UK Team Ends Fourth in B League

The last round of the B-League on 16th May saw the UK playing Italy. Board one was played a day early. The match was drawn with wins on boards 3 and 4.

Andrew Simons wrote: I'm afraid I lost my game last night against Allesandro Pace. I was happy with how the opening went, and played a shoulder hit I'd seen in a Lee Sedol game to counter his influence strategy. Once I played the last big opening point on the left he played a strange attachment underneath and rather than directly answering I went for a leaning attack. He then played a loose move (f7 rather than f8, afterwards he said it was misclick) which allowed me to clamp to get the side but instead I got carried away and played what was essentially an endgame move at e2 so he fixed the clamp problem in sente. He then played a sharp attachment which I answered submissively and couldn't break into his moyo due to his own clamp tesuji. By now I was in overtime and tried to reduce aiming at his bad aji, but my wall had a cutting point of its own and with just a few seconds per move I sacrificed a huge group to kill a smaller one of his with bad aji. Maybe I could have had a chance if I surrounded the centre and sacrificed the tail of my group, but I saved it and in doing so he saved his formerly dead group, so I was miles behind but didn't have time to count, thus played it out and lost by 25 points.

Des Cann was beaten by Matias Pankoke by 5.5. He wrote: I was black and played high Chinese. His first corner we played simple version of the small avalanche, which I felt was good for me given adjacent corners but he kept sente and I allowed him to form a shimari with two extensions. I invaded deeply, which he answered fairly passively, but then he counter invaded. The position was complex with us both having two weak groups. I let him live with his smaller group whilst getting extra moves on the outside and got an attack on his larger group. He then resisted a peep of mine eventually allowing me to cut off the head of his group, in exchange for the remainder, living comfortably. I tried to surround the head on a large scale, but didn't succeed. Probably still ahead at this stage, but too many errors in the yose cost me the game.

Daniel Hu wrote: I won by resignation against Carlo Metta. I’m feeling pretty exhausted from exam prep. My play is substandard, though I think my opponent also did play well, with a nice plan to attack a weak group I set up. He let my group off completely by protecting a severe cut in gote, when he could have attached in the corner to protect in sente. I lost points on the upper left when I pushed up. He was probably a little ahead until I threatened a ko to kill a small corner of his. He could have connected on the first line, but instead threw in the ko himself when I had plenty of threats. In time trouble he played a fake ko threat that gained 4 points in sente, but I was alive due to special properties of the corner. I ended the ko, and won.

Chris Bryant wrote: I decided, ahead of time, that I was going to open on 6-5 and 7-5 as a bit of end-of-season fun, and to the credit of my opponent (Davide Minieri) he reciprocated with the almost equally silly 6-4 and 5-4 to set the stage for a nice final game. I then played a 7-6 point as an 'approach' for move 5, lol. Who says you need alcohol to have fun.

After the silly opening shenanigans, he managed to somehow find space underneath my seventh line stone to invade my rather large corner, and we had a fairly uneventful fight. I got sente, followed up my move 5 'approach' and then had a rougher fight. I read that I could play a ko, let him punish me fairly heavily on the first corner, but fill the ko, and I liked the position that would have resulted from it. Unfortunately he managed to get a couple of moves on the outside first, so when we played the ko it was a bit better for him. In the end his group on the outside lived after I won the ko, but I built up nice centre influence and took sente after he defended the first corner.

I then built a moyo worth about 200 points which probably was big enough to win the game even with proper reductions – I felt pretty comfortable at this point. He was also getting very low on time. I played a move (M15) that was sente against one of his groups, and he replied with a bad move that left behind a lot of aji, and I punished pretty hard. I found the lovely F15 (move 103) and after that the game was pretty much over; I had too much in the centre and finished that area in sente.

This left the team fourth at the end of the season (15 points, 26 board wins). First was Poland (20 points, 34 wins), with Italy in the play-off place (16 points, 29 wins) and Austria third (16 points, 26 wins).

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