: Joseki are just standard moves; if we’re doing a non-fighting joseki, they are probably not as urgent as a fight elsewhere
[22:01] mukashi_mariner: Thanks also for the suggestion of penalizing myself for weaknesses! That’s a good tactic to build fundamentals
[22:29] mark5000: Yes, I think you’re on the right track now 