4th and 5th game

The forth game is against another French guy. This time he is supposed to be 7 kyu. The game started well and I felt good after the opening. I got a big corner while my opponent didn't get much influence in exchange. Then I started to play too fast and didn't settle my groups before I moved to the next big points on the board.

My opponent invaded my side and I played a little strange but with and OK result. I was still ahead in the game. Then I did a stupid invasion of the lover right corner. I ended in gote of course and my  opponent was able to close of the right side and now that area looked huge. So I had to invade and either try to capture some stones or live in the center.

The only problem was that I had a weak group at the bottom that got really hurt by my center invasion and I my opponent had a joyful time to attack them both. At the end I did a desperate attempt to enclose the white group at the top but I failed and my stones died. So I had to resign.

The next day I had yet another French guy to play. He was 8 kyu but by now I have realized that French ratings are not to trust at the kyu level. I was told that French players can not decide their own rank as soon as they become 12 kyu. They must prove their strength in a tournament and the competition for the ranking points are very tough. It is hard for them to get a higher ranking because all players are improving and keep losing games against each others. I hope winning against me will give them a higher rank.

My opponent of today played black and choose to play the chinese opening. I answered by a stone halfway to his side and directly he invaded my corner. I felt it was too early for an invasion and I didn't know how to answer so I defended. That was of course wrong and I should have let him take the corner. My tactic was to only give him one eye at the side so I could chase his group over the board to build strength and territory. You see his group in the upper side.

I was doing quite OK until he invaded my right side and I got two weak groups again. I had my chance to make the left one alive while still having the possibility to save the one in the middle. I should have played where the marked black stone is, but I didn't. Instead black played there and the stones god captured. Then I did some desperate attempts to capture the black cutting stones in the middle but failed and more of my stones died.  I lost again.

So now I have played five games against French players and I lost them all. When I got home and looked at the result list I saw that all of my five opponents have won all of their games. If you look at the results you can see a lot of great results for French players who are around 5 kyu. That can be of some consolation for me. Maybe I don't totally suck. Maybe my opponents are stronger than their rank say.

I put some hope in the next weeks games, but you can expect me to lose games when I play the French.