UK Lose to Strong Serbian Team

Our team lost all four games against Serbia. The result was not a surprise, as Serbia has an extremely strong team, quite likely the strongest in this league. They went top, just ahead of Sweden, after this match. Our team had fallen to eighth position after this round, round two. The next match will be on Tuesday 20th November, against Belgium.

Alex Kent wrote: I lost my game against Nikola Mitic by 17.5 points. I made an effort to play a slightly calmer/simpler opening than I normally do, which gave me a playable position early in the middle game. I may have made a few moves which were too meek - in particular my pincer on move 20 probably would have been more effective if it was closer to the action. I think I should have tenukied in a couple of places where I didn't. My opponent launched an effective splitting attack which built up his large potential on the left side - things came to a head soon after when a large ko developed on the lower side. I ignored my opponent's first ko threat and connected the ko. I think this was the right choice because I could still save some of the stones his threat attacked and I felt there was a decent chance I could launch a strong attack on my own. In the game my attack petered out soon afterwards and I was left with a challenging position. I tried to create complications later on, but the damage was done.

Sandy Taylor wrote: I also lost, against Dusan Mitic. In the end my position collapsed, but I had been pushing my luck for a long time and I'm not really sure which moves put me behind. I look forward to asking my computer about it!

Des Cann wrote: I lost by resignation to Milos Bojanic after a game of mostly quiet fighting. On the whole my groups were stronger than his, but he generally had more potential and there never seemed an opportunity for me to seriously attack. He found a sequence to wall me off on the right side. I must have had a better sequence than the one I played. This resulted in him getting a large corner in the top right. Then he attacked the group I'd just formed on the top side. I felt if I responded passively I would simply lose on territory, so I counter-attacked and the first fierce fight occurred. When the dust cleared two of my groups were dead and I resigned.

Jamie Taylor wrote: I lost by resignation to Mihailo Jacimovic after a bit of a rough game. I think Mihailo made quite a few rather dodgy moves, but I did a poor job of punishing them. I was doing ok though, until my reading became very bad towards the late middle game and I lost some important stones unexpectedly. I think the game might have still been winnable at that point but I tried a couple of poorly thought out manoeuvres that both died and after that I had to resign.

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