The exchanges 34-40, 60-69, 76-82 and 84-88, in which White shifted the territory balance in his favour and let Black get the favourable influence balance, made me happy. 89-91 followed by 96-101 was my plan. With 69, I was prepared to sacrifice the stones 23 and 65; White 112-120 and White 133 fulfilled my wish. In between, I could take the huge reverse sente 127.

Especially moves 47, 50, 51, 112 and 120 deserve further study of variations. With 50-52, White decided to counter the black center influence. With 60, 76 and 84, White must have thought that the black center would not become too great. In my opinion, White 70 was too slow; there was no severe double attack on the adjacent black thick shape groups. In particular, moves 145 and 162 seem to be small endgame mistakes not affecting the winner. Black 181 has a nice timing because White must not try to start exchanges at that moment.

After surviving the opening starting from one of my favourite patterns, the game was won due to superior positional judgement. At the moves 77, 83 (anticipating 84), 87 (anticipating 88-91), 91 (anticipating something like 92-101), 103 (not giving way too much), 113 (allowing White 136), 127, 133 (giving way to restrict the aji), 153-165 (not giving way a bit), 175-177 (allowing White the reverse sente 178) and 185, I was confident to win the game by about 2 points. Maybe Ali expected me to play 109 at N11 followed by a ponnuki or other good reduction shape, or to connect at J3 with 113 and then reduce my center? White 70 or 84 would have been better chances for reduction of the upper center.

In conclusion, my first even game victory against a professionally ranked player was well deserved. As far as I know, it was Ali's first loss as a professional against a European amateur-ranked player in non-Blitz, non-Rapid tournaments. This is such a nice aspect of European tournament go: there are even games regardless of amateur or professional ranks, and the professionals have the courage to accept occasional losses.

http://www.egc2014.com/rezultate/weekend.htm

"Rules: European Verbal Japanese"

Don't tell me you have created another set of rules.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Congrats RJ

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Congratulations on the win. What do you like about the 5-4 3-4 opening?

Congrats on the game, but I want to point out that there are open tournaments in the US and Asia as well.

Amateurs in Samsung preliminary
http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/wr/sc.html

http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/jp/agon.html
Hon Soggi won his way into this tournament by beating many professionals

I thought RJ's play was definitely superior, and his consistent strategy was especially admirable, but I found it hard to see anything in JA's play that smacked of professional level. Does anyone know how a 1-dan European pro is meant to stack up against, say, a "proper" Korean 1-dan pro (three stones handicap looks plausible to me).

A 1 dan European is not a set strength, but a title awarded to the top 2 in the recent qualification tournament. Ali's European Go Rating, which I think is a pretty reliable indicator of strength, was 2658 (before it got reset to 2700 the 1p level, a decision which seems somewhat strange to me, but consistent with resets of other pros like Catalin or Diana based on pro promotion rather than earning points in European rated games). In the Lee Sedol vs the West series the West of Catalin (2696 GoR), Andy Liu and Gansheng Shi who are all a bit stronger than Ali (maybe half to one stone?) got pushed down to 3 handicaps when it was abandoned. But Lee Sedol is a top pro not a 1 dan pro. But then some new Korean pros are pretty close to top level (thinking of Shin Minjoon for example http://gogameguru.com/prodigies-upset-t ... -go-games/). Korean ex-insei like Hwang In-Seong who are close to but not quite (new Korean) pro level are 2800 GoR. So I would say 2 stones certainly, 3 maybe favours Ali a bit? And certainly less than 3 stones from an old low-dan Japanese pro I think.

Congrats Robert, good work.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I like the 5-4, 3-4 opening as Black because a) it involves an influence stone and I like playing with influence, b) it allows a large scale pincer if White makes a standard approach to the 3-4 and I like using such pincers, c) the two opening stones can be combined well with splitting the lower side for most of the reasonable white combinations of White's first corner stones and I like this splitting because I am a destructive player WRT to opposing moyos (I prefer to prevent moyos before I need to reduce or invade them deeply), d) the previous features lead to follow-up openings I am experienced with and for which my winning percentage is above what it would be for many other standard openings.

(Typo correction: "Verbal European-Japanese Rules", see http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/egfgtr.html )

Cher Robert,

Congratulations! Well done.

You got the last big play of the opening, and then built up a commanding lead by move 101.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Congratulation now, back to my so much to learn...

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Converting the book Shape UP! by Charles Matthews/Seong-June Kim
to the gobook format. last updated april 2015 - Index of shapes, p.211 / 216

Congratulations Robert.

