I am trying to improve my play, currently playing around 20-25 kyu on OGS and GoQuest
On my recent game I have accounted several situations, which I do not fully understand
On the top right corner I tried playing joseki. However, as I see, the 9x9 games are highly territory oriented, so the joseki do not work as expected. Is this right understanding? Are hoshi moves on 9x9 disadvantageous because of 3-3 invasion easily steals the corner?
Another thing, from AI analysis, white led most of the game, but after move 26 black gained much points. I feel like white won just because black made a mistake in the life-and-death problem in corner and made it possible to kill the group. But are there any major mistakes white made? I think the 18 turn (capture) was unnecessary and I could instead strengthen wall by F5.
And the last thing - I played several 13x13 games and now I feel 9x9 as much different game. Concepts like influence and joseki are not applicable, it mostly feels like reading and experience are more important. I was recommended to play 9x9 until I reach 12-15 kyu, and now wonder if it would be a mistake playing 13x13 instead? I solve pretty much of tsumego and do read books (like graded go problems), but often do not have more than 10-15 minutes for a single game.
Otherwise it doesn’t matter what board size you play, 9x9 or 13x13, except that if you only have 10-15 minutes and want to play 13x13 then you need fast time settings.
Hi, great post! I think you are really on the right track with your analysis.
In brief I wouldn’t say hoshi is bad on the 9x9 because the center is so important. If you get a big wall around the corner you may actually be able to take the whole rest of the board. 3-5, 4-5-, and 5-5 are all good openings on 9x9. It is very different from 13x13 and 19x19.
Personally I don’t think you need to restrict yourself to 9x9, I think you can improve more by playing different sizes and especially 19x19.
Josekis are recognized fair patterns elaborated usually on 19x19 boards. They have to be carefully exported from 19x19 to 9x9, which behave more like a huge corner as a set made of corners, sides and center. 4x4 is a playable starting stone, you may find a bit of opening catalog in the OGS resources.
I will second everyone’s advice, you are indeed looking at this in the correct way and you are on the path of improvement if you follow the good habit of reviewing your games and seeking advice.
The only thing I have to add is on the quoted part: a) Do not feel restricted/disuaded from playing on larger boards. There is a significant amount of Go players that never really started on smaller boards or do not play there at all and immediately started learning on 19x19 boards. That has also been my experience and it worked well.
b) If time is of the essense, you could consider playing correspondence games with the analysis tool enabled. This way you can think over moves for a longer period of time, there is no “time anxiety” and you can use the analysis tool to try out variations or deep explorations of moves to see if they work or not. It is a great learning tool which cannot practically be used on shorter time settings (because you will lose from time, if you do so).
On this particular game and question, I’d say that 4-4 is too high for a 9x9 board:
Black has profit in the corners, you have played for influence, but there is no “middle part of the board” in 9x9.
This is fine for the 19x19 board because you invite black to invade and you gain more influence “outside”, but there is no such space here.
For example, from move 15 and onwards Black can just play even passive moves and do nothing else and still win, because the wall you built has nowhere to expand towards.:
White now has influence towards the outside (the arrows), but Black has sente, A and B are serious threats against White and any expansion that White’s influence allows for is already towards the stones that Black has sitting safely in the 3-3 of the corners.
Again, even with passive moves, Black comes out easily ahead:
It does indeed, but I didn’t even consider life and death and points at that moment.
I just played things out to complete the walls and enhance the previous point that influence isn’t as useful on the 9x9 board. The game is played at 25k, so I was thinking that showing the basics comes first, sort of thing.
If I had to play that game after those first moves, I’d probably opt for that:
It is not an easy/clean kill, for sure… I can definitely say that I’ve lost games in fights like these, in 19x19 boards, and there are usually fewer significant ko threats on a 9x9 board. I am notoriously bad at this.
…and since I’ve never really considered playing these moves (they are overplays imho), I had never realised how terrible this situation is. I cannot make this live, at all. Even with 5 at h5, I can’t find a solution.
Very nice! Thank you for pointing it out.
With the marked White stone in position, extending is a mistake and potentially only the diagonals or the cut might lead to something profitable/viable:
All three seem interesting, but which is best (or if any of them are also leading to dangerous traps), I have no clue at the moment. This is why Go is so cool.
