Study Paying Off

I have spent a lot of time with Cho Chikun's Life and Death Dictionary, studying all those pesky corner shapes. I can feel that it is improving my game, but that's just a feeling, not always shown in a tangible way.

But then, there are games where I can see that yes, studying does help. My opponent had a keima enclosure from hoshi and I invaded it.



We played the normal ko variant. We fought the ko for a few moves, when he connected at A. This enabled me to live without a ko.



The rest of the game was awful, and the invasion was badly timed, but I still felt really good about having my study pay off in such a visible way. It was a simple sequence, but six months ago, I might have screwed it up anyway.