if you look at my last game i controlled the middle part of the board yet the other guy had over 90% control of the board at the end on review please could someone explain why this is ???
Can you link it here?
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Are you aware that a group which can’t make two eyes is generally dead?
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It’s easy to link a game here: just copy the address bar when you are on the game page and paste it here
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If you are referring to this game here:
You did not actually “control” the middle of the board. You have a single long group of stones in the middle, but those stones did not enclose any points of potential or territory. They didn’t surround anything. Yes, they did prevent White from being able to surround any territory along that line, but White had plenty of other places that it could control, and didn’t need your thin strip in the middle to win.
If you click the SCORE ESTIMATOR button on the right side, it will give you an estimate of what each side is likely to be able to surround given the current position. According to that estimate White is ahead by about 118.5 points
I’ve color coded the board below
The only 2 places where you have a good chance to enclose territory that White can’t take away from you are those two spots on the right side.
On the other hand White has huge chunks of the board on the bottom, left, and top sides which would be very difficult for Black to invade or take away. So yes, you might have been able to reduce a bit from that long group in the middle, but not enough to really tip the scales in your favor to any great degree.
So yes, it’s not about having stones in that particular part of the board. It’s all about how many empty points you can surround that your opponent can’t take away from you.
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Welcome, @dokbohm!
As you seem to be a newbie to Go, I wonder – are you aware of “Atari”?
In that game that @tonybe linked to, you ignored an Atari that you shouldn’t have ignored, because if W captured the endangered stone, it would immediately be another Atari on another stone.
And further … have you ever played through our nice interactive tutorial?
You can find it here: Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS
And then there’s Go Magic, which not only has great paid video courses but also lots of EXCELLENT FREE stuff for beginners:
This one with video also:
I strongly recommend playing through ALL these tutorials … they explain so much that you will be a few stones stronger afterwards … no more blunders of the kind you played in that there game, but NEW KINDS OF BLUNDERS like those all of us do here every day 
Wishing you lots of fun with learning,
Tom in Germany
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is this rating system here based on a bell curve or something like that? How many games won does it take to move from say 25k to 24 k is it a direct linear advancement or is it based on what others do in the bell curve? Sorry, but I’m new to this game as of this week and would like to understand how one advances..
OGS uses glicko2 rating system, so basically it takes into account the game outcome and the rating difference between you and your opponent, plus the uncertainty of your current ratings (and also whether game had handicaps or not)
So its impossible to say how many games it requites to rank up, that all depends on so many factors. If you win against people whose ratings are much higher than yours, you will rank up quite fast ^^
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Keep in mind OGS caps the kyu-level ranks at 25k. I see your Glicko rating is in the 200s, much lower than the 24k cutoff (~685), so it may take you some time to rank up.
You can play with OGS Rating Calculator to get a feel for how wins and losses will affect your rank.
A strong 25k (~655) could rank up to 24k (~685) in about 3 games, if winning against evenly matched opponents.
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I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but while you are just beginning to learn Go, I would strongly encourage you to do your best and try to ignore your rank for a while. Just keep playing ranked games with people close to your skill levels, and see if you can play some unranked teaching games with people willing to teach / mentor you
Imagine instead of Go you are trying to learn tennis. Most of the people you’re playing with are at about your level, and at this point - you are still unclear on the basic rules and win-conditions of tennis - like you don’t understand what shots are in-bounds and what shots are out-of-bounds, etc (in Go terms, this would be analogous to not understand what makes a living group, or how area scoring works, etc).
The thing is
- if you’re playing against someone else who also doesn’t understand the rules of tennis, then the outcome will be almost probabilistic - it’s whichever one of you ends up making the most mistakes throughout the game
- if you’re playing against someone just a tiny bit better - let’s say someone who understand what shots are in and out of bounds, then they’re very likely to win because you’re likely to make more mistakes than them
Unfortunately, neither of these scenarios actually leads you to learn or understand the rules of tennis any better. Just playing over and over will not do much for you - because if you don’t understand the rules of tennis, it doesn’t matter how often or how hard you hit the ball - if you keep knocking it into the net or out of bounds - you’ll keep making errors and losing points, eventually losing games.
Having a personal goal of raising your ranks amongst all the other players who don’t yet understand the rules isn’t very effective because you are focusing on winning rather than learning - and unfortunately learning is a pre-requisite for winning. I say just relax and play for a while. As you learn you will improve, and you will begin winning games because you are making fewer mistakes than your opponent. Then you will begin to rank up naturally. My 2 cents.
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Hi @dokbohm and welcome to the incredible world of Go!
You did get well thought-out responses to the two questions you raised in this thread.
As I didn’t see any reaction from you to these answers yet, may I ask whether you have seen them?
The community here is very willing to put time and effort into helping beginners. It would be great to return the favor by providing feedback on whether you can relate to the information you have received.
Good luck learning this fascinating game!
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