I remember when Uberdude beat Breakfast, so maybe you two should play each other now

The thrill of beating a much younger player at the top of his game has got be great. It's certainly very inspiring for those of us in the over-30 crowd.

Congrats.

Nice win.

But I keep wondering why 127 wasn't at J3...

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Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

or 122?

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Black 127 is a reverse sente worth about 7.5 points per excess move. White J18 - tenuki - J15 - H15 - K16 - H16 - K19 - L18 - M18 etc. explains why White J18 would be sente and Black 127 is a reverse sente rather than a gote. As long as Black is not guaranteed to get both F18 and F16, the extra intersection E18 contributes only 0.5 to the value of the move. White J18 should be answered by M18, I think. Therefore, Black 127 makes the new territory intersections M18, K19 and J19 and prevents White's new territory intersections H18 (two points), G19, F19 and (as mentioned) possibly E18.

White 136 has Black's privilege follow-up E1 etc., so that the white move makes 14 points in gote = 14/2 = 7 points per excess move. (Let us assume for the sake of simplicity that C1 already counts as Black's territory.) So J3 has a - slightly - smaller move value than Black 127. (If one goes into more details, namely White's follow-ups after a Black J3, one sees that actually the value of J3 is even slightly less 7 points per excess move, because Black J3 does not prevent all of the 14 new white territory points there cleanly.)

Presumably White knew that White would not have enough points to win if White 122 or 124 were already played at J3. White tried to catch up before letting J3 be as powerful as possible in the endgame position. Unfortunately, the catching up tactics did not suffice and eventually White had to take J3 nevertheless when probably knowing of still being behind with it.

EDIT: move sequence

If white gets J18, then later K19 is his privilege:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc19
$$ +----------------------------
$$ | . . . . . C C C . 3 7 5 6 .
$$ | . . . . . C O B 1 X . 4 8 .
$$ | . X O O . . O O O X . . . .
$$ | . . X , O . . . X M . X . .
$$ | . X . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Note that falls back because of the aji around the marked spot.

If black gets J18, then later H19 is his privilege:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc19
$$ +----------------------------
$$ | . . . . . 4 3 5 S S S S S .
$$ | . . . . . 6 O X 1 X S S S .
$$ | . Z O O . . O O O X . . . .
$$ | . . X , O . . . X , . X . .
$$ | . X . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

This is a swing of some 14 points.

Robert mentions the following sequence after

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc19
$$ +----------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . 5 . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . O X W X 6 7 . .
$$ | . X O O . . O O O X . . . .
$$ | . . X , O . . 4 X 3 . X . .
$$ | . X . . . . O 2 1 . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . O X . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . X . . . . . .[/go]

But it seems to me that is a mistake and should be at

Then again, with at L17 white can squeeze like this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc19
$$ +----------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . 9 . . .
$$ | . . . . . . O X W X 6 7 . .
$$ | . X O O . . O O O X 5 8 . .
$$ | . . X , O . . 4 X 3 0 X . .
$$ | . X . . . . O 2 1 . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . O X . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . O X . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . . X . . . . . . .[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc19m11
$$ +----------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . 1 O . . .
$$ | . . . . . . O X O X X O 3 .
$$ | . X O O . . O O O X 2 X . .
$$ | . . X , O . a X X O X X . .
$$ | . X . . . . O X O . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . O X . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . O X . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . . X . . . . . . .[/go]

Though black may get to do some counter damage in the center later at a

I wonder about o4, is it better at n4? Perhaps it leaves some greater aji inside (I think I once saw Cho U play bizarre q3 attachment in such a shape), but with the way play went against the lower side black group it would have ended up in a more efficient place.

Overall, it feels like white played rather simply, perhaps assuming that as the stronger player he would win and not respecting black's centre potential quite enough. Often when a weaker player goes for the centre you can just let them have it and win anyway, but not so here. I agree 70 was slow and 84 should have done something about the centre.

Sequence 4 (which I imagined during the game) is better than sequence 3, with which I confused myself when trying to read on the small L19 game diagram. I think White prefers sequence 4 to sequence 1, and then the loss in Black's territory becomes unbearable. So I do not think it is just White's gote with privilege follow-up, but rather White's sente. Maybe Bill can clarify this for us? He always knows whether sente is ambiguous:)

During the game, I did not calculate the value on the top carefully enough. Instead, I simplified my thinking by removing the aji on the top, assuming White J3 and making the positional judgement that