I played a couple of times when it started being introduced at the local chess club, but that was back before college and I haven't played recently. I've signed up, same name, and would be interested in a game.
Sent you a challenge. As you would have seen, the server is quite active -- there are games and ladders, no difficulty in finding a game most of the time.
Standard for the first 4 moves. At move 5 black choose a two-space approach, which has some kind of alphago flavour to it, but is difficult to use properly. No real pressure is put on the white stone at the 4-4 point, and the move can be just ignored, which is what white kind of does. Black 7 is very slow, compare something like O3, O4 or D10.
Black 9 is a mistake, but won't be felt until much later in the game. Black 11 would be an excellent move if the other black stone was just one line to the right. The pressure on the white corner stone would have been immense.
As such, black is just a little bit misplaced, and white uses that to immediately start a big fight. There aren't really any options here -- a double approach is severe even with a misplaced stone and requires an answer, but any defensive answer would leave white badly off. So white 12 splits the black stones at the cost of letting black split white back. However, white's stone are working together much better and after both sides add strength to the fight by move 17 black is in trouble and has to take slow defensive moves. White has a favourable fight on his hands, but it still takes fighting out.
White 18 sets the scene -- the black stones are denied a base, whilst white concurrently makes points down the right side.
This is now basically won for white. The apparent fight isn't even a fight, the three black stones on the board at move 14 are disconnected and severely damaged. Black is definitely split into two groups, and one of those groups will get destroyed. And after that fight concludes, white is left with a secured top-left corner up on black. How did black get here? Well, Black 7 was something of a non-move, but not game losing. Black 9 actually made some sense given the positioning of other stones. Black 11 was the start of the problem in earnest -- the Black 11/White 12 exchange gives Black nothing, whilst White gets a strong shape all but securing a large corner. Black 13 is tantamount to resigning -- the idea must have been to get some synergy of the Q10 stone, whilst strengthening the fighting group, but the move actually does neither.
GG Bacchus, I resigned. It's clear you are able to capture most of my stones on the board, and time is a little tight right now since I'm on vacation this week. I think I'd be up for another game in a couple weeks though
This is now basically won for white. The apparent fight isn't even a fight, the three black stones on the board at move 14 are disconnected and severely damaged. Black is definitely split into two groups, and one of those groups will get destroyed. And after that fight concludes, white is left with a secured top-left corner up on black. How did black get here? Well, Black 7 was something of a non-move, but not game losing. Black 9 actually made some sense given the positioning of other stones. Black 11 was the start of the problem in earnest -- the Black 11/White 12 exchange gives Black nothing, whilst White gets a strong shape all but securing a large corner. Black 13 is tantamount to resigning -- the idea must have been to get some synergy of the Q10 stone, whilst strengthening the fighting group, but the move actually does neither.
I did not realize the timer was set for 24 hours. Maybe it is for the best though as I will be doing a lot of driving in the next few days and may not be up for much play. I do not think I did that well but maybe latter in August once I am settled we can play again if you will have me.
