Dogmeat

Minue has been working on how to use handicap stones to pound White into dogmeat. The goal is to get me to win at least 50 % of my 7H games against him by October. It's an interesting way of studying. I have studied some about how to use handi stones, but not much. This is good. My study material looks like this:



Naturally, I haven't been able to find perfection like that in my actual games. My last 7H game against Minue looked like this:



White is everywhere and the only one being pounded into dogmeat is Black ^^. I still have a lot of room for improvement, this is typical for my games against him. I will have to study a lot to be able to beat him at 7H occasionally.

Studying handicap go made me think back to the advice Kipawa gave me about a year ago. His handicap advice:

1. How can I split White?
2. How can I stop White from splitting me?
3. How can I attack White (preferably while protecting myself)

This fits in very well with Minue's statement that go isn't around surrounding empty space, but it is about surrounding opponents stones/groups. I still fall into the 'desperately trying to hang on to territory' trap too often, need to get over that.

It seems so simple on paper, but somehow amazingly hard in real game play.