UK Draw With Slovakia

The 8th round of the B-League on 28th February saw the UK playing Slovakia. Andrew Simons played another European pro, this time Pavol Lisy. Charles Hibbert had connection problems and so Sandy Taylor, as captain, had to take over on board two. The match was drawn as both these two lost, but Des Cann and Jamie Taylor won.

Andrew Simons wrote: I lost against Pavol Lisy 1p. In the opening he picked an unusual move to grab territory and I got a big wall for a side moyo, which he then wedged (not in the place that has a miai two-space extension out of respect for the wall, an advanced technique I'd studied recently). But, rather than settling on the side, he attached on top of my pincer and then pressured my corner, and I moved out with a shoulder hit. I then spent a long time deciding whether to k16 jump on top or f11 surround his group, and chose the later, but maybe it was a mistake as only sente for a seki, not a kill, due to a sente move of his. So he raced ahead on territory, I made some small weakish groups in his Chinese opening side, but he played rather small yet aggressive moves denying a life in his final corner and I didn't really know what to do about my centre potential. By now I was in overtime and trying to get as many moves down as possible, so, when he played a sente move on one of my groups, I played some extra moves which ended up filling in my own liberties, thus I killed myself and resigned. That was rather unfortunate as I think that previous seki had now become a possible sneaky kill.

Sandy Taylor wrote: For my part, I think my game against to Xaver Gubáš was fine except for a bvital mistake at an unfortunate time. Go is a game of patience!

Des Cann wrote: Comfortable win by 17.5 points against Juraj Waczulik. I was happy with the opening. I felt I was moving round the board faster. I tenukied from a weak group with good shape to build moyo. Only concern was that I was giving him a decent amount of solid territory all round the board.He eventually ignored a kikashi played from my weak to come into the centre and eye the weak group. However when I followed up my kikashi he held onto territory at the expense of letting his stones get cut off and giving me an option to connect. I declined to kill his weak group just making territory whilst attacking. Eventually connected my weak group on dame whilst giving him the option to capture two stones. By this time most of my moyo was territory and I had a clear lead. Played passively after that to get a safe win.

Jamie Taylor beat Peter Smolarik.

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