Underscore_Underscore vs. acabodeempezar

Hello everyone! I’m kinda new to this game and looking to improve. I would like to know what things I could/should do better or things I don’t do at all that I don’t do.

Thanks in advance. :slight_smile:

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Well, this should keep you busy for a while. :grinning:

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Hi, at your level, I would recommend to just play a lot: you first need to get a bit of a feel for the game before any real advice will start to make a lot of sense. Nevertheless here are some of the things that you could work on based on the game you played.

  • Atari: make sure your stones can’t be captured immediately on the next move. Be very careful with any group of stones that has only two liberties. There’s only one way to learn to recognise stones in atari, and that’s by practicing a lot, so once again: play a lot of games. It probably helps to focus on the 9x9 board, where fighting is more important than on 13x13.

  • Your first two moves are great: they’re placed in the corners, while your opponent made the mistake of playing in the centre and then at the side. It’s easier to make territory in the corner, than on the sides, and easier on the sides than in the centre (this is especially true on 19x19, but is also good advice for 13x13). So, when your opponent did not try to play in the other two corners, I’d suggest you put a stone there for yourself before worrying about whatever white is doing.

  • Your third move looks greedy: white gets between your stones, and you attach to it as if you’re trying to kill it. Sadly (or gladly, if the roles are reversed) Go doesn’t work like that. You’ll have to learn that your opponent is entitled to their own territory. If they play on the side in between your stones? No big deal, just take territory elsewhere! The whole left side of the board is still empty, why not make territory there?

  • Finally, attaching to your opponent’s stones is often a bad idea. By attaching, you remove one liberty of your opponent’s stone, but you also lose a liberty of your own stone, and your opponent’s turn is next, so they get compensation and you’re immediately at a disadvantage. Try attacking your opponent by playing at a bit of a distance (1 or 2 gaps in between). It will also be more difficult for your opponent to separate your stones like that. This also holds for your own stones: if you keep all your stones connected, they’re strong and safe, but you’ll also be very slow in claiming territory (usually too slow, in fact). To summarise: only connect your stones when trying to stay alive, and try jumping when surrounding territory / your opponent.

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For now, the basics of connection and life will be the most help. You have several places early in the game where you play moves that create bad cuts that end up costing you. Then, in the late game, you become timid about being cut and play a bunch of moves connecting things that were already connected. You also spend a few moves capturing groups of dead stones, which would’ve cost you what should’ve been a very close game. You lost the corner because you similarly created a false eye with a disconnected stone instead of a true eye.

Some of this is just a result of being new. Self-atari is a bad habit that most people grow out of fairly quickly, but bad connections haunt people well up into the single digit kyu ranks. Everything doesn’t need to be solid chains of stones, but you should read up on double atari, table shape, bamboo joint, mouth shape, and tiger’s mouth and try to look for them in your games.

The other thing that will come with a lot of that is figuring out what the big moves on the board are. A lot of times, you were attacking things that were alive or defending things that didn’t need defending when big parts of the board were wide open. Learning what’s alive and what’s connected and trying to figure out what’s big will be very helpful.

I also left a review on your game with a few notes, but as everyone else said, playing lots of games is the best thing to do when you’re first starting out.

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