Handicap go

My handicap go skills (now talking about me giving stones to others, I am not on the recieving end very often if at all) always lacked something, for whatever reason I used to be totally unable to play the “correct” handicap, strugling with handicap reduced by two stones. Lately, playing in the tearoom (told ya about it already) seems to have improved my handicap skills quite a lot. We change handicap after each game in appropriate direction by one stone, here are my results:

I was able to force 1kyu (Ondra Kruml) down to 6 handicap (which I lost, but it wasn’t that desperate as one could expect), well, he got back to 3 handi, but now he is at 4 handicap again, I succesfully dodge his attacks to try to get to an even game :)

Now even more funny, I managed to get a 2dan (Písa) down to 4 handicap (we were starting at 2 handicap, which is the “correct” one), and while I had the better of it already, after some blunders from both of us he won. Nevertheless, I won the 3 handi we played then and I’m looking forward to put up a fight next weekend in a 4 handicap again.

I am really happy that my handicap go improved this much, now I will hopefully be able to slay some kyu players who always thought too high of themselves in the correct (or higher) handicap.

And, a bit of what I’ve learned:

• in the fuseki, spread your stones all over the board (the higher the handicap the more this applies), never play anything completely out (if possible), the sucker will be confused and won’t know what to do
• play nonstandard moves, the suckers often know joseki, you gain everytime you play something wrong that no one knows (as you are able to read much deeper)
• sacrifice small groups for sente (I can’t stress this enough probably, it is utterly important), the sucker will spend a few gote moves to kill it and probably choose wrong ones so you might be able to live later
• be bold, but not completely unreasonable, if you see your trick move responded correctly, don’t hesitate to make tenuki (the aji is better left for later)
• influence is worth five times it’s real value in handicap games (either it will help you kill something or you will get a huge territory, the sucker will be afraid)
• if you know what your sucker is afraid of, just play it whether it works or not, the psychological gain is usually huge; also, when you do that, it helps to ask over-anxiously “are you afraid?”, this will put him under pressure and he’ll either play something really safe or decide to punish you by an unreasonable overplay

As a side note, the term sucker is meant relatively here and I leave it up to you which advice was meant seriously.