Foreign Tournament Report

It was an exciting match against Italy with some interesting games and the added excitement of Jon Diamond's game breaking just at the crucial point in a fight. In the end it ended honours even which left us third in the B-League just ahead of Finland, both on 7 points. At the top Netherlands beat Sweden to go a point clear of Italy with 10 points.

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Daniel Hu wrote of his game against Matias Pankoke: I was first to finish this time, in less than 2 hours, a surprisingly relaxing game. My opponent tenukied in the upper left which may be slightly questionable. A standard joseki ensued on the lower side, where he should get 2nd line territory on both sides and I get thickness on the 4th line and half an eye on the lower side. I'm not sure my clamp was best, but it was fighting spirit when he refused to play the simple one space jump. He certainly misplayed it, trying to save everything.

A late change on each team meant it was going to be close against Croatia in the fifth match of the season. In the end the UK lost three games to one, with Des Cann taking the only win. At the top of the B-League Italy drew and Netherlands won to equal Italy on match points. The UK stayed third, just ahead of Finland on board points tie-break.

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Alex Kent wrote: I lost by 2.5 points to Matej Zakanj (komi was applied retroactively as it was set incorrectly). The opening seemed very balanced - I played a slightly dodgy sequence in the lower left corner but this ended up working in the board position. We ended up with a situation where we each had a large framework in addition to some smaller territories. We traded moves for a while prodding each other's moyos before I messed up a bit and sacrificed a number of stones which I probably could have done more with.

The UK lost three games to one in their fourth match of the season. A strong Netherlands team meant this result was likely and only Daniel Hu, on board one, managed a win. As Italy beat Turkey they moved top of the B-League, whilst the UK slipped to third behind Netherlands on board points tie-break.

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Daniel Hu wrote about the longest game of the evening: I won by resignation playing white against Geert Groenen. We started off with a 3-3 MYT flying dagger joseki, that I knew the variations for, knowing I had a severe cut. I think it's meant to be a good result for me. However, my opponent worked hard to attack that cutting group and I prematurely counterattacked seeing my opponent's shape was so bad on the right. I was just unable to capture the cutting stones and so my own group was attacked with Black profiting by capturing most of the lower side.

In the third round of the B-League for 2020-2021 the UK played and beat Switzerland. There was a big gap in time between Jon Diamond's win and that of Daniel Hu, with that last game lasting not much short of three hours when the opponent's cuckoo clock reminded him it was bed time and he resigned. This kept the UK team in top position, with Italy beating Finland to move up to second place, a point behind UK.

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Daniel Hu wrote: I won by resignation against John Walch. This was the last game to finish, with plenty of tiring calculations.

My opponent made a mistake in the upper left 3-3 invasion fight, losing 2 cutting stones early on after which the game was easier for me. He set up several weak groups over the board which all managed to live (though I kept wondering if the upper right was a ko, but didn't try it as I felt I was ahead). There were many kos into the endgame.

Alison writes: I am playing in the World Amateur Women's Go Championship. There are 33 players from 33 countries taking part. The top seeds from China, Japan, Korea and Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) do not need to play preliminary rounds. All other countries have been put in four geographical groups to play knock out preliminary rounds. I am in the European group and there are four places available in the preliminary rounds from 15 countries.

The tournament is played with fast time limits (even for me). It comprise no basic time but byoyomi of ten lots of 30 seconds. So not much scope for lengthy thinking on any single move.

It is also being played on the wbaduk server. It was a good thing I did some practice on this in advance of the match. It is actually quite nice to play on, but working out how to join it in the first place and then how to set a game with the right settings was quite difficult.

My first opponent was Viktoriia Symonenko from the Ukraine.

In the second match of the new season in the B-League, the UK played and beat Sweden by three games to one. It was a long evening for the spectators as the top board was scheduled one hour after the others and that game lasted three hours.

Previous league leaders Germany lost four-nil to Italy (including two no-shows) and so the UK moved up to first place, the only team to win both matches so far.

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Daniel Hu wrote: I had a toughish game against Charlie Åkerblom, spending too much time thinking in the opening and not with a great result. I tried playing a bit more solidly with my shape. My opponent made a largish moyo but I got out with weak group one into the centre in sente and invaded with a ladder breaker. My opponent capped, letting me pull out the ladder stone and attack the weaknesses on both sides.

In the first match of the new season of the Pandanet Go European Team Championship B-League the UK beat Belgium three games to one. There were wins for Daniel Hu, Alex Kent and Jamie Taylor, their game reports are below. This placed UK second behind Germany who beat Croatia four-nil and just ahead of Finland who beat Netherlands.

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Jamie wrote: Against Gabriel Mercier I managed to isolate a nice chunk of stones fairly early on, but then messed up the capture a bit, giving away some nice influence in exchange unnecessarily. I thought I was only a bit ahead after that, but my opponent played some slow moves and let me neutralize the influence to get comfortably ahead. I lost the ability to read towards the end and let him capture some important stones but my opponent seemed to be having the same difficulty and I managed to hold on to the lead and win by resignation.

As they finished second in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship C-League, to get promotion Ireland had to beat the B-League's ninth placed team, Sweden.

Board one was played early on Sunday 14th May and Karl Irwin lost to Sweden's Charlie Åkerblom by resignation. The other four boards played on the Tuesday, 16th May, and Philippe Renaut beat Martin Li, also by resignation, to make the match one all. Matei Garcia's game ended when Tiger Hillarp lost on time in a complicated game with huge territories and dead groups, but James Hutchison struggled against Robin Nilsson, eventually resigning. This meant it was all down to the last game between Ian Davis and Anton Silfver. This was a very close and long game, but unfortunately an error in the small yose saw Ian lose a point and the game by half a point.

Our team’s last match of the season was against Belgium. If we won then we would jump above them into fifth. A loss would move us down near, but just above, the relegation zone. Jon Diamond finished quickly and Des Cann finished slowly, being the last game of the B-League season to end. His game was a win which went with Jamie Taylor’s to make the match a draw. The team stayed to sixth (on tie-break from Switzerland) to end the league comfortably in the middle. Serbia saw off demoted Lithuania to take the top place, and Italy drew with Switzerland to get the promotion play-off place. The most important game of the evening saw the Netherlands beat Sweden, allowing the former to escape the relegation game in favour of the latter.

Andrew Simons wrote: I lost to Lucas Neirynck, returning to my bad old habit of losing on time after unnecessary complications during overtime in a game that I was leading.

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).