UK Team Crushed By Strong Serbia

In round 7 of the League, our team came up against the top placed team Serbia. Jon Diamond played a day early and lost, and despite playing well the other three lost too, losing the match four-zero. This result saw the team drop one place to fifth.

Bruno Poltronieri wrote: I lost to Dusan Mitic after a pretty bad misread. Overall I’m actually fairly happy with the game. I started a running fight quite early on the right side. At some point my opponent gave me a chance to trade territory at the bottom for a wall facing the top side, which I took. I think that was the wrong choice and I’m probably a bit behind here, but at least it simplified the game. I managed to cut off part of his group in the top left, but that allowed him to try something in my territory. That’s where I misread and lost big. According to Leela his attempt actually shouldn’t work, and I’d be ahead if I countered it correctly! Oh well.

Alex Kent wrote: I lost by 4.5 points to Nikola Mitic. I went a bit wrong in an early middle game fight, but not devastatingly wrong as I did manage to capture some cutting stones and stabilise my position. My stones in the lower-right were too heavy to save, but their aji proved useful later on. I had some opportunities as the game went on and it became really close. Subsequent engine analysis shows that I missed a chance to take a commanding lead on move 166: I could have allowed some of my opponent's stones to escape and take profit in the centre. I was in some time trouble at this point and disregarded this option. Overall I'm fairly happy with the level of play, just not the result I was after!

Jon Diamond wrote: Started off reasonably against Milos Bojanic, but a squeeze didn’t quite work and when he got an eye in my corner to save his group I felt I was a bit behind. So I played some large moves, expanding my territory and compressing his. It seemed to be going reasonably well. Then he counter-attacked against my territory, which was actually thinner than I thought, and I blundered in the end, giving away too many points. However, he courteously returned the favour and then again! I then misplaced a move F14 by one point (a misclick?) and it all started falling apart, when it should probably have been fine, the situation turning into a ko I couldn’t win. So I filled with a few more inevitable moves and it turned out to be a smallish loss (7.5).

Sandy Taylor wrote: Alas I lost by one intersection to Mijodgra Stankovic, but it was a pretty reasonable game for a weekday evening. Although my opponent built a large moyo, they also threw it away, and we played a long (and probably not all that great) endgame. I felt that I was behind and slowly gaining a little, but evidently not enough (losing by 2.5).

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