New Playing Style

Writing the post on playing down to weaker players, and reading other people's thoughts on it has helped me to figure out the problem. At least I hope so. I just do too many overplays and silliness against weaker players, I am going to get rid of it. My new plan is to play any opponent as if he is firebolt (KGS 5d) or shygost (AGA 6d). They are the strongest players I play, and somehow they don't let me get away with anything. I should assume that everyone plays that way, even if they don't, so that I'll play the right move. And resist the temptation of pushing just a bit more than I should, or invading just a tad deeper than is reasonable.

Sounds good, right? Sounds very reasonable. The hard thing is to actually do it. Last night was the first game I seriously tried it. Since I was experimenting anyway, I decided to also go for territory instead of my normal influence based games.

The whole game I kept these three things in mind:

1. Territory
2. Strong moves
3. Calmness

I resisted playing so many more fun moves. I never jumped into places I would usually have jumped into. My play felt soooooooooooooo slow. But somehow, I managed to win anyway. I calmly took territory, split two groups, surrounded them, and killed them. Or maybe he killed them himself, since he was defending things he shouldn't have, while he was running. Whatever the case, I felt very good about my game, I hope I can keep this up.