Now for that game review I promised! My friend, David, played in the Chicago tournament last week and won all of his games as a 4 kyu (I believe). I taught Dave how to play Go, and he has both loved and hated it ever since. I was happy to hear he did so well. I went through his games, and picked out a good one that has a lot of teachable mistakes. As far as Dave's style, you'll find he enjoys killing groups as much as I do, but tends not to make the correct large scale tactical decisions. Hey, if you kill your opponent's fifty stone group, it doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to work. I'll do the review in separate parts, and continue Wednesday and Friday. All right let's roll up our sleeves!
David is Black. The first mistake we come to is Black 13. It's the wrong direction. This is an easy mistake to make. You want to build a wall in this direction because of the star point stone at Black 1. The thing is, this joseki ends with Black gote. This means that the right side is wide open. White played 18, which is not the way to make use of this mistake. Instead, White should have played at "A" to reduce Black's thickness. Reducing thickness is not glamorous, but there's nothing worse than having five inefficient stones.
Black 19 is also not so great. The upper left Black stones are low, so building influence here to make a moyo is inefficient because part of our moyo can be pressed down and reduced. This also makes White too strong. Black should have pincered. White 26...I can understand. I really can. When I review kyu games I'm pretty lenient. He probably felt he could've been attacked. If it were me though, since my upper right group is so strong, I might have gone on the offense and make Black pay for his bad direction by attacking with B or somewhere around there. Black 27 is good, and White 28 is correct. White needs to guard against the pincer at A. Moves like Black 37...I wish I knew what went on in Dave's head when he plays stuff like this. I know he knows the right shape, it's just his unconscious spits out something random when the time comes to play a move. White 38 is really beautiful and the correct shape, but he really could've foregone defense here and tried to attack Black, especially since he has sente and White 26 already in place.
Seriously Dave, Black 37?
I'll continue on Wednesday with more of this game! Stay tuned!
