I’ve just returned to Go after a 10 year break and I was hoping someone would be kind enough to review a game I played yesterday. I was around 12k when I quit the game but I’m not sure of my strength now–I remember a lot of the major concepts and strategies but my fighting skills and joseki knowledge are incredibly rusty.
I’m not very comfortable playing white and I think a mistake I made was not playing aggressively enough, and conceding a large amount of center influence for a small number of points on the corners and sides. I’d be interested to hear any feedback the community would be kind enough to share.
Thanks!
Game link:
Bonus game:
I played another game today where I think I did a little better, although I’d love some feedback if anyone is willing to review Thanks!
I’m back into it after a longish break as well. Things have changed since 10 years ago. There are now strong bots that will happily analyze your game for you. I used this one: http://ns1297.imingo.net
I tried to give you some ideas here. https://online-go.com/review/312462 It is very crude, as I am tired this evening, but your request was just so nice that I wanted to give back at least something
I will try to revisit the review tomorrow evening if I remember
But so far I would say your summary was quite fair. You played extremely defensively in the opening. That is not to say that you need to be aggresive in go, but a balance is important. You cannot win a fight just by blocking. SENTE is very important! you only kept responding to your opponents moves to an extreme degree. And once you finally had sente you immediately spend it on a needless move inside your own territory just to lose it again. And when you finally decided to try and do something about your opponents huge moyo, it was just too solidified to do anything anymore.
There were a lot of fights that could have gone better, but I would not care much about that for now. Reading will come naturally, but it is the ideas about the moves that need to make sense. Especially if the board position favours the opponent you need to try and do something, not just protect that what is not enough to win anyway. So a lot of a later part of my review is just commenting “slow” on moves, which I feel was indeed the major issue. Cherish sente and try play bigger moves when you can (when there is nothing urgent).
Sorry again for the crude review, hopefully, someone will try to pitch in and best of luck in future games
Thanks AdamR, I really appreciate the review. I see what you’re saying about a lot of the plays being slow and how it put me at a significant disadvantage in the early game. I’m going to work through this review a couple more times and incorporate your feedback into my games going forward. As I play more games I’m already getting a better sense of how far out I can play without over-extending (I was obviously very cautious in this and earlier games).
Thanks again for your time, this was very helpful!
Thanks!
