UK Win Again in Europe

The UK team won again in the European Teams to stay top of the B-League (equal with Germany). They beat Switzerland by four games to nil.

Andrew Simons wrote:

I was playing John Walch 4d again, who always gives me a tough game. As we are both slow players who struggle in overtime, my plan was to play faster than him, but that plan soon evaporated! We did a mini-Chinese plus not-avalanche opening that was popular in pro games a few years ago, but quickly went into uncharted territory and I spent a lot of time and ended up loosely connecting on top and capturing a stone in a ladder whilst he got some big territory with bad aji, seemed so-so.

After his double approach I tried out a 2nd line hanging connection pros like that's supposed to give my group more eyeshape (spoiler alert, it died). In the later fighting he cut to resist my attempts to push him down, making my stone heavy before I could sacrifice it and by move 60 I was already in overtime and soon had to play 17 stones in less than a minute. Somehow I managed to do so, despite my opponent's frequent disconnections and a meowing cat. However, I neglected to cleanly live with my corner (b12 probe probably gets b16 life in sente or big profit later) so played q3 preparing big ko threats, but he retreated and in a moment of muddled thinking I connected rather than living so my corner actually became a ko. As the ko was hard to win I played tenuki to offer a trade and he finished it off.

I half killed a group of his, but was too hopeful I could get a move (s12) in sente so he ended up living with all his groups I had tried to trade for. He was also in time trouble though, so he failed to cleanly live with his bottom group and it became a ko. I had quite a few threats with my dead group, but any decent sized middlegame move was also likely enough for him to win, so the ko lasted for ages, but eventually I won it and hoped to make enough in the centre. Some endgame and another fairly large ko later I came out a few points ahead just before midnight. Phew!

Bruno Poltronieri wrote:

I won my game by resignation against Fabien Lips, though it was a tough one. I started a running fight on the top side pretty early on, which I probably could have handled better as I ended up with terrible shape several times. Somehow though I managed to connect my running group nicely to my AlphaGo san-san invasion corner, getting some points on top, some points on bottom and sente to play in the bottom right corner. I think at this point I was ahead.

I was low on time though, so of course things got messy. We ended up playing a pretty big ko in my corner, but I had enough threats to fight it. It turned into a ko for my previously running group, which was good for me as it had a lot of local threats. The ko ended peacefully and, even though I messed up a capturing race I think I should have won at the bottom, I still had a lead and white resigned.

Sam Aitken wrote:

I won my game against Félicien Mazille by resignation. The opening was fairly peaceful. I decided to double approach following his pincer in top right as I thought he was hoping I would go 3-3. He gave me the corner, connected to the right side and I was pretty happy. He took a surprising sente to invade bottom right corner which led to some fighting in the middle. After I managed to cut off his tail and secure a decent sized centre, I thought the game was in my favour. Eventually he seemed to lose the will to fight a bit and he resigned when a ~20 stone group lost its eyes.

Chrs Bryant wrote:

I won my game against Frédéric Schlattner by 14.5: not very happy with how I played, wasn't at my best, but did enough. It was a fun game though, lots of fighting from start to finish. My opponent played a slight overextension in the first joseki, which I immediately invaded and made a lot of points at the bottom of the board while attacking. I ended up overplaying on the left and got a result that initially was a bit crappy, but managed to come up with a sequence to connect out a key cutting stone and then push into the left side after he played tenuki to save another group of his from an earlier probe. I then managed to capture a few important stones between two of my groups and got a good amount of centre potential. I figured that put me quite far ahead so played safe and ended up losing more than I intended to, made a couple of sloppy moves, disappointing. Still had enough though to carry it through. Oh well, a win is a win... :)

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