Life In 19x19

Gu Zihao beat Tong Mengcheng by resign.

Ahn beat Tang by resign (these semifinals are best of 3, 2nd game tomorrow). Looking good for my tip of Gu... However, if Tang does make it he beat Gu twice recently (Chinese league last week) although in lifetime record Gu leads 5-3 (strangely Gu won their first 5 games despite him being 5 years younger so you'd expect him to improve and do better more recently).

So in this tournament, Ahn has beaten Chen Yaoye (twice), Tuo Jiaxi, and the first game against Tang; pretty good stuff. Certainly, Gu Zihao isn't too shabby himself, having gone through a trio of Korean elites in Lee Donghoon, Park Yeonghun, and Park Junghwan.

Gu lost his second game. I wasn't a fan of his strategy: he started an early fight and made lots of small groups with second line moves whilst Tong played a thick game. Gu resigned when his last desperation invasion got killed with a nice shape attack involving broken shapes.

Tang won, so both semi finals go to deciding third game.

Tang and Gu won so through to final. Gu aggressively went for a kill and it ended up as a semeai between his bent four in the corner and a no eyed group with several liberties. Tong didn't have big threats though for the corner ko so got 4 extra moves to grow his moyo whilst Gu took the liberties. Gu then nicely managed to cut and capture some of the moyo boundary during his reduction and had enough to win.

Final starts 5th Decemeber. Gu's good form continues, he just beat Lian Xiao in the Chinese league (with a really big ko trade in endgame) and is #8 on goratings to Tang's #12.

Tang won the first game today. Next game tomorrow, Gu needs to win to stay in the match.

I heard 2nd hand that Gu's win rate was 70% after 30-40 moves, rapidly rising to 92% for the first 150-200 moves and then he messed up the ko in byo-yomi

(according to fine art)

I guess the ko went well. He messed up in the center trying to cut black group. According to FineArt it was enough to just take the stone

Gu won the second game. Long exciting ko at the end, kid has balls of steel! (he captured some stones which allowed his huge group to get in trouble and eventually become a high stakes ko but had loads of threats and a double ko thingy to wriggle his way out of trouble; this willingness to go all in is something I've noticed in his games, makes them quite spectacular).

Edit: according to a glance at a comment from Dia at BIBA at a review by Kim Jiseok 9p Gu was in trouble with his big group but Tang messed up.

Uberdude wrote:this willingness to go all in is something I've noticed in his games, makes them quite spectacular).

Fascinating indeed. And you're doing that on Tang, who is known for his boldness.

My prediction came true, Gu Zihao won the deciding third game to win the Samsung cup, his first international title aged 19. Well done him. The decisive moment seemed to be another high stakes fight: Gu had surrounded one of Tang's groups but rather than living locally Tang counterattacked to cut Gu's surrounding group which meant Tang's group wasn't alive but had a fair few liberties. Gu ended up withd only 1 real eye and 1 ko eye but few libs. He lost the ko but settled his group by capturing a good chunk of its surrounding stones.

Not the highest quality game, but very exciting to watch. B121 was the losing move. After W122 that black stone could not be saved. But instead of saving his dragon, Tang decided to do an all-in, typical of his style. But he was just short of one ko threat.

Probably, Gu Zihao will be promoted to 9p.

trout wrote:Probably, Gu Zihao will be promoted to 9p.

Yes, the 44th 9p from China.