Weird game between 8d and 9d


Last Sunday was held the final game to decide who would go to the World Mind Sports Games representing the USA in Beijing in October. The game confronted Joey Hung 8d vs Jie Li 9d and it was very interesting and very didactic as a sample of how to count ko threats and how to handle them.

But what strikes me the most was a sequence I found during the game and I'm still thinking it's worth trying. I was said during the game that my move wasn't good, but without explanation.

As you can see on the next image, there is a big fight going on the upper right corner of the board where there are several white and black groups involved and winning this fight would almost decide the result of the game.

Now that you've seen the board I'll tell you that the original sequence ends up with a huge ko for live or death. You can see the whole game on one board and my variation on another one.


Here you can see the original game:



Here you have the variation I found by playing L12 at Q13, which appears to be a eye-stealing tesuji.

And, once again, another variation on move 152, which gives white a nice result on the side, or at least in the variations I found.

This entry was posted by Alejo on Tuesday, June 24. 2008 at 10:29. and is filed under In the Game. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog. All new comments are subject to moderation before being displayed.

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    Alejo,

    it is quite impressive what you analysed around move 92 ff, I didnt see all of that.

    Concerning move W152, White seems to have preferred a safe variant W56, while your tigermouth suggestion W156 begs for the bad aji at P7 with subsequent escape and/or capture.

    Tommie on GD
    #1 Tommie on 2008-06-25 04:33 (Reply)
    Yes, p7 is left as a bad aji, but I must confes that I tried exploring some branches on this move and most of them were favorable to white (though I wasn't able to check if each move was the best for both)...
    #1.1 Alejo on 2008-06-25 07:00 (Reply)
    tommie is right that the aji is cleaner in the game than in your variation for move 152, though I'd say that p7 isn't really the focal point of that. Simply think of all the ways that Black can play forcing moves in this area, threatening to draw those stones out through the hole at q5. With the game move, clamping at q6, there's a lot less bad aji; black has useful forcing moves at q4 and q5, and that's about it.

    However, I don't think you'll get the result that you expect, in your variation. Is move 154 forcing, in your diagram? What if Black plays 155 at 156?

    With the move 92 variation, I think there's a bit of a conceptual error with the reading. You have white committing to connecting the two stones with q13, after which black captures and white has greatly reduced liberties, and THEN you seem to be having white trying to capture the 5 stones and the center and failing because of lack of liberties. Better the other way around, right? It's certainly plenty good to capture those 5 black stones in the center, connecting 3 weak or potentially weak groups in the process.
    #2 Anonymous on 2008-06-28 07:04 (Reply)
    I see Black can play some forcing moves, but I still see white ending up with a good result. It is true that Black doesn't get too bad results on some variations, but I assume that it is because my lack of imagination when finding the best moves.

    Move 154 seems to be a forcing move because the aji of the N12 group.

    I must confess that my reading ability is not close to the pro's or even near the dans', so I can't read the whole sequences but they look like good ones.

    About move 92...
    ...
    ...
    (five minutes later)
    ...
    ...
    Yeah!!! You're right. Directly killing these 5 stones saves the whole White group, but it gives Black the chance to live easily...Or not?
    #2.1 Alejo on 2008-06-30 12:20 (Reply)

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