Match Against Finland Drawn

In the fourth match of the season, our team (the same players as the previous match) managed a draw against Finland, after a late substitution of a weaker player by them.

Andrew Simons wrote: I won my game against Javier-Aleksi Savolainen by 7.5 points. He played even more slowly than me in the opening, so it was a nice sensible game: after some AI-style josekis he shoulder-hit my not-in-the-middle extension and rather than jumping out he cut off my wall below. As it had made some standard kikashi earlier, I managed to get it out in ok shape; we ran for a bit (I think he shouldn't have let me get j12), he capped my group, but then I went for a small local life/connection, which was locally a bit sad but ok given I'd got a big tenuki out of it, and still wasn't dead. He then used his cap to invade my right side, I got some handy kikashi and connected on top and built a wall, but he took all the territory. m12 seemed a nice point, aiming at miai of making an even huger top left and attacking/cutting his middle group, but AI says it was bad and too slack, the later threat wasn't actually real enough, but thankfully he played a not-sente peep, so I tenukied to grow the moyo. I was wondering if his 3-3 would be ko or killable, but instead he attached so I kept the corner eyes and then spent a move to kill off the aji and so was leading a bit going into the endgame. There was some excitement when I came back to connect the k7 peep (which he answered thickly at b4 to avoid me attacking his centre), I then didn't play n18 "double sente" kosumi because I thought he could ignore and my l5 was more sente; he took the kosumi so I broke into his lower side and he got a big sente monkey jump. There was further drama with a ko in the centre with neither of us wanting to submit, and I went for a trade of letting his dead top-left group live, at the time I thought it was a little smaller but in retrospect I maybe lost a few points, and then I didn't have enough ko threats for the last ko, but still had enough to win in the end.

Bruno Poltronieri wrote: I lost this game against Vesa Laatikainen. Things went down hill after my invasion on the top side. I think I had a chance but I was tempted at the last second by a massive ko. He ignored my first threat and White got both influence and territory, while I only got influence. I tried to attack a White group in the centre but I played slack and it lived with points. After that I didn’t quite realise how behind I was so I played a few more slow moves, which definitely killed off my chances.

Alex Kent wrote: I lost this game by resignation against Mikko Siukola. The start of the game went reasonably well and I think around move 75 my position was decent. In hindsight I should have played the forcing move at D10 earlier on as it would have had a significant effect on the desperate fight later on. Move 76 was a mistake - a result of me significantly overestimating the strength of my group on the bottom-right side. Said group nearly died, and perhaps it should have been sacrificed, because my opponent gained a lot of power here. From here on out my opponent played very strongly. I managed to create a bit of trouble and started a tricky fight. This would have gone a lot better for me if I had the aforementioned D10, in the game I died in a couple of places.

Jon Diamond wrote: An easy game for a change! This one against Johanna Tuominen. Also I was trying not to complicate, by not creating weak groups for a change too… Fairly quiet opening by both of us mapping out large moyos on each side, but my opponent had a few slightly weak floating stones which I pressed. They lived easily, but created more outside strength and turning much of my moyo into territory. We then emerged into a bit of fighting after we had both some stones in the middle without eyes, but both connected, however this helped destroy any additional potential for them. When I sealed off a couple of significant areas there was a clear win, however I lost a few stones accidentally which was probably the best part of 20 points, so making me a bit nervous. However my yose was better, so I ran out the winner by 37.5 points.

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