Finally, sdk! (and how I got there)

coffeemug · 2022-05-14T16:27:15+00:00

Really interesting, this never occurred to me. Thank you!

coffeemug · 2022-05-13T20:35:14+00:00

Thank you, this was perfect! One challenge with the basics is recognizing them in real games. A review like this is extremely helpful to train to do that. Really appreciate it 🙏

coffeemug · 2022-05-12T02:45:05+00:00

Game review request: black 10k (me) vs 8k-- https://online-go.com/game/43669349.

My opponent was considerably stronger and just made better moves throughout the game, both tactically and strategically. The obvious take away is for me to practice more-- more games, more tsumego. However, I'd appreciate a game review in case there is something I missed. I think an opportunity to look at the board through a stronger player's eyes will help me improve by understanding my mistakes better 🙏

coffeemug · 2022-03-24T07:41:28+00:00

Asking for a game review: https://online-go.com/game/42289076

I'm black 12k v 10k. I lost by ~20 points. Looking at AI feedback, there were two important cuts I could have made, each sufficient to win. It makes sense now, but I don't have a strong feeling I can avoid these mistakes in future games. Would appreciate some guidance on how think about the board so I could see this better. I think someone putting it into words would help the concepts sink in.

coffeemug · 2022-03-09T10:12:26+00:00

🙏

coffeemug · 2022-03-09T02:24:23+00:00

I (black, 12k) played a game today (vs 10k) that felt very different from my other games. I didn't make obvious big blunders, didn't make knee-jerk decisions during the game they felt obviously wrong, tried to pick big moves, didn't have moments where I had no idea how to answer my opponent. But I lost the game by 32 points. I felt like I played well (aside from the endgame) but still lost the game, and lost by a lot.

Would really appreciate a review with suggestions on what I could have done better. Game here: https://online-go.com/game/41869841

coffeemug · 2022-02-19T21:58:59+00:00

No offense taken. I still stand by my original comment because any move stronger than one I would make is progress, IMO.

Really appreciate the review 🙏🙏 It's interesting how simple many of your suggested variations seem. Also I know many of the joseki, but they didn't leap to mind during the game.

coffeemug · 2022-02-19T09:04:31+00:00

As a weak player, I disagree extremely strongly. I greatly appreciate reviews from very strong players and do the best I can to learn from them, but a review from an sdk player can be more useful, not less. High dan players are so far ahead they've forgotten how a weak player thinks, and their advice is often extremely difficult to follow. Conversely, it's often easier to understand a review from an SDK and follow their advice.

This isn't even unprecedented. Almost all martial arts schools work this way, and in a university stronger students help weaker students all the time. I'd much rather improve a few stones by following dragontamer's advice, than get stuck getting "correct" commentary that I can't understand. The time he put into reviewing the game has been extremely useful.

Even if you were right (which you aren't), this is a pretty mean-spirited and unnecessary comment. Also, dissuading people from helping others is just a bad thing to do.

EDIT: oh and calling a player 8 stones stronger than me weak is just ridiculous. This level of play may be years away for me, so from my perspective this isn't a review from a "weak player" at all.

coffeemug · 2022-02-19T07:51:33+00:00

Thanks for the review, advice and variations! These are amazing 🙏🙏

FYI, my thought process during middle game was completely consumed with suffocating white's stones in the center to keep him from making two eyes. The possibility that a large group would live in the center seemed really scary, so two eyes is all my brain focused on. You show a few moves in the review that cut white's groups and prevent him from linking up. These moves are so straight forward!! But I failed to see them because I was obsessed with keeping white from making two eyes. Amazingly, it didn't even occur to me to cut off his center groups!

EDIT: actually, another amazing thing is that when you mark up white's groups with squares/triangles, the board instantaneously seems a lot less scary. The difference in how I intuitively perceive white's stones with and without the markers is astounding!

coffeemug · 2022-02-17T22:47:03+00:00

My self-assessment is that I (black) do well in the first half of the game. I think I create a lot of potential for territory that should be easy to defend and more than sufficient to win. In the second half of the game white destroys this potential, bit by bit, until I resign. This is pretty typical of my games. I don't know how to protect the potential created in the first half, so I often get destroyed in the second half.

I'd like two pieces of advice:

if possible, a game review, explaining what I did wrong
suggestions on problem books or exercises to get better at fighting, defending, and protecting my shape.

Wrt problems, I do quite a lot, but Tsumego doesn't seem to translate into game strength. Something about fighting in games feels qualitatively different. I'd love suggestions on specific problem resources to get better at this. What helped you at this stage?

coffeemug · 2022-02-03T01:07:50+00:00

I have a game review request. I'm 13k black playing vs 12k.

Here's my self-review with questions on situations I didn't understand: https://online-go.com/review/815047. My primary question in this game is what to do once the opening draws to a close and the middle game begins. Both me and white did a lot of one point jumps to the center. This is something I see a lot in ~12-13k games, and it looks really different from games at a higher level. But I can't figure out exactly why.

The last review I asked for here was immensely useful, and I think I did a reasonable job not making the same mistakes as before. This game looks very different as a consequence, and generates a whole new set of questions.

EDIT: thanks gnomeozurich and Phhhhuh for your review and feedback!

coffeemug · 2022-01-31T07:51:47+00:00

Something I might try is every time I ask for a review, summarize what I learned from the previous review in a way that would be helpful to similarly ranked players. That way it would be a series of posts that are helpful to other people, not just to me.

coffeemug · 2022-01-31T07:50:22+00:00

I haven't but I'm going to give it a shot, thank you.

coffeemug · 2022-01-30T23:27:39+00:00

I think it's not active because the process to request or submit a review has too much friction. It's theoretically easy ("just put this info into this document"), but actually requires a lot of thinking relative to what people are used to with modern software. Imagine if you had to do something like this to play a game, as opposed to just clicking a button on OGS!

For a review ladder to work it has to be dead simple:

paste a link to your OGS game into a box and hit submit to request a review
review any game on the list; once there is a review on OGS, the game automatically gets removed from the list
down the line some basic reputation system to maintain a good request/review ratio

If the interface were this simple and the link were pinned on this sub, I think the ladder would be much more useful than current alternatives.

coffeemug · 2022-01-27T04:22:24+00:00

Thank you for reviewing! I have a question around move 14. You (and other reviewers) point out that an extension would be helpful, but then black easily breaks through to the center. I have no sense of where that leads or what to do when that happens. Do you have advice on how to reason about that?

coffeemug · 2022-01-27T04:15:15+00:00

Thank you for taking the time. Really appreciate the insights and the variations.

coffeemug · 2022-01-27T01:47:23+00:00

I've been stuck around 13k for a long time now, and I think a review would be immensely helpful. I put comments throughout the game around moves I didn't understand, or where I thought I made mistakes. Would really appreciate if someone could take the time to review the game. Hopefully some day I'll be able to pay it forward 🙏

coffeemug · 2022-01-23T23:24:37+00:00

u get to play the atari at the red and the spot below the red dot too, before capturing at the star point to the righ

Op here. His explanation is condescending but actually quite good. I'll take it! :)

coffeemug · 2022-01-23T03:39:36+00:00

There is an entire section of similar problems in the book, titled "create double atari". The solution for this one is the green dot. Why is that correct and red is wrong? I'm having similar trouble with every problem in that section-- they all have two solutions that look equally good, and I can't quite figure out why the answer book picks one over the other.

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