A repeat win against Croatia 3-1

We managed to repeat our result from 2011, although we're now both in League C, not League B...

Andrew failed for us on Board 1. His opponent, whom he had beaten in the first season of the league in 2011, played some rather strange and bad moves in the opening and Andrew spent rather too long trying to punish them. Andrew didn't get much advantage (if any) and got annoyed.

He then got a group in trouble and lived in ko instead of unconditionally, losing some stones in the process, but then his opponent, presumably thinking Andrew was an utter moron based on the play so far, played some nonsense overplay of his own and created some dead stones. Andrew then missed a tesuji, so some more stones died and then the group that should have been alive had to fight the ko, as Andrew was trying to kill his surrounding group. Andrew lost that ko, but saved another group and then died instead of living in his corner because he played 3-3 instead of 3-2 by mistake... Both players then flailed around for some endgame, leaving Andrew the loser by 2.5 points in the end. Not a good game for either player...

Jon played his first game against Zoran Mutabzija for at least 40 years - the last one was probably in the European Championship that Zoran won! Jon had a good, fairly easy win - for a change he kept all his groups, except one, very safe and cramped Zoran's sort of invasion into Jon's moyo. Jon's weak group was never in any danger of dying, and one of Zoran's surrounding groups was… It didn’t die, but it didn’t get any territory either and Jon created some territory in the centre, winning by 20.5 points.

Des also had good game. He was able to calmly secure territory on the right side and at the bottom to the point where his opponent felt forced to go for an all out attack in the centre. When the dust settled his opponent's stones had died and he had to resign. The tempo was good too with Des's opponent using three lots of overtime and Des entering his first lot just before the game ended.

On bottom board Alex managed to win fairly easily too. He got a comfortable position out of the opening and kept a fairly firm handle on it throughout. At one point in the middle game things were going a bit too smoothly so Alex gave my opponent some weak stones to attack - but he was able to handle it with sabaki. End of story.

Good result.