So, before I went to bed yesterday, I felt like messing around a little with go and started a 9x9 game against Cosumi, which I ended up playing about halfway through and then left and went to sleep. Here’s where I left the board; I have the black stones and it’s my move:
When I went to sleep, I felt like I was in a decent position here and might be able to make it to a win. However, I’ve tried playing around with it some on a separate board today, and I’ve realized that actually it’s maybe better for White than it is for Black.
My stones are rather concentrated in the center, so even though they’re pretty strong there, White has a larger area of influence I think and more opportunities for developing further territory. Also, it’s kind of hard to attack White’s groups and come out on top; their proximity to the edge gives them a lot of ways to live and you can get into dangerous situations if you overextend yourself in those places trying to kill them. I’ve found routes of attack that work pretty well, but they still end up with a win for White because at best we end up about equal in territory and then White ekes out a win on komi.
I’m still a beginner so there may be (almost certainly are) important possibilities I’m missing here. So, I feel like this might be an opportunity for me to learn something valuable. What might you do in this situation if you were playing Black?
At beginner level, black may well be able to win from this position. But in the hands of stronger players, I suspect black would need white’s help.
9x9 games are quite unforgiving. It’s hard to recover from 1 or 2 mistakes early on in the game.
So I think a better question to ask would be: “What did black do wrong earlier to end up in this disadvantageous situation?”.
For such analysis, we’d need to see the whole game record, not a screenshot of just a single position. It should be possible to download the game record (SGF) from Cosumi.
Okay, here it is: You vs. COSUMI . I guess I should note too, this game was actually without komi but I wasn’t able to find a way to win even given that, at least playing both sides myself on a separate board. I would definitely appreciate any advice! I’ve done okay so far playing 9x9 against people on here, but against Cosumi I don’t think I’ve won even a single time—maybe once but I’m not sure, and definitely not any more that that.
Looking at it right now, I feel like maybe I start to become overconcentrated with move 7? Move 9 seems maybe kind of useless to me right now, also. I think I was aiming to take control of the upper right corner but now that seems like a pretty weak way of trying to do that.
I’d call move 7 (D6) “passive”, not “overconcentrated”. The same can be said about move 3 and perhaps even move 5.
I think move 8 (by white) was a mistake, allowing black to attack the upper-right severely (perhaps even kill it). White should have defended their upper-right group with move 8.
Black tried to attack it (which was good), but move 9 (F8) and follow-up move 11 (E7) wasn’t really attacking from the right direction[*], and the execution wasn’t quite right either, so white ended up living comfortably and black fell behind.
I think black should have attacked more forcefully by restricting white’s eye space in the upper-right so severely that it could well end up dead (thus turning the whole upper right area into black territory), for example by playing move 9 at G6.
After this attack failed (we’re at move 14 now), all groups were basically settled, so it’s more or less endgame now, with white having a territorial lead.
Black still tried something with move 15 (C4), but that didn’t really improve things for black, so white expanded their lead by move 18 (the last move of the game).
All in all, I think black played a bit too passively, focusing too much on keeping all their stones connected.
It is important to avoid getting cut to pieces, but keep in mind that go is ultimately about securing parts of the board as your territory, and do that at least as efficiently as your opponent.
Playing too cautiously may well lead to not having enough points to win. But you need experience to properly judge when it’s time for defence and when it’s time for offence (and also how to do that), so it’s not easy to strike the right balance as a beginner.
[*] In general you don’t want to attack from a direction where you’re already quite strong. You’d rather want to attack from a direction where you’re less strong to hopefully build some strength where you didn’t have much of it yet.
Thanks so much for this detailed analysis, it’s really helpful!
Mmm, I see. Earlier today I definitely felt like I maybe could’ve started off a little more stridently in retrospect looking over the game, because I started thinking about 19x19 corner joseki and how they generally seem to involve an attachment within moves like 1–5 and often kind of have the quality of a fight from like the first move on. I was kind of thinking about how like, 9x9 in a way is kind of like “one big corner” from the 19x19 perspective, even though obviously the presence of the sides changes tactics in places. So like, it’s maybe more helpful to look at it kind of from the logic of 19x19 corner joseki, especially in the early game, even if you can’t necessarily apply any them directly because the center of gravity and the presence of the close-in sides and so on are all different.
Like, I think that helps explain why tengen is a reasonable starting move for black even if you would never start in the center in 19x19; it’s more like playing 4-4 in 19x19, as if the area where you do that becomes the entire playfield. Also, it’s kind of like white “has nothing to do but invade black’s corner”; like, they can’t opt to play very far away from black by 19x19 standards, so it’s like a corner invasion by white from move 1 no matter what they do.
