OGS Team League game reviews

@bugcat

I’ll use this thread for writing a couple of comments on the opening of your game yesterday.

Move 7

(double star point extention from 4-4) - In this setup, after white invades 3-3 black can’t utilise both extentions ideally. Instead approaching the top-left corner is good - perhaps a high approach is consistent with a moyo strategy.

Move 37

In the game the push with D7 showed your desire for going for the center, but it became difficult to make all black stones work together, as the three black stones in the top-left were somewhat weakened.

Blocking with A is big here. If black gets to play B, there is a nice moyo on the bottom side. However if white prevents this, they will incur a local loss when black pushes in with 1 and plays the hane with 3.

Move 39

According to AI blocking with A is still best, but lets ignore that and go for the center. The move in the game, marked with X, creates an enclosure that is full of cutting points. In my experience such a move is not very suited to build a resilient moyo (there are of course exceptions, but basically black needs to be strong nearby).

Instead how about pushing directly with B, or the keima with C?

Move 43 has a similar problem as move 39 in my opinion. It leaves white a cut to work with. Instead the keima is solid.

As a general note, I liked your cosmic style opening to create a setting that perhaps your opponent is less experienced with. But you spent a lot of time early on, which your opponent deliberately used to their advantage (they even commented on this in the Malkovich). It is possible that Notbiased used your time to think, then played their responses to your moves fast to put you under more time pressure.

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