Our Team Stays Fifth at End of Season

Congratulations to the BGA team who managed a draw against a strong Polish team to keep fifth place, out of twelve, in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship B-League.

Bruno Poltronieri played board one and had to play the European pro Mateusz Surma.

Bruno writes: I lost. I felt the opening went fairly well. I generally managed to lead it towards the kind of game I am comfortable with. Unfortunately I let my nerves get the better of me and spent far too much time quite early on. I entered byoyomi around the time Surma started to attack a lone stone I had on the top side (which I probably should have defended earlier anyway). At that point I made several bad decisions and ended up dead fairly quickly.

Alex Kent on board two played Stanislaw Frejlak (4d).

Alex writes: Alas, I lost my game. The opening did not go that well: I made a joseki error where I played too slowly and my opponent managed to build up some thickness (though I managed to create a few defects). I didn't feel the result was too terrible because I at least gained sente to launch an attack which paid some dividends. I felt that I caught up somewhat in the middle game and I launched a critical splitting attack which seemed promising. This boiled down to a game-deciding ko, and unfortunately my choice of ko threat was not ideal. When my opponent ignored the threat it started another even bigger fight, but I don't think it was winnable for me.

Des Cann played Kamil Grabowski (1d) after a late swap from Koichiro Habu (4d).

Des writes: A nice win. I was happy with my opening, staking out a big right side. We both had one weak group coming out to the centre from the left. My opponent pushed me towards the right side then blocked me at the cost of being cut off. He then had two weak groups but some aji in my right side. Soon he invaded the right side and I decided this was an overplay and cut again. Now he had three weak groups and I had two and a lot of bad aji. He used the aji immediately which I think was a mistake. He killed a big clump of stones, saving his second weak group, but at the cost of letting me squeeze in the centre. His two other groups were then very weak. I attacked strongly against his original weak group. He made it live, but at the cost of letting me resurrect my clump of stones which killed his second group and I was still very thick. When his third weak group died he resigned.

Jamie Taylor played Grzegorz Marczak (1d) on board four in a very close game that Jamie ended up winning by 3.5.

The B-League was won by Israel, as expected, who will be replaced by relegated Netherlands. Hungary was second and will have to play off against the A-League's Sweden to gain promotion. Norway was demoted and Switzerland will be in the play-off with either Croatia or Spain from the C-League.

The four teams playing the over-the-board finals at the European Go congress are Russia, Ukraine, Romania and France, the top four from the A-League.

League Page with game records