It's that time of the year again -- the annual Ottawa Cup Go Tournament at the end of April. I was glad to see lots of friends, and happy with both my result (2nd place in Group A) and the contents of my 3 games. Tournament photo credits to Jean-Sebastien Lechasseur.
Game #1 was a tight game against Kevin the rising star.
Game #2 against fast-improving young Dimitri
Game #3 In the final I faced Sarah Yu 6d, a strong and experienced player
I have played a few games with her online and know her strength. People say you would really sense strong players' power when playing them face-to-face, and that is absolutely true. She makes fewer errors especially at game-turning points.
Although I lost, the game was decently played and I might have a couple missed chances.
This was a scenario in our game. I was white. I fixed my dragon with white 1, and black 2 also had to fix the centre. Then I would spend a move in upper-left corner to secure some territory and keep the game balanced. These were all in my plan, steady and peaceful like the ways of some old generation Japanese players.
In fact, white could play the push move as shown above. Due to the shortage of liberty with black's centre stones, and the unnecessary triangle exchange a bit earlier, it's hard for black to block white. That means significant reduction of black's centre territory, and black needs to be mindful of his safety in the lower-left quarter board. In the mean time, white's dragon is safe because black's top and centre are not strong enough to kill white. So white 1 push is an active and efficient play that's appropriate at this exact moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment