Spirit Animal (9k) vs me (7k)

Interesting game versus another redditor-youtuber.

Move 31 – the fearsome power of influence

We reach our first crucial position. White has 44 points of “cash” and Black has maybe half that in cash. But Black’s influence is fearsome. If he puts down a stone at 9, he locks up 20 more points.. sort of… I can hop in at 10.

Likewise a play at 1 followed by a play around H11 creates another large moyo which will be hard to invade.

2 and 3 are where Black owes several moves. the extension between H17 and O17 is too far: there are other obvious lack of connections allowing me to play ‘4’ or ‘6’ but in no case will I settle easily. Black has been calmly losing the territory war to stake out huge areas…

I’m think I’m going to hope a play at ‘4’ will lead to thickness allowing an attack on H17

Move 51 – what have I done? I’ve been duped!

At this point in the game, I am feel VERY frustrated. My opponent has been tossing me bait and I’ve fallen for the trap every time. All the while, his right side is growing to monstrous proportions by just dropping a few well-coordinated stones down. I got 3 corners, but I’m losing overall. He seems to scamper away right when I see a weakness.

The current mess started when I bump-cut his knight’s move on move 41, thinking it was a weakness I could use to get well into his moyo. But it got me into a situation where the A stone is now free!

Continuing with analysis I need to look at playing 3 soon to settle this group and maybe safely threaten the corner as I am not skilled enough to play 4 or 5.

The B group is light and the C group is weak… should I do a splitting attack with 8? Rob the base of B with 7? or play a cap at E7 or e10? I’ve been successful at coming back against people who grab moyo while I surround and then kill them (this is a recent example).

the play of Black is the perfect example of someone who is looking at the whole board and keeping the focus on having life for equal or more stones, instead of having a nearsighted focus on saving every stone and winning every local battle…. sigh….

I really want to complete the captures in the upper right, but capturing is not a threat… instead I will play the splitting attack, hope he runs out and then my E12 group can run out with the running group and reduce his gigantic upper right… which by the way I’m still sore at my choice at move 37 which allowed White to take P13 on move 38.

then again, wait if I attack with E6, I’m attacking from my strong side… E12 is not settled and does not have a lot of places to run, which means I need to either attack with a capping move or play 1 or 2 to finish off the upper right… decisions, decisions.

Move 107 – I claw my way back?

l’m not worried about the peep on my opening at G6 because both groups can live even with the peep? but anyway let’s say my next move is ‘X’ then Black has 2 ways to try to make an eye… actually that has me thinking… since the bottom is only 5 wide, he can only make 2 eyes there if he gets F2, G2 and G1, meaning that all I need to do is play at ‘2’ and let him try for that?

Nah, I think I will play ‘X’ and then:

  1. if Black plays ‘1’, I play 2 to knock out the eye that he might try to make and then wait for the effort to make 2 yees at the bottom and then play a vital point to thwart the plan
  2. if Black plays ‘2’, then I play ‘1’ and then the J2 group will not connect with the E3 group and one or the other will die.

Well, let’s see how this plan works out.

White Resigns

Thank you for the game SpiritAnimal / fulltimeskywizard. Maybe we reddit baduk’ers should duke it out more often?

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