UK Draws with the Swiss

Pandanet Go European Team Championship
Pandanet
Sat, 16 - Tue, 19 Feb 2019

Our team fought hard and managed a draw against Switzerland. The next match will be on Tuesday 19th March, against Norway.

Andrew Simons wrote: I played my game against John Walch on the evening of Saturday 16th. I won on time, but was fairly confident of winning anyway. The game started with a diagonal opening and me 3-3 invading (as I did against Sam in the second championship game); he took the gote wall so I took its extension and then peeped at it. He resisted, connecting on dame, so we had a fight and I was happy to build centre strength, and then, as he haned at q11, I got to make the dame cut in sente. His group was hard to attack directly though, so we played some more opening stuff. I made a makeshift defence against h17 invasion with l18 hane and got to cap his c9 stone (if he runs it out then I get a splitting attack on lower group) and he made a fun second line invasion on top. I ended up sacrificing half my group (for now) to live in the corner in sente and then attacked his lower group, which settled, but I got a nice thick wall and centre potential. He reduced that at l12, so I did likewise at j12, and he probed at e2: do I cut and try to kill his 3-3 invasion, or defend the corner and let him have some nice yose (later)? I went for the kill, and managed it, but then he set me another problem with b10. I let that one connect to build some centre in exchange and then he almost managed to connect to his dead bottom left, but he was short of time (c5 before b8 would unless I fight unreasonable ko) and didn't quite manage to get to his next overtime period as I just cut his thrashing stones on their dash for freedom.

Alex Kent wrote: I squeezed out a 3.5 point win against Armel-David Wolff in what felt like a very back and forth game. I wasn't very happy with how the opening went - I ended up making quite a few groups of stones that needed managing. However, I successfully made sabaki in the upper-right and the position wasn't so bad. I think I took the lead around move 78 when I lived solidly at the top, while my opponent still had some weaknesses. Things then started to get dicey again, around move 100, when my opponent started making a large potential on the bottom. In hindsight the moves I played to reduce it were pretty slow so I definitely lost ground there. I launched a cool splitting attack in the upper left which I think went well: I gained territory and settled my weak centre group. I did lose the left side though so it might be a bit questionable. Later on things got very tight and I think I missed a chance to make a 10000 year ko which might have made things easier (or at least more exciting!).

Jon Diamond wrote: Got off to not too bad a start against Fabien Lips, but then allowed a cut which gained him some thickness. However, I cut between his groups to run out into the centre, living both sides but in a small way. Oddly, to my way of thinking, he created a ko and secured the upper corner with the unanswered ko threat, but I thought the sacrifice of his lower group of 9 stones and therefore at least 50 points of territory, surely not a good exchange? He was also playing puzzlingly slowly... He then decided to challenge me to kill his large bottom group, rather than saving a bit and creating a possibly weak group on the lower left. Being the greedy person that I am, I accepted the challenge and of course he escaped! Well, actually he spurned the first opportunity and played on the left instead which gave me the opportunity to stop his second eye. However, he wriggled a bit and then threatened the right-hand side, so I needed to patch that up and this gave him the upper hand. I then let him cut a few stones as I was getting desperate and the whole thing fell apart. Sad.

Des Cann wrote: I lost by a fair margin in the end against Flavien Aubelle. All started well. The opening was quite simple and I took five minutes to his twenty. He let me establish territory and then I invaded under his hoshi. He took sente to lean on my right side in a fairly unimaginative way. However I regretted not playing an atari and now I had a large moyo to invade. I didn't take it seriously enough, quickly enough, focusing on his bad shape instead. All too soon it was territory and I felt under pressure. I was quite thick in the rest of the board and potentially I might have squeezed out a tight game. Instead I went all out to kill his weak group, but it lived all too easily and I was well behind.

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