Thanks for the comments. I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing then, which is pulling interesting positions from pro games being discussed on Asian Go news sites and broadcasts. Speaking of which, this recent board should look familiar to you all.
I looked at a range of moves but the best ideas seemed to be either H14 to sacrifice the weak stones and make a huge moyo, or G11 for a running fight. I’d go for H14, the words of Honinbo Jowa ringing in my head (blast this tinnitus): “Running groups away will make you cowardly… if you have invaded too deeply, you must sacrifice your stones.”
I tried to make it by head this time (cause I’m mostly playing blitz and correspomdance and found out that on normal game, I’m having more and more difficulty to read 4-5 moves keeping in mind the first move of the sequence…)
Maybe people don’t want to post their review? I know I usually want to delete mine after I look at LZ’s analysis btw it must be hard for the pros too, LZ didn’t seem very impressed by their moves.
Would it work better with a separate thread for each game?
The pro move here is well-known, and contributed to Sakata Eio’s reputation as “Razor sharp.” I ran it through some LeelaZero after concluding my analysis, and the AI thought it was 5% worse than my path for reasons I still don’t understand well.
It seemed to me that White’s bottom group has to make an undignified exit to safety on the second line / first line and then try to live with the centre group under pressure. I tried sacrificing half the group for influence but if Black wasn’t passive enough then it wasn’t enough compensation.
I took a fairly long time over it, about an hour. I made the status of the top right corner to be
Summary
that White has to play a two-step ko in order to kill Black.
I considered immediately fixing the aji in the top right but that seemed unreasonable as White had already concentrated his forces so much there. I also had some ideas of
Summary
living in the lower right corner (didn’t seem possible), sacrificing the stone there (perhaps sometime but not immediately), and making a cut to introduce aji for later (seemed reasonable.)
The first move I instinctively wanted to play was
Summary
G4, strengthening the K4 stones whilst weakening Black’s stone. However, I didn’t like the variation from Black’s response H5 which saw White sealed into the side.
The final move I examined was
Summary
the one I was happiest with: the same idea but a line higher, at G5. It appeared to be harder to push White down, and if Black took the base at H3 then White had a series of forcing moves to gain robust shape and even finish in sente.