OGS Study Group - Board 15

I’m reading Alexander Kotov’s excellent book Think Like a Grandmaster, and it occurred to me that a lot of Go players also don’t know how to analyze variations systematically. Kotov describes a method where he would set up a complicated position, analyze all the variations, write them down, and then establish which of them deserved consideration within the demanding conditions of timed play, and which could be left out to save time. Normally a master decides this by intuition, but most of us have to develop our intuition. He developed his by practicing this method and then successfully tried out the same method in study groups, so I thought it would be fun to try it here.

Here are the rules:

If this sounds interesting to you, no matter what level you are, please practice with us on the position(s) below:

Current Position

Past Positions

Board 1
undefined vs. undefined (most analyses in forum comments)

Board 2
Xie Ke vs. Park Junghwan

Board 3
Chen Yaoye vs. Shin Jinseo

Board 4
Sakata Eio vs. Fujisawa Hideyuki

Board 5
Fujisawa Hosai vs. Fujisawa Shuko

Board 6
Shin Jinseo vs. Gu Zihao

Board 7
Park Jungwhan vs. Shin Minjun

Board 8
Na Hyun vs. Kim Cheayoung

Board 9
Shin Jinseo vs. Gu Zihao

Board 10
Mizutani Nuiji vs. Murase Shuho

Board 11
Shin Jinseo vs. Ke Jie

Board 12
Fujisawa Hideyuki vs. Sakata Eio

Board 13
Park Jungwhan vs. Ke Jie

Board 14
Shin Jinseo vs. Na Hyun

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Very nice, I enjoyed Kotov’s books on think, and play like a grandmaster.

Here’s my review for the position:

My initial analysis was pretty wrong. I added some joseki lines that I looked up when I was done studying on my own, as well as the game line with some comments (I looked it up when I was done with my self-review.)

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analyisis: https://online-go.com/demo/view/360275

that was really hard… and i dont doubt my analysis is quite wrong :laughing:.
i gave myself 25 mins, but found i was thinking about the resulting positions more than actually reading different variations :stuck_out_tongue:. in the analysis i stuck to my preselected moves (you could call it intuition) and didnt have time left to try others.
anyway, i found that 2 of my 4 initial ideas probably werent worth the trouble and i discarded a third after a bit more thought and wouldnt want to leave it out of consideration.


great idea btw :smiley:
count me in for the future, if there will be more.

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You already did a sgf! I used that one.
Thanks for starting that interesting topic

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Spoiler. Don’t read if you haven’t participated yet and want to.

One thing I noticed so far is that no one found the pro move n3. And no one found LeelaZero’s move j4. And no one found Zen’s move k4, which was also CrazyStone’s move. None of these got any consideration whatever. Everyone found l3, a move that LeelaZero thought was better than Zen’s k4, but everyone discarded it, with the possible exception of violaine who didn’t say one way or another.

I’ll write my own analysis in a few more days.

Spoiler. Don’t read if you haven’t participated yet and want to.

L3 did look possible to me, but a bit passive. I didn’t think of the bots moves, which put more pressure on b but same time leave more weaknesses. I got that direction to push b to the wall.

spoiler

Summary

Darned attachments ^^ … i havent really incorporated them into my play. seems like i should make an effort XD.

Here’s my analysis, but consider it more of a sample answer since I checked the answers beforehand and that affected my process. I’ll do my analysis first for any future positions.

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Summary

Why you don’t consider at all H5?

Response

The unhelpful answer is: intuition. The truer answer is that attaching would kill the aji there. I can’t exploit the weak connection later if I induce Black to fix it by attaching now.

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I peak up two variations:
*v2.sgf (1.1 KB)

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the question that they are not displaying correctly…

Board 2 is up. Please share your analysis if you want to practice with us.

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Here’s my thoughts:

I only found two candidate moves that I really cared for. I’m feeling more lost on this one than the first, probably a good indicator that I need to work my midgame skills, which I’ve known for a while…

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Thoughts

All I would really care about at this point is the balance of power in the lower left.

C9 is tempting as it prevents white eyes on the side, but then white can counter attack around F6. So I’d rather have it the other way around, pressure white from the outside and force a reply at C10.
I’d love to play G4 but I don’t see how black can resist a double hane. So I would take some distance and play H5.

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Here’s the full game, for anyone interested:

Don't peek before you analyze the position!

https://online-go.com/game/15763853

Park Junghwan has a very interesting and instructive style. As opposed to super sharp, super aggressive players like Mi Yuting, he tends to play very solid shapes, without many weaknesses. Unlike Lee Changho’s “play solidly and then win the endgame,” though, he takes his solid shapes and uses them to cut up his opponent’s groups, often starting big ko fights and winning them. His ko-fighting successes, of course, are in no small part due to the lack of ko-threatable weaknesses he tends to leave behind, compared to some of his opponents.

@ckersch88

just my 2 cents

I think the point of the exercise is not to reveal the pro move. @mark5000 will do it along with the analysis.

For the record it seems that the pro didn’t play the best move anyway.

another very hard problem :smiley:. its mazing how little time 20 minutes are… looking forward to viewing the other analysis everyone did.

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I know, but I was curious how the game played out :slight_smile:

It’s an interesting game, so I figure’d I’d share it in case anyone else wanted to take a look.