BQM 49 / Game

Sub-page of BQM49

Here I will try to comment the game in BQM49 as best I can to make my question more clear. --BlueWyvern

[Diagram]
Moves 1-10  

I don't believe any explanation is necessary here.


[Diagram]
Moves 11-20  

I played B3 for several reasons. The first is I thought a pincer would come under attack fairly quickly and I didn't want to have to worry about fighting on my opponents terms here. Secondly I thought play out like this would keep White's position on the bottom thinner so I would have more potential to deal with it later. I thought attaching underneath would bring his extension noticeably closer to his position in the lower right. White later told me he made the extension to W8 one space shorter in attempt to induce an invasion.

Normally I would dispense with playing B9 straight away, but for some odd reason, my opponent spent a year learning just about every known variation of the taisha joseki, so I wanted to set up any approach to the upper left so that a simple variation choice by me would not result in a loss.

AJP: This is not a good reason for playing a move that you know is wrong. B9 is playing too close to strength. If you're scared of the taisha you have some options: 1) (best choice) learn the taisha yourself and don't play scared. 2) Play at a instead of b in the above diagram. 3) Play a parallel fuseki (each player can always force this option). In this way you will have a ladder breaker in the diagonal corner opposite any taisha which greatly expands your options against it.

Chris Hayashida: Also, c is a valid approach. You sacrifice the corner to get a position along the side. In my opinion, it works well with your position in the lower left.

[Diagram]
Moves 21-30  

This position is partly key to my question. After B1/W2, I played the pincer at B3 as White did not yet have a stone in place at W8. When White played a W4 instead of taking the 3-3 point, I switched to taking more of the corner with B5 to B7. This seemed like a fair exchange to me, because White needs two more stones, 8, and a before the lone Black stone is in any serious trouble, and if Black choses to ignore both of these, White will have made two gote moves allowing Black to make up for the loss here with sente somewhere else. Even after the second gote move, White would still need a third at b to eliminate entirely the usefulness of Black's lone stone. From this point of view, my lone black stone on top doesn't appear to be a weak group at all, rather more like a kikashi stone that can be treated lightly and used some other time should the situation present itself, as its weakness has theoretically been compensated for by plays elsewhere on the board, in this situation, by getting the first approach in the upper left.


[Diagram]
Moves 31-38: The meat of my question  

After 6 is where my question was really was. I looked at the board and didn't see much to do. I wasn't overly concerned with the stone up top for reasons I described earlier. This left the rest of the board and I was faced with a choice of strengthening myself or reducing my opponent. Reducing my opponent seemed more interesting to me, so I played 7 because I thought was light, split White's position, threatened to cap at a, and could get away towards the right at some point. The main thing here is that is ALL I had to go on, and my thinking here hit a kind of roadblock, and I felt like I didn't make much of an interesting choice here. It was only after White's response that I began to see the implications of the move I just made. It was after White 8 that I saw the defect mentioned on the previous page, which I will copy here.


[Diagram]
White has a defect?  

When White played the marked stone, it at first appeared to be a developing play, but when I looked at it seemed to introduce a subtle defect in White's shape at a. If I were somehow able to develop thickness represented by the squares on empty spaces (not necessarily at these points), the cut at a would threaten to lop White's three stones in the corner off, and were White to defend the corner, I would get a nice clean slice through the waist of his keima.


[Diagram]
39-40 It starts to come together.  

At this point, all I had in mind was that I had some aji in the lower left, and I didn't want to remove it, so I thought I'd try do something with my stone in the upper right with 9. 10 caught me by surprise, I was expecting a hane-extend-connect sequence. As I stared at the board, I suddenly saw a kind of wall appearing where the circles are on the board. I could then see a reducing move and a fight appearing in the center near a, where I might have a chance at steering the fight in such a way that I get my needed thickness represented by the squares and I could cut at 'b'. None of these was exact, my reading is no where near precise enough for that kind of thing, but I did get a kind of feeling. I felt I could do all of this without losing sente so I acted.

[Diagram]
41-50  

I built my wall with the sequence from 1 to 5. When White turned at 6, I play 7 to enduce the reduction. It seemed that if White played a shallow reduction I would be able to make a lot of territory. He came in with the shoulder hit at 8, and I pushed up at 9, with the hope of steering the fight down.


[Diagram]
51-60  

Move 51 was intend to fix what I thought was a defect in my wall that White might aim at. I thought that fixing it would steer White down. When White pressed down, I got the thickness I had wanted since move 38.


White's plays on the left side were extremely ill-conceived. Charles Matthews



[Diagram]
61-70  

Black 1 is a silly move. I honestly can't remember what I was doing. But then White went and closed off the top in gote so I was saved. Then I played the cut....


[Diagram]
71-75  

Somewhere the marked exchange took place but I can't remember where, so I put it in to fix the position. After 1-5 I felt like I was dominating the game. That is the extent of where I got.


BQM 49 / Game last edited by ChrisHayashida on January 8, 2006 - 21:49
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