Match 1 – 19×19 board vs. 24kyu player – won by resignation
The first 8 moves of this game were somewhat strange. Black started at seemingly random points around the board, while I responded with the low chinese opening, and approached the one star point he had claimed. We fought and I made a few mistakes costing myself three stones, but I was able to make what I think would be a safe group over towards the right side of the board.
I built up in the top left corner next. Black attempted to prevent this, but I’m pretty sure I could live in the corner and decided to tenuki to the bottom left. At move 61, black made an empty triangle which I would be able to later exploit. We continued to build up along the left side with my gaining a good amount of territory and black getting some strong influence. I made bad plays at 76 and 78, which would’ve given black a good advantage if he had played F7. However, he played B7 instead, which allowed me to capture his empty triangle group. At this point, black resigned.
Match 2 – 19×19 board vs. 21kyu player – lost by 80.5 points… Kinda
I think I started losing this one fairly early in the game. As I opted to open with a low chinese and expand out from the corners, white quickly took the left, top, and bottom star points. This put me at a major disadvantage because he had a much larger moyu. Starting around move 43 I think I made a mistake by playing to solid. I was able to get a strong wall but it didn’t seem to do too much to help me. Around move 79 I made a mistake which allowed white’s group to live.
I was able to get some territory at the bottom, but white wormed its way into my top-right territory. I feel that I was able to kill his invasion for the most part, but lost a bit of territory in the process. Move 143 is where things really started to go downhill. I attempted to invade his massive open area and was unsuccessful in making a living group. I sealed off the top and left to score some territory but by move 197 I had a large dead group in the center, and white had a massive amount of territory in the bottom left. I attempted to invade at the lower left 3-3 point but made a mistake by playing A4 instead of C2 and died.
During scoring, I hit the wrong button and somehow marked my group at O9 as dead, causing me to lose a good amount of points. Fortunately it was still a loss by a big margin so I’m not going to fret over it.
I have a tendency to open with the Low Chinese fuseki, which I’m probably not strong enough to use properly since I still get my butt kicked when fighting. I think it’s time to look at a couple different openings an perhaps find something that better suits my ability.