14
Sorry I'm a total noob I can't help but I spontaneously started playing on cosumi with your post and this happened I have no idea how this is possible
Yeah that's how a lot of my early 5x5 games turned out. It looks like you backfilled your controlled territory too much, leaving it with only one "eye" (an empty section within a territory entirely under your control). This creates what's called a "dead group" because a group with 0 or 1 eyes can be captured. You always want to build your groups such that they're "alive," or left with room for at least two eyes (which makes them uncapturable). This tends to be much easier said than done in the actual back-and-forth of a match, but it's a good goal to keep in mind.
Wow turns out maybe I should read the rules
You said yourself you are being too defensive.
Your 4th move is where the root of the issue lies imo. Instead of contesting the south, you defend a north that is already mostly decided. Black is playing for 2-3 points up there and you make sure it's only 1-2, but forget that your southern flank is still super open. Black does their 4th move to bait you to play up there, then attacks in the south when you do. That attack is your doom if it works, so after making that mistake you needed to fight that and not just defend with your 5th move at least. After those two moves, the game was over for you.
You also need to be a bit more assertive when placing against lines. Instead of just making the line straight at the edge of the board, play diagonal. If black answers that offensively, that stone can freely be taken so it's a save move.
That makes sense, thanks!
Got another game for you to look at, if you'd like. This one went a bit better - I only lost by 2.5 points. I was black this time and komi was enough to tilt it in white's favor.
This is a more scrappy game, which makes it harder to point at anything specific for me as I am not that good myself either. Let me try though
You are ahead on turn 6, though obviously it's early game, but you are holding the center when white is all on one side. So instead of cutting off white on the side where white is already strong, you should have played inside the empty territory on the right on your turn 4 to secure it, or strengthened the middle line more by making a connection there. That way, you'd force white, who is always a stone behind to be offensive.
By turn 12, the board is a mess of small fights and it's good to play like that to learn how to fight, but you are by then reacting to white's moves, playing stones near where white just played for several turns. of course you need to contest, but by being consistently defensive, you let white make plays and then spend your turn shoring in the fallout of those plays, when you should be the one making the plays. You did one big play at the start, but then you keep reacting.
By turn 16 it should be clear that the south is lost for you and cutting off the two white stones as you do is good, but you then spend too much time shoring up against encroachment from the south, instead of trying to kill whites position on the top right. You do kill that eventually, but let white push into you a lot more then necessary first.
Thanks again! I'll review the game with this advice in mind. I feel like I'm getting better at recognizing where to attack and where to defend (largely thanks to extensive practice with life-or-death problems and learning shapes like tiger mouths and nets), but I definitely have trouble regaining the initiative once I've lost it. I think I'll make improving that a focus of future games.
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2025
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