Great UK Win Sees Promotion Possible

A great win in the eighth round - against the strong third-place team from the Netherlands - sees the UK guaranteed at least second place in the Pandanet B League. With just Sweden to go for the UK, unless there is an upset by Turkey against top team Germany in the last round, the team will be in the play-off position and will have a chance for promotion by playing a team from the bottom of the A League. This is likely to be Serbia and the team would have good chances in a best-of-five match against them. Well done to the team for playing so well.

Andrew Simons wrote: I lost against Gilles van Eeden 6d by resignation. Playing black, my opening was based on AlphaGo Master's favourite opening, but when I played the taisha press, rather than crawling for territory, he went for the complicated taisha line and I didn't back down (as I had nearby support) and so spent a lot of time working out variations. I probably made an order mistake (should hane before push lower side) so his group there wasn't as weak as planned and turned to attack on the left. He made a stubborn empty triangle (he regretted in review after) and I played c16 attach to settle my group, but I realised too late that he had a strong counter to cut me, so he settled his group and I got the corner. I kept building my wall and developed my moyo, but he snuck in some annoying shape attack before living. I only had a few seconds per move by now so we had some crazy trades where I half-killed a group of his on the right and he attacked my big now-eyeless wall. Maybe I should have made some sente exchanges and finished off his group and dared him to kill my wall, but in the end we both lived and I had got two decent corners on the right. In time trouble again, I made a nonsense ko as a way to play enough moves quickly and he lived in the upper left, but I had a chance to count and surprisingly it was still close (so should I have spent a move to solidify that corner?). We played some fighty endgame in which I made an ugly dango to attack him, but later I blundered a few stones and resigned (I was about to lose on time anyway and I was a bit behind by then even without the blunder).

Alex Kent wrote of his game against Frank Janssen: I ended up winning my game by resignation! The opening went poorly for me - I played (what I thought to be) joseki in the upper left but it did not work well with some stones that were already in the lower left. During the middle game Frank started building a large moyo which I invaded fairly deeply, but the subsequent complications went well for me. When the dust settled I felt that I had a slight lead. As the endgame progressed I could feel the game getting close, but my opponent made a mistake and died in a corner before counting could occur.

Chris Bryant wrote about his game against Geert Groenen: I won my game by a few points. I was unfortunately unwell and had to take a few breaks from the computer, so ended up in byo-yomi very early, not what I'm used to. The game was really hard work, but a lot of fun.

I was happy with the game until my opponent played a really nice joseki tesuji in the lower right corner - painful! I was intending to push and cut to fight, but because of that stupidity, one side of his group was almost completely alive. Brazenly, and annoyedly, I thought 'cut first, think later' as a result.

So, the game degenerated from a fairly clean and peaceful opening into a massive kerfuffle where the life and death statuses of about half a dozen groups were unclear at one point or another. In the process of the fighting, I mapped out a large area at the top of the board, while two of his groups in the middle were unsettled.

Instead of settling his top left/central group (by capturing with C18), he attached to my 4-4 stone in the top right. This allowed me to get a very strong splitting attack between his two central groups. The top area was large for sure, but if white had captured with C18, I'm not sure I would've played a move to secure the top immediately anyway, so he probably made a mistake there. Hard to be sure. Positional judgement is tricky.

He ended up skilfully living with both groups I split, which was impressive - I expected to kill one or the other. I probably could have done so I think without the time pressure. With the massive fight settled and everything alive, there wasn't much left to do. I played a couple of stupid moves in the endgame (C1, S14) proving once again that I should sit on my hands for a moment, once I've chosen what move to play, before I click...

Sandy Taylor wrote: I won my game against Gelmer Bouwman by resignation, after a game that swung back and forth following my opponent's powerful invasion, but luckily ended up in my favour once we both got into time trouble.

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