UK Team Slump to Bottom of B-League

Our team lost three games to one against a strong team from the Netherlands. This put our team down to bottom place in the Pandanet B division, behind Denmark. After four rounds, in the B League out of A-D, four teams have three wins: Serbia, Sweden, Austria and Belgium. This win left Netherlands in fifth place. The next match will be on Tuesday 22nd January, against Austria.

Alex Kent wrote: I lost by resignation against Geert Groenen, but I feel I played a lot better this game (at least in the opening) so I'm not too regretful! Probably the hardest choice I faced early on was how to handle my opponent's 3-3 invasion on move 28. I ultimately played the double-hane variation, but it was a bit of a toss up between that and the keima-and-try-to-retain-sente one. My first move that was probably a serious mistake was a severe capping move I played on the right hand side. This aimed towards some aji I had there, but trying to cash this in later did not turn out as I intended. Just defending on the left would make more sense. We played out an exciting broken-ladder variation where I gained some compensation, but I think I spoiled it at the end by cutting prematurely (move 89) which introduced some weaknesses in my wall. Things went downhill from there and I couldn't find any good way to meet my opponent's reductions in the centre.

Jon Diamond wrote: Another poor loss, this time to Filip Vander Stappen. I felt OK at the start and then was moving out reasonably aggressively on the top side, pressing his side group and cutting it off from the centre. Unfortunately my attacking walls had too many cutting points, so he made an easy life with the central stones. I then found the stones that I thought I had surrounded had a little extra oomph and they got into the corner. Another miscalculation let him live a little too easily and then I really needed to kill his side, which was somewhat implausible and truly lost it with many kos I just couldn’t win. A final mistake was retaking the wrong ko, but everything was lost anyway!

Des Cann wrote: Interesting game against René Aaij, which got away from me in the large yose. We had what seemed a strange sequence to me in the bottom right and the result seemed OK. I was surprised he tenukied from the area and I came out splitting him. I got a large territory at the bottom as a consequence. I should have played calmly, but cut him at the top right in a dubious manner weakening my corner. Invading the left seemed OK, as he still had a vulnerable group in the centre. However once I connected he used sente to invade the top right and I didn't find a good answer. Worse I tenukied too soon. I should have made a comfortable life extending on the side and weakening his upper stones. Instead he got to play sente there reducing me to a small group whilst solidifying territory. I never recovered from that. I blundered in the small yose but he was already comfortably ahead.

Jamie Taylor wrote: For once I had a relatively easy game, against Gerard Nederveen. I made a few mistakes but always managed to turn them into sacrifice plays, while my opponent made some bigger mistakes with no compensation. I accidentally let the centre get very big unecessarily which made the game close for a bit, but managed to capture some stones on the side, either by a brilliant tesuji or a mistake from my opponent, I'm not sure which. After that I won comfortably by 25.5 points.

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