Test your positional judgment

I’m intrigued by the potential learning benefits of submitting this partially complete game to an AI like AI-Sensei, directing it to play as white and completely outclass me.
Then, I’d reset to the same half-finished point and repeat this process until I glance at the starting position and unmistakably perceive white’s formidable strength, confidently affirming, ‘Yes, yes, white is clearly ahead.’

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Ah, I misread it

Originally I came to the same conclusion when seeing the life and death issue in the corner. Adding the stone changes the position a lot.

It was a very interesting position, and fun to have these types of group puzzles in the forum encouraging everyone to learn from too (now we have a tesuji thread and positional judgement problems - cool ! :slight_smile:), thanks for posting it, jlt ! ^^

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Thanks for posting such an interesting position!

As well as the whole board judgement, KataGo showed me an interesting point of technique.

temp

Instead of just living at ‘a’, black should exchange ‘b’ for ‘c’ first. (If white doesn’t reply to ‘b’, then black doesn’t need to make eyes in the corner, because black ‘c’ will capture some stones.) This means white can’t squeeze the same way, so now the position evaluates to about B+3 (assuming it’s with komi) instead of W+5.

I think this is an example of the proverb force before defending.

But still the point remains: the game isn’t over just because 20+ stones got captured.

SGF for anyone else who wants to ask their local AI (this is the position a move earlier with black to play: add a stone at ‘a’ or ‘b’ to your taste):

(;GM[1]FF[4]SZ[19]
PL[B]
AB[dp][kh][kj][kl][km][lf][lh][lm][mg][mj][mk][mm][mo][mp][nd][nf][nn][no][nr][of][og][oh][ol][on][op][oq][or][pm][pn][pq][qd][qf][qg][qh][qi][qj][qn][qp][rc][rd][re][rk][rl][rq][rr][sm][sp]
AW[dd][fq][jk][jl][jm][kd][kn][kq][le][ln][lp][mc][me][mf][mq][mr][nc][ng][nh][ni][nj][nk][nl][np][nq][oi][ok][oo][pc][pd][pe][pf][pj][po][qc][qe][qk][ql][qm][qo][qr][rm][rn][ro][rp][so]
)
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