I am new to Go and am struggling a little bit about scoring. I lost this game with 12 captures under Japanese rules. I used my stones to defend and capture in my territory but then it appears they counted against my territory. What can I do to understand this and prevent a loss similar in the future
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At this stage, you can pass. No need to remove the white stones from the board. The marked stones are dead, they are already Black’s prisoners. So each of the marked stones represents one point for Black. If Black plays D4 then Black loses 1 point since Black gets 1 less point of territory.
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You’ve probably heard this before, but at least for me it took a long time to really grasp it, but the stones played inside your territory end up cancelling out with the prisoners your opponent put there. It happens to work out exactly this game, that the result under area scoring or territory scoring would be the same
Note: jlt addressed this point in his above post
Up to this point, I think Black has been too passive. I really liked 4-2 (simple and solid), but the high-level idea is that Black should have pressed white a bit more on the bottom half: once the territory is split in two so peacefully, komi is heavy
I would be feeling something like this instead of 5-4, but maybe I’m being overaggressive
I would be looking to hane at the head of 2 and 3 on these moves
Here Black has the opportunity to turn at the head of 2, which is even better
Here it’s no longer a proverb move, but it is better endgame. If it plays out like this, just taking slightly less passive endgame, Black should win comfortably
To bring it back to the main point, Black in 9x9 generally needs to mix things up in order to overcome komi, and so should be on the lookout for ways to get more than just a nice peaceful split. Probably noticing just one of these opportunities could have drastically shifted the outcome
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Thank you both. That was very helpful in understanding the scoring better and to remind me to play more aggressively as black in 9x9.
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It’s not that much about aggressivity, it’s more about to look each move and play the biggest one on the full board. To keep distance from it, not just following your opponent.
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