Tips blooms

• New players tend not to sacrifice stones enough. To win, you often need to let the opponent capture strategically placed stones, so as to put them in a weak position.

• Consider sacrificing one of your colors to keep your own opponent from establishing a strong position, while trying to create a dominant bloom in your other color.

• If some of your opponent stones are dead, don't rush to capture them. Instead attack elsewhere and only capture the dead stones when you need to create more space around your blooms. This advice is doubly important when some of your opponent's dead stones are occupying spaces next to other opponent stones of the opposite color.

• More generally, a player's colors can interfere with each other by taking away space from each other. Try to force your opponent into positions where that happens.

• When attacking, be cautious about attacking both of your opponent's colors at once. It's often better to focus on attacking one opponent color while containing the other.