UK Lose to Austria

The UK team lost to Austria 3-1 in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship on 8th March; congratulations to Jamie Taylor who provided our win. We are now 9th (out of 10) in league B and in the potential relegation zone: everything now probably depends on our last match against Croatia who are just above us in the Table unless we can beat one of the higher teams.

League Page with game records

Bruno Poltronieri wrote of his game: I lost by 5.5 to Viktor Lin, though I think I had less of a chance than the score might indicate. After the first four corners, we started the middle game with a pushing fight where we both got a large framework. I haven’t reviewed with AI yet but I feel this part must have been better for me as my framework was completely closed off, whereas his was still open towards the centre. On the other hand he also had a lot of potential on the bottom side too.

I then played a very deep invasion at the top, thinking that even if I don’t live, I should be able to at least reduce and it shouldn’t cost me too much. In the end I did die and what it did cost me was time as I spent way too much time trying to find a way to live. After that I feel the game must still be ok enough for white, but I wasn’t able to properly handle my reducing stones at the top, my invasion at the bottom, and a ko on the right. In the end he recaptured my reduction stones in a large way and it was a comfortable win for black.

Alex Kent wrote: I lost a very dynamic game to Schayan Hamrah.

As has been a bit of a theme for me lately, I made an error early on (tried to punish a dodgy shape too early) and ended up strengthening my opponent as much as I strengthened myself in the top left corner.

Things settled down a bit after this though and the position was such that I had thickness vs. my opponent's territory. I was therefore pretty happy when things started really heating up in the centre, and after some overplays by my opponent things were looking good.

For a while I was convinced that I could kill a white group in the centre, but I failed (not sure it's actually possible), burning through much of my time in the effort.

After this the game was still pretty close and I picked up thread that had been hanging on the bottom side. Needless to say, this turned into another fight, but this time I could win! Unfortunately, I missed a sneaky move by my opponent (D5) and played on the wrong side of some cutting stones: facepalm.

I resigned at this point, though in hindsight maybe I should have persevered for a bit longer (KataGo says I'm 6 points behind in an endgamey position).

Des Cann wrote: I lost by resignation to Bojan Cvjetkovic. A very tricky fight in the middle was complicated by the wish to maintain aji in the bottom left corner and not give my opponent too much territory at the bottom. I took a risk by playing a huge yose point instead of defending my centre group and paid the price.

Jamie Taylor wrote: I played really badly against Lisa Mayer, but somehow still won. I think we both played a lot of very bad moves, but my opponent played her worst moves towards the start in a fight where they were very costly and let me get ahead. I think I must've been a very long way ahead because by the endgame I was playing at a solidly 6 kyu level, losing dozens of points with every move, but was surprised to find I had won by 11.5 points.