UK Team Loses to Italy

Pandanet Go European Team Championship
Pandanet
Tue, 7 Apr 2020

In their eighth match of the season the UK played against Italy. The first three games to finish went Italy's way, but the last game ended with a win for Andrew Simons after nearly three hours of play. This loss moved the team down to sixth out of ten, with just the final mach against Belgium on 19th May to go.

Andrew Simons wrote: My game against Matias Pankoke was the opposite of Jon's and Alex's: we had a modern AI joseki, following my attachment against his big low shimari and he made a slight overplay, with the L14 hane instead of extend, and then a big one with the atari which meant his corner turned into mine. As I had a sizeable lead I tried to simplify the game with early settling of my groups (kick and kosumi bunker style) and thick play to avoid any fights (I lost against Matias in the play-offs last year when he out-fought me). I was largely successful in this, though I did feel when he didn't defend his shoulder hit reduction group on the left, but grabbed the big point on the top, I didn't manage to get particularly clean profit from attacking it. But I did surround enough points in the lower centre to win the game by resignation; after counting it I played two or three unnecessary moves inside my territory just to be totally sure I didn't misread and die embarrassingly.

Alex Kent wrote: My experience gainst Alessandro Pace was similar to Jon's by the sound of it. I went wrong in a complicated joseki which my opponent clearly knew better than me. The variation I chose required a ladder that I didn't have. The game was very unfavourable for me from this point on, and my opponent resisted my attempts to make the game complicated. At one point I managed to make a large moyo in the centre in a last ditch effort to make enough territory - I probably went a bit wrong here somewhere, because this got reduced drastically, and resigning seemed like the only option.

Jon Diamond wrote: Pretty poor game against Carlo Metta - I messed up the first corner, losing at least 15-20 points and after that couldn’t seem to find any opportunity to score an upset.

Sandy Taylor wrote: I also lost, against Davide Bernardis. I don't think I played especially well, it started off quite well, but then I played incredibly inactively in a close position that merited something more interesting. As I often feel happens in these evening games, I walked carelessly into a losing position and resigned in the endgame when it was clear.

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Last updated Thu Jun 18 2020.
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