President Closes Out the Spanish Inquisition

The UK's match against Spain on 18th November was split so that board 1 was played a day later.

Des Cann on board 2 wrote: My opponent started our game with the wrong overtime and I didn't notice causing a flurry of emails and abortive attempts to restart. On the board things were much calmer and I was able to plan the yose fairly early. My opponent got a ko in my corner but just using big yose as ko threats was good enough for me. He lived but I won the game quite safely.

Toby Manning on board 3 wrote: We had a fairly quiet game, with no major fights. I played a simple fuseki, ending up ahead and by the early middle game I simply had to avoid a major disaster – either losing a group or letting him get a large central territory. He failed to start a fight on the left hand side which could have been problematic and then I started a small semeai to gain some aji on the lower side. However, he made a mistake, resulting in ko rather than winning it cleanly, and when I finally started the ko 50 moves later his position fell apart and he resigned.

Chris Bryant on board 4 played a very entertaining game: I felt a bit shut out of my game from the very start, couldn't seem to get going. I think my opponent is quite a bit stronger than he claims, but I didn't play very well either. Had to fight very hard even to make the game close but ended up losing a whole-board semeai since his no-eye group unfortunately had more liberties than my one-eye group.

Jon Diamond on board 1 wrote: I managed to win. My thickness won out in the end, although I felt at a couple of times his big group might escape. The early game was pretty even, but I always felt quietly in charge although my points were a bit lacking at times.

This gave the UK its third win of the season and second place in the C-League behind Bulgaria.

Links to the games are available on our main PGETC page