Applying new knowledge to actual games
Sometimes when I study go I wonder if I'm ever going to put it into practice. I learn some tesujis which I can use in real games, strange josekis appear in pro games and if I try playing them my opponent doesn't follow the sequence... In the end it is all very fustrating. It is so till you find a place where to play them correctly. You find a perfect spot for using that strange tesuji, for exploiting the aji of the sacrificed stones or to make a double hane...
We've already talked about sacrificing stones for "leaving the aji". On the next posts I'm going to talk about double hane too. And I hope you've watched the videos of the Workshops which took place at the European Go Congress this year, because you are going to put into practice all this three techniques in a single sequence in corner of a game.
Remember to stop each time you see the Question Image loading at the bottom of the page. You shouldn't see the following diagrams if you want to read the solution on your own.
This is not a prepared board for a post, but a real game played on KGS on August 14th between two 8k players.
 | Is there anywhere you'd like to play? In fact, you don't really NEED to play somewhere currently. You could play somewhere like S15 or S16. But imagine you are playing a Ko, and you need a Ko threat, is there any possible Ko threat there? |
There are a couple of cutting points around there, but the game followed after a cut at P16 and its appropiate response by my opponent. This sequence is sente because of the presence of the M17 stone, which black needs to kill (or, at least, atari) as a response. In this way, I used the aji of the M17 to cut black in more groups, but my 22 and 24 end up as sacrificed stones too...
You may argue that sacrificing the stones there wasn't a good idea. I'm not really certain about it. Lately I realised that my game didn't improve because I didn't try new things or new ideas I had while playing and limited myself to play as I had been doing. Since I've started trying "new ideas", my game has improved a little bit.
| Well, time to think a little bit again. Where would you play your next move as white? You may want to defend the possible cut at R15 but that isn't the right solution. I can tell you that black's four stones around Q17 die. Try using a few minutes with this move. |
Though the sequence from P17 till the next move was played in 17
seconds considering black's time too (it was a fast game) and that I hadn't read the whole sequence during
the game, I decided to play the double hane here.
| Now that you know I made a double hane, go back to the previous diagram and see what happens. If you still don't read the solution, it's because you haven't watched the single-digit kyu Workshop, or that your reading ability doesn't reach that far. In fact, as I told you, I didn't read this either during the game. So you'd better try it for a couple of minutes. |
This intuition I'm building for this sort of moves is what is causing my level to grow little by little with my reading ability being the same. In the next diagrams you have the whole continuation of the sequence. Try reading them and considering all possible variations.
Here we can see the double hane, with black cutting, white deffending and black atari-ing at S18.
| What is the next move? White has two stones on the other side, with 3 liberties. Black is about to create one eye. If you've watched the SDK workshop, you must be able to read this. If you haven't you probably won't be able to read it. |
And here it is: the eye-stealing tesuji.
 |
| W30 at T17 |
Well, there you have it. After White 30, black is forced to answer at S18. After White 32, black is forced to kill the two stones. After White 34, black is forced to kill white 34... Then white will play Q18, which forces black to fill his own eye by playing at S17.
So this is the final result:
As you can see, black dies, because white plays first, but they have the same amount of liberties (2 vs 2). It is not necessary, but can you make it so that white has one extra liberty?
Yes, the only thing you need to do is to atari at N18. This way black needs to escape by playing L17 and you can chase him once again by playing O18. Black must answer connecting at M17. Now white has 3 liberties, and black only 2.
You have the game loaded on ZGo on the "continue reading" section. I've only loaded the first 50 moves, because, later in the game, are moves which I'd like to mention on other posts.
If you still haven't watched the SDK workshop, here you have it.
