Jamie Taylor Only Winner Against Belgium

Jamie Taylor was the only one of our team to win a game in the third round match against Belgium. He wrote: I won my game against Lucman Bounoider, despite my best efforts. I think we were both a bit tired, as my opponent died big quite early on, then I made a colossal mistake to allow it to live instead. After that I think we both just started playing worse and worse, donating points to each other all over the board. Eventually he resigned, after I got out of several narrow scrapes, none of which I had any business being in in the first place. I can't complain though, a win's a win.

Alex Kent wrote about his board one game against Lucas Neirynck: I lost by resignation. As black I opened with a Kobayashi style fuseki, and instead of playing the "normal" two-space approach my opponent played the 3-3 invasion in the upper-right. We then followed a computer joseki - in hindsight I should probably have played tenuki part way through to obtain sente. I wedged in on the left side early in the mid-game which backfired a bit and created a weak group. I traded this for the corner and felt that the position was still playable. Around move 70 I made some rather vague moves in the centre with hope of enticing my opponent into a fight. This worked, but in the resulting complications I lost more than I gained.

Main takeaway from this game: I'm undervaluing sente - need to start playing tenuki more, particularly in the opening.

Jon Diamond wrote: Not so good from me (again) against Jan Ramon. I got suckered into making a cut early on. Then I didn’t handle the extending into the middle too well and ended up having to sacrifice 9 stones for some thickness plus an attack on a group in my large moyo. Unfortunately, it had means to make 1.5 eyes and cut out, so was pretty safe and I wasn’t making too much in pursuing it. Eventually I managed to wall it in and he made his second eye, but in gote. This allowed me to threaten his now isolated stone on the side, but he just made life. I didn’t have enough points and slightly miscounted how many I’d lost by - I should have resigned then...

Toby Manning wrote: Sorry, I lost to Gabriel Mercier. I had a brilliant opening - I pincered and his counter-attack failed and I lived on both sides. However, instead of (probably) killing his group, albeit in a bent four in the corner, I made a third eye for mine (a misread) and he lived with 5 points in the corner! I was massively ahead, and I carried on using the resultant thickness to build a moyo. I then sacrificed four stones to get even thicker. How could I lose? An over-cautious play to make shape rather than connect out a few weak stones lost me strength in the centre, but I made up for it by capturing a 7 stone group in exchanged for a large corner. But he found a move to threaten to save his stones or kill a small group of mine. I misread the sequence, could have both saved my stones AND killed his but instead added 3 stones to my small group which then died in gote. Oh dear! Even then all was not lost, but I miscounted the game and erroneously thought I had to invade his corner: I then lost the resulting semeai by one liberty and there was no way back.

League Page with game records After this entertaining match, which left the team in 9th position of ten, the next match is against the Netherlands on 11th December.