Macfadyen - Hirata

British Go Journal No. 62. July 1984. Page 7a.

Matthew Macfadyen

This is the second game reported from the tournament. The first game reported from the tournament was Macfadyen v. Budig.

Black: Hirata Hironori, 7d
White: Matthew Macfadyen, 6d
The game-file in and SGF format.

Figure 1 (1-70)

• White 12: Wrong joseki. Black has stones in both adjacent corners, so....
• White 22: The fight which arises from white connecting 6 and 14 is a bit unreasonable. Nonetheless the connection is still best. Up to 25 black gets an excellent position.
• White 58: I had intended to play 66 instead, but realised just in time that black 58 would cut me to shreds.
• White 60: Bad shape but there doesn't seem to be anything better.

Figure 2a (71-100) BGJ had Fig 2a and 2b as one diagram, Fig 2.

• Black 71: I was expecting a fight here, but Hirata calmly gives me the upper side, discards his 4 stones in the middle, and retains his lead.
• Black 83: An error - at least he is human. Hirata thought this threatened to play to the right of 82, but it doesn't work.

Figure 2b (101-147) BGJ had Fig 2a and 2b as one diagram, Fig 2.

• White 106: Normally this move would be regarded as heavy and very risky. But my last chance seemed to be to encourage him to attack me and then get some sort of counter-attack going on the stones in the left centre,
  But, Hirata won't fight - he doesn't need to. Black 109 finishes his territory off. When 131 connects all his stones securely the game is over.

I [White] was at least 15 points behind when I resigned.

The impressive thing about this game is the calm way Hirata keeps his early lead, with-out ever having to dirty his hands in a fight. I never had a chance.