Thursday, February 21, 2008

Played Rated Again

After a few weeks of having that nasty question mark attached to my rank on KGS I decided to play some rated games to get rid of it. Yesterday I used automatch to find my games. The first game was a 0.5 komi game against a solid 8k, which I lost by 20.5, a significant defeat, especially since there was no real fighting. That loss dropped me from 7k? to 9k?. Well, that just couldn't be allowed to stand. So I fired up another automatch game right away. I ended up as white against a solid 11k giving two stones of handicap, which I knew would be a challenge. I play white often, but I am still much more comfortable as black even when there is no handicap.

I actually was ahead by 4.5 according to Score Estimator just before I played the winning move. In the screen capture below you can see the shadow of the stone that I intend to play at h19. Because black made his second eye at j19, I was able to cut at h18. I would then be able to capture the black stones to the right because black could not approach from the inside because of a shortage of libeties, but I could approach from the outside.


The screen capture below shows the position at the point at which black resigned. Score Estimator shows W+37.5 at this point. I was glad not to have to depend upon superior end game play to win the game because I am okay in the end game these days, but I hardly have superior end game skills. I would not have been happy falling to 10k, so it was a good thing to get it over with painlessly... well, at least for me. :-)

2 comments:

Oolong4Go said...

Hi Terri,

glad to see you playing Rated again. I really think that the kgs automatch making you play white as well as black is one of its good points. I just wish more people would use it.

in the game you posted if black would have just calmly responded to your h19 with h18 he would have miai for life (g19/j19)

have a good weekend.
Eric

Terri said...

Yes. Unfortunately it is the less obvious move, and actually looks more dangerous because it doesn't create too eyes immediately, which is probably why he chose the move he did, which proved fatal.

Thanks for the comment. I appreciate it.