Quote:
(In my pro games database (>2000 games for 2018) these are the only 8 games of 2018 that show up for the discussed position. Nobody connected at a in these games. For the size of empty quadrant see first post of thread.)
Ah, OK. There was nothing in your post to indicate you were insisting on an 11x11 quadrant and I used my usual 9x9. That limits the hits drastically, even on my almost 4,000 2018 games. But for the AI era you may wish to look at Cho Han-seung vs Tao Xinran 2016-07-16 and Ichiriki Ryo vs Uchida Shuhei 2018-04-26 as the spacings there are very large. Takao Shinji vs Kono Rin 2014-09-11 is pre-AI but there is an even wider gap on the side. In all three cases the quality of the players concerned would make me hesitate about saying "bad move."
Also, although I glibly talk about "AI era", as far as I can see no AI has played the crawl (as opposed to the connection) in an 11x11 quadrant (on a 10x10 quadrant, I have only one example: AQ vs Baduki, but only as late as move 65, in August). The earlies example I have of the crawl for both 10x10 and 11x11 by a human is 2018-03 as above from China (move 26 by Chen Yaoye). So is this a purely human idea, an AI-influenced human idea, or an AI idea I have missed?