UK Beaten by the Danes
The UK team lost their round three match in the Pandanet B League by losing to Denmark 1-3.
Andrew Simons was on board one against Uffe Rasmussen. He wrote:
I lost in a spectacularly stupid way. The game started with a reasonable fuseki, but when he extended high on the top side, I didn't feel like making a shimari, so invaded. He played an inappropriate pretty shape move in the resulting fight, but, as I had the ladder to the left, I captured a stone for a good result. His ladder breaker wasn't so amazing and I played a pleasant honte to net the ladder stone. After a standard joseki and trading some solid moves, I played a checking extension which he ignored to grab a load of points. I then invaded to take his base and he tenukied again to grab another corner. The problem was it wasn't so easy to kill the resulting heavy wall, nor to make profit from attacking. We had a ko in which I ignored his local threat to make one eye, and his group was almost dead but with a little escape aji. Under time pressure I made a blunder, he didn't punish it but ran away, and then I fixed the blunder in a bad way. I then surrounded some centre points, and was probably still ahead but didn't have time to count. Then as I was feeling depressed I played an absurd fake tesuji to either gain a few points or let him into my centre with a double ponnuki and try to kill it, he called my bluff and I went out in a blaze of glory/idiocy. I shouldn't do that.
Charles Hibbert lost to Jannik Rasmussen. He said:
The game started with a mini or micro chinese attempt which I denied by approaching his 3-4 stone immediately. This made the game fairly aggressive until I broke into the middle disrupting his large wall, in exchange for two decent size moyos (both with weaknesses). I then made a Kobayashi-looking thing which got pretty big after he made a low two-space approach, and worked well with a 4-4 4-6 3-9 enclosure on the other side of the group he was settling; at this point I felt I was winning, which is unusual for my openings.
He then went after the Kobayashi moyo, which I messed up by being too forceful and letting him live on the inside, and then I really messed up by getting too heavy in one of his areas and ending up dead; both of these were about 15-20 points lost. After that I tried a few things, but my opponent played safely from ahead and got into endgame very early, so there was little I could do, and lost by 7.5.
Des Cann had a frustrating game against Torben Pedersen. He writes:
Last night was somewhat excruciating. From the start of the game my client was suffering bad delays. I would play a move and my clock would stop but his wouldn't start until anything from a few seconds to several minutes had passed. It continued like this the whole game and I didn't finish until midnight.
I was happy with the start. I had a high Chinese on the right and we both had two weak groups jumping out from the left. He tenukied from this first letting me cap in the centre which felt good. I then invaded the position he had formed at the bottom cutting his position in two. I think this was good but as his second weak group jumped into the centre I overplayed and suffered a semi-collapse as he captured two stones in the centre. The rest of the game felt like yose to me as the capture meant I was divided into many different groups. I managed to get back a lead but then lost some more stones through worrying too much about the eyes of another group. It was tough then but I got it very close. In my first period of overtime the server then decided I had lost on time although I had played my 25th stone on my board and still had 3 minutes on my stopped clock. I reckon I would have lost by two points, but still frustrating to end like that.
Daniel Hu played Mathis Isaksen on board 4. He wrote:
In the opening, I was careless, not paying enough attention, and I got in to the deepest of troubles on the right, with two large weak groups separated. I needed a desperate ko to live and my opponent repeatedly underplayed letting me connect eventually with two moves (but losing lots of points in the process). My endgame was far better however, letting me get enormous 20 point moves while he protected against me saving 10 points in ko, blundering several on the bottom, and missing a key point in the centre. Eventually he tried to kill my upper left group and I knew I had no choice but to keep bravely entering his territory, and he lost several points when I connected to my other group. It seemed to be just 2/3 point moves, remaining, but he suddenly blundered 7 points on the top left, so my advantage was W+12.5, and about to fill in dame. He then missed a liberty shortage in his own territory and I had a ko to gain 29 points. He resigned - Phew!
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