UK Lose to Finland

The seventh match of the season was against Finland. At their request Bruno played board one on the previous Saturday and the games on the Tuesday were at staggered times. In the end Bruno was the only winner and the loss put the team in bottom place of the B League, on tie-break behind South Africa.

Because Russia and Belarus have been removed from the leagues, there is only one relegation place now this season.

League Page with game records

Bruno Poltronieri wrote of his game: I won my game today against Javier-Aleksi Savolainen as black by resignation. The start of the first fight felt good for me but I quickly found myself with a large unsettled group. Katago agrees the fight was good, but thought I had nothing to worry about with my group. Unfortunately I panicked a bit and settled my group with a costly ko, giving white a lead and a lot of influence.

After that I was more than 10 points behind and had to throw stones into his centre to look for any chance. Thankfully my opponent was even deeper into byoyomi than I was and things quickly became complicated. My centre stones managed to connect and simultaneously cut white into 3 groups. White then tried to kill my corner in a multi-step ko but two of his groups were killable at that point.

Jon Diamond wrote: Started as usual against Tuomas Hella trying to play quietly, but as usual didn't last long enough. Still, this time didn't lose anything immediately! Nevertheless, the middle game didn't seem terribly favourable for me. Perhaps I didn't play as well as I could do when I had the initiative to expand from my 3-3 corner and press him enough?

Still, I was plodding along, but he didn't defend accurately enough and I had a throw-in to secure one of my groups leaving him with two groups in danger and only one of mine. Hmm, maybe one of my groups is not quite strong enough? But hey, he's had a disconnection - it's my move, but it doesn't let me play, although his clock is running down... Oh, dear I've just noticed that my protection move for the other side doesn't work - disaster in prospect!!! Anyway I struggle on a bit then lose the corner and resignation seems really appropriate.

Jamie Taylor wrote: I got off to a really good start against Oiva Moisio by capturing a whole corner after my opponent got careless. I managed to keep things sensible and stay well ahead for a while, but somehow a small fight broke out which then became big and then I made a bad misread and lost it. It might not have been such a disaster, but I got panicky and allowed some more stones to die. I still wasn't that far behind when we started endgame, but we got to a situation where I read a move out with my mouse hovering over a different move and clicked that move instead. Things went downhill from there, I died and resigned, although by that point I was being comfortably outplayed and I'd probably have lost anyway.

Alison Bexfield wrote: My game against Olli Ervelä developed into a fight fairly early spreading out from a corner where I had my opponent under attack. I could not quite seal him in but came out with very good centre thickness which I proceeded not to use to advantage. So I lost the game with insufficient territory.