Intermezzo: Lucky Ladder

Will post the other two Boston games soon, but wanted to share my lucky game of the day.
It started 'boring' although I don't see that one space high pincer much.

 

I am black. I expected him to jump from his hoshi stone, but he tenuki'ed.
Since he didn't play at A, I decided to play there and see what happened.

 

I expected his next move.

 

But then he surprised me again, and I made many mistakes answering his moves.

 

Anyway, the game went on, and eventually we came to this position. It is black turn, so I knew that I could live with one of my groups at least.

 

Those two stones were going to be my second eye.

 

He replied at A. I immediately recognized the present he gave me and realized I just got super lucky.

 

He resigned... Yes, I realize it was just luck, but I still enjoyed it ^^
Here is the game.

 

Four Handi but STILL Lost!

Sigh, four handicap stones and I STILL lost...
Here is the game with review by sendol.

Here is my first mistake. White played A, and I played a simple one point jump instead of being more aggressive.

 

This would have been a much better way to play. Not only do I make white painful, but I made a base for black.

 

Go is so easy in hindsight!!!

 

Boston Game 1

Here is game 1, reviewed by my teacher sendol.

First interesting move was when he atari-ed on the inside instead of on the outside during this joseki. I had seen it before, but it doesn't seem as common as the outside one. Luckily I remembered not to just connect, but to atari right back at him first.

 

At the end I made a mistake when I didn't play A first and then B, but instead played B directly and omitted A. Oh well, next time I'll remember!

 

MGA Tourney!

On Sunday I actually went to a real life go tourney again! Happiness is mine.

I won two and I lost two, so that is perfect, right?

 

Game 1: against 1d, he tried to kill, but stumbled over his own sword, and suddenly I was alive and his killing stones were dead.

Game 2: against a 5d, with 4 handi stones. I lost one corner (oops, will have to review that joseki!) but things didn't go too badly till I decided to take points instead of fixing a cut. Yeah, she cut and and I cried and I resigned.

Game 3: against a 1d, which didn't go as well as I wanted, but somehow tricked him into suiciding. I was lucky.

Game 4: against a 2d. I captured a nice chunk of his stones, but forgot that maybe I shouldn't let him cut off a bunch of my stones. Oops. Oh well.

July Madness

I might not have been posting, but I have been busy playing. I really want to get back to ASR alpha and on the last day of June I was still stuck in gamma and not even ready to promote.

But I played and managed to promote to beta.

(ASR has four layers, with alpha being the highest and delta the lowest)

 

Since July 1st was a Sunday I actually could play quite a lot so I got as many ASR games in as I could. It is my experience that it is easier to get games early and late in the month. I didn't want to get stuck in desperate late month games again, so happy that I got all the early games in.

I played way more games than usual, let's see whether I can keep it up during the rest of July. Even if they aren't ASR games, I think actual playing beats boring study :D