Also, responding to the other aspect of what you said there, maybe in a way it’s kind of hard to truly be overconcentrated in 9x9? I guess it’s kind of possible, but maybe not to the extent it is in 19x19.
Yeah, okay, that makes sense. I felt the same way actually, so I guess I’m glad that I had that instinct even if I didn’t act from it in the most effective way in practice. I’ve learned something at least
Yeah, I just wasn’t really sure what would make for the best attack I guess.
Thanks for noting this! That’s really helpful advice for me. I’ve heard this a little bit recently in Marianna Szychowiak’s game reviews on YouTube, she emphasizes that point at times, but I’ve found it a little hard to know how to apply, so it’s great to have a specific example from one of my own games of where I could’ve done that.
I’m still a little underconfident in “the power of a single stone” I feel like I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently when I watch games by dan-level players. Sometimes they’ll launch invasions that look “unprotected and deep in enemy territory” to me and come out very well from it, just because they can build something faster than their opponent can stop them (and/or because they also give their opponent other things to worry about). I’m a little afraid of getting shredded into pieces trying things like that, but I’ve seen it work in more experienced hands so I know it’s at least possible I should probably just get out of my comfort zone a little and try things like that more. I do sometimes dwell on how “a single stone can have 4 liberties and thus can take 4 moves to kill, and therefore has a certain strength…” I think I just need to gain a better feel for what that means in practice, maybe.
Aaah, I see! Honestly I feel like this gives me a bit of an epiphany. In cases like this, oftentimes I’ve just thought about something like white’s group there as “this group could conceivably live” and “maybe if I restrict their territory it will get harder for them to live”. However, clearly it’s worth thinking about how easily the group can live, and even though I’m sort of familiar with thinking like that, you can get even more specific and think of all the different ways the group could make eyes. If you eliminate even some of those possibilities with the next move, you might be able to then eliminate more with the next move, etc. etc., until eventually the group is for sure dead.
I kind of know this way of thinking already from tsumego, but with tsumego I’m often thinking more just in terms of like “where are the vital points right now” or things like that; I’ve done some that have long sequences of moves where you head off eyes in various places of course, but even then I think I’ve thought more along the lines of like “how do you stop the opponent from forming two eyes in the next three moves” or w/e, just like strung together in a sequence of 12 moves or the like with repeated questions like that, not something so distant and high-level as this game scenario. Still, you can apply the same type of thinking here!
So, all of that is to say, I think I see what you’re getting at with your recommendation. G6 for move 9 is one of the places where white could make an eye using that single stone at G7, and it also helps me considerably to gain territory in that area of the board. My move at E7 didn’t have any direct effect in reducing white’s eye space there, and my move at F8 didn’t do much for me in territory terms (which I guess is what I was trying to get at earlier when I called it “pretty weak”).
Ah, okay, so you wouldn’t call this “midgame-ish”. I was kind of wondering that…I wasn’t entirely confident in referring to it as “midgame” myself (hence the “-ish”).
I think I was hoping to try taking more territory in the upper-left instead and cut off white’s stone at C5, but when I tried playing out scenarios where I took that further earlier today, I found that I could do that if I tried hard enough but it didn’t end up actually netting me enough territory in the end; it lets white take too much control elsewhere and involves a few sacrifices etc. so it’s just not worth it on the balance, at least from what I found.
You gave me some really helpful tips actually! I mean, not to say I won’t keep making mistakes like this but I already feel like I understand how to actually make an attack somewhat better now, which should help me play less passively. Obviously sometimes it’s advantageous to play passively, but I’m obviously a little timid at the moment when I do decide it’s time to attack, which is something I could stand to work on. At least where 9x9 is concerned specifically also, I feel like I have a better idea of the (very high) tempo it’s necessary to keep up in order to win, where the early game is over by moves like 5–10 and the midgame by moves like 15–20 (such that if you have an advantage in territory by then you’ve probably won, barring any serious blunders on your part after that).
Indeed. Tsumego often involves vital points, but in a real game, attacking (and possibly killing) a group does not start with playing a vital point inside the target group. It usually requires preliminary tactics:
Separate the target from the herd
Ensure it has no escape route
Reduce its potential eye space
Play a vital point if needed
Many newer players get this order wrong, for example playing a phase-4 tactic prematurely, only to see the target slip away comfortably. I suppose this could happen when they’re doing lots of tsumego practice without actually playing lots of games as well.
Maybe I wasn’t off the mark today after all.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently when I watch games by dan-level players. Sometimes they’ll launch invasions that look “unprotected and deep in enemy territory” to me and come out very well from it, just because they can build something faster than their opponent can stop them (and/or because they also give their opponent other things to worry about). I’m a little afraid of getting shredded into pieces trying things like that, but I’ve seen it work in more experienced hands so I know it’s at least possible