Life In 19x19

For game 1 I resigned because I played a time tesuji that was too small and died, but even if I lived I lost a few stones and was quite a bit behind. The important stuff came earlier. I would summarise (or maybe detail!) the game as follows. I played the 5-3 point because I wanted to make the "Gu Li" variation of the orthodox opening that we had studied with Guo Juan at the strong player training weekend 1 week earlier as a present to Tim who was hosting. Unsurprisingly Andrew Kay answered my approach at the top left (r14 in the record due to being recorded from Tim's perspective) with his favourite 2 space high pincer instead of keima so we didn't get that opening. The fighting started when he didn't answer r9 (there is no particularly good answer) but took the corner at r3 so I tried to split his wall from his pincer stone (Dinerstein's commentary said my q13 was correct for this). He played aggressively and I made a big mistake with p13, which I knew was a bad move but was too lazy to look for a better move (such as p14). Thus he ko-connected his groups and I didn't get enough compensation for losing the corner. He even took sente for a big point instead of defending. I felt annoyed and like I had already lost and spent the rest of the game half-heartedly playing crap moves resulting in a poor quality game that I am embarrassed will be preserved in history as part of the British Championship title match.

I would say that in terms of abstract Go skill Andrew and I are pretty close now (before this match our ratings were exactly the same at 2368, a weakish European 4 dan). He used to be a fair bit stronger than me but I've improved over the last year or so and his rating has dropped though I don't think he's got much weaker, just had a few bad tournaments (maybe he feels differently?). His reading (which is the most important thing in Go) is better than mine, but conversely I have the edge in some areas of theory and knowledge. He thus prefers to skip standard openings and get straight to middle-game fighting, whereas I prefer a calmer game I can control. But I think this game showed the most important difference between us: he is mentally strong and I am mentally weak. I found it difficult to play well after a mistake (and nervous too perhaps) whereas he keeps on fighting and trying to win. And of course I play too slowly.

In the second game I played an early invasion which Guo said was dubious in her commentary. However, I have heard that Korean professionals like it, and it is also advocated by Go Seigen in his book "A Way of Play for the 21st Century". It resulted in me as white taking a lead on territory and black with some thickness. The result is probably a lead of a few points for white which Korean pros like, but Andrew Kay was quite happy with the result too as he prefers thickness for later fighting and I used a lot of time and am likely to make mistakes worth far more than a few points later under time pressure. I was leading for sure when I got to defend the top right (in record) corner and then he played a somewhat slow defensive move and I got the big point on the left side and he couldn't kill my group or hurt my lower right corner too much. But I had used a lot of time. The fighting on the left side was interesting and resulted in a trade with a ladder breaker. I now had a big lead of points but black had a moyo and a weak group of mine to attack. I managed to live in byoyomi without too much damage and then the life-or-death question of a 3-3 invasion under a 4-4 stone arose. If I lived I would have a comfortable lead, but Andrew killed most of it and I got some yose in exchange. With enough time to play good yose white should have won (I wouldn't say anything as exact as 4 points), but in the end I made another poor move in byoyomi that wasn't really sente in an attempt to get more time to read how best to patch up some weaknesses (was it sente to kill a huge group? the answer in later analysis was yes). Andrew ignored my time tesuji and exploited the weaknesses and I lost on time with one stone to play as I was trying to find a way to salvage my broken position and forgot to keep track of the clock.