Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Playing W in a Handicap Game

Last night, I yet again discovered that I have a hard time giving stones to someone who half knows what he is doing. I started out pretty calm, was going to win on calmness and better stone efficiency, but at some point in the game I was at a loss and decided to pick a fight. A quite unreasonable fight I might add. Things only got worse from there ^^

I have been contemplating what's the best way for W to play in handicap games. Most books seem to focus more on learning to play B, W is supposed to know what she is doing. Studying pro-pro handi games have helped me improve my W play a bit, but I feel there still is too much I am missing.

Maybe I should review pro-pro handicap games again and focus on the W play. I haven't found any books which were particularly helpful to learn how to give stones, it might just be a combination of experience and learning from my mistakes. After reviewing last night's game with strong players, I have more ideas for next time. We'll see what happens.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What I do when I give handicap is just to play normal moves (maybe choosing the more complicated, but reasonable variations when given the chance) - basically waiting for the opponent's bad or slack moves and punishing them.

If the handicap size is proper, this should be enough to get a balanced game, and have a chance with White.

Sorin

Anonymous said...

Hello !

You can study to "How to play the stronger player",written by Sakai Michiharu 8p.
This book is freely downloadable here : http://www.wingsgoclub.org/books.php. It's supposed to be a book for the weaker player, but one's can learn lots of things about how can white play too...

Anonymous said...

I would imagine that playing as white is like playing as black after you made the mistake of playing somewhere really small and thus giving your opponent a free stone.

shrimphead said...

I also concur with "anon" about the Wings Go Club free PDFs "How to play the stronger player". I first studied them (there are 2) when first learning to play. Now i study them for playing against newer go players with handicaps.

Anonymous said...

I just attened a Kerwin Workshop. He said the key for black is to build up power so when white is forced to invade white is badly outnumbered. The key for white is to get a numeric advantage somewhere on the board. Then use that to control the rest of the game. I played two handicap games this week at club, one with and one giving stones, and this thought helped out a lot.
Yertle