World Go Championship 2019

[sorin]

sorin, nice, I didn't see the 1st line atari of 8, just the peep on 2nd line. My idea was white could play a11 for sente profit before coming back to f3 if it is indeed necessary. Trouble is W f14 / B g14 is so big and tedomari. I played out the endgame with both white f3 and allowing black g14, and white taking f14 so sacrificing the m5 stones and white still lost, but only by half a point instead of 1.5

I had the same questions as you do - why doesn't white play hane on the left first (A11), at least, before connecting at F3 - but like you said, the local profit on the left is not "free" at all, it has implications towards the right.

I was also surprised that white didn't find time to play hane-connect on the first line though (N1) before black played (what looks like) reverse-sente M1. I guess that's because N1 is not really sente.

Such a complicated endgame even if the position looks relatively simple.
We need Bill's mathematical endgame approach here

[xiayun]

Poor Ke Jie, made another stupid late endgame blunder (n11 timesuji* was gote) in a final vs Park so lost by 1.5. Park wins his 3rd World Go Championship in a row.
* Actually it does defend against black L11 so not as inexplicable as it appeared.

I don't think it was "timesuji", as in thinking it's forcing - it is a big move. I think he just miscalculated the size of the other move Park played, maybe realizing too late that F4 is sente.

Agreed. This was not nearly as bad an error as the other game. The move itself had significant value and removed any variation related to the potential ko. The key mistake was to not realize b247 was sente, which doubled its value, but that's much more understandable.

[Elom]

What if the World Go championship operated like a traditional big seven tournament in Japan such as the Meijin or Honinbo (seeding in the prelims based on last years perfomance, one-by-one games instead of one large preliminary)? Perhaps such a thing is unrealistic nowdays, but considering it's one of the few international Japanese tournaments, it seems a good opportunity to give some of it's 'spirit' (and maybe make it more familiar for professionals playing in Japan).