Had a horrible game, want a review

Had a game I lost horribly, could use a review on general concepts and obvious things. https://online-go.com/game/view/29057112

You met a fighting opponent.
The big issue I see is that you let too many of your groups die.

Advanced players love to play elsewhere (tenuki) whenever they can. But at beginning is better to play safe and take care of your groups until they are “alive enough”.
That doesn’t mean necessarily to draw two eyes for each group. But if you don’t already have eyespace, you need at least a way out.

Even better if you have both: try to surround a sufficient area to make two eyes while still avoiding to be completely surrounded by your opponent.

If you can’t have that, then settle your groups before going away.

Fighting players can be confusing, but usually they leave a lot of weaknesses behind them. If you play solid first, you can exploit those weaknesses later. You must be in good health to attack and win, so drink your milk, eat your vegetables and settle your groups before kicking your opponent’s ass! :wink:

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Easier said than done :stuck_out_tongue:

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I always get really confused playing against aggressive fighting opponents in particular. This gives me some guidelines on how to deal with them, at a lot of points I wasn’t sure if some moves warranted a response from me or the purpose of some of my opponents’ moves. Thanks for the advice, I’ll evaluate the strength of my groups before finding the next big point. I’m not great at evaluating group strength, either my own or my opponent’s.

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I’ll try do a review later on if someone doesn’t beat me to it :slight_smile:

Lys had some great advice above. However, unless you have a good understanding of

  • how to use sente and gote to assess the current danger level
  • how to settle your stones
  • how to tell if your frameworks are “settled enough” or “alive enough” to make living shapes down the road
    you’ll have a difficult time following that advice in the course of a game.

If you have time, I encourage you to read through this 19x19 FOR BEGINNERS series that I’ve been working on, that tries to examine these concepts. The goal is to help beginners learn the language of the game, and be able to read the risk and opportunity which is implicit in the position of the stones at any point in the game (i.e. is it time to attack? is it time to defend? is it time to tenuki? are my stones settled? is my group in danger? if it’s my turn to attack, where is the biggest point on the board? etc).

It seems like you’ve already got a good handle on the overall game, so I say skip the INTRO article, and move on to Part 1: Sente and Gote. You’ll links to the 2nd article at the bottom of the 1st one, and so on, etc.

Good luck!

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