Aggressiveman I vs Aggressiveman II

Monday, September 3. 2007


I guess the title is quite self-explanatory. This was the first game in the 5th Rioplatense Tournament, between me (8k) and Ecchi (7k?) and took place on KGS last Friday.

As I've already told you and you've seen, my style has become more and more aggressive lately. From my point of view, I think it's due to two things:
1. My intuition has increased a lot lately and I'm able to find some good moves (or, at least, they seem so to me) which I couldn't spot some weeks ago. Personally I think this might be the result from viewing pro games with the "guess next move" enabled.
2. My openning sucks. Sincerely, I think this is the next weak part of my game which I'll try to improve.


The game is available on the "continue reading", so as not to load ZGo on the main page and the RSS feeds. I'd be very glad if someone could make some comments on the game.


Continue reading "Aggressiveman I vs Aggressiveman II"

Nice training against a 9k

Saturday, September 1. 2007

While preparing for the tournament, I started to play on an unusual time settings: 10 minutes plus 15 minutes of Canadian byoyomi for 25 stones. This means that games are played on a quite fast pace. I decided to give it a try against the first one who accepted my challenge on the KGS room. It was a 9k. At the beginning it seemed we were about the same level, but white ended up with several groups killed...

Several groups killed? Yes, two of them. For some reason, all the games I've been playing lately appear to be incredibly aggressive, both training and the tournament ones. In these games, if I manage to kill my opponent I win, if not, I lose.

This is one situation extracted from the game. As you can see, white has been splitted, but black too. On this situation I tried to capture black on a large scale.
Can you think of any possible sequence?

Well, here you can see what happened on the game. I'm not saying this is the correct or the best sequence, but it is certainly a good result for white, though I think he should have escaped after white 32..

As you can see, black has been trapped in the middle of the board. Some players with a higher level might argue that white's net is not very powerful and black can escape. Certainly I don't know, but, for me (and I guess anywhere below 8k), this is a good move for white.

Black got a corner and made himself strong on the lower part of the board, but the game was not finished yet. Black tried to save his group desperately, assuming that losing this group would send him to defeat...

And there he goes, he manages to create one eye, and almost escapes... almost...
How can you avoid that black escapes? In this case, I used another "technique" explained here, but it is not "capturing on a large scale".

If you want to see the answer you'll have to click on the "continue reading" section. There is the full game available.


Continue reading "Nice training against a 9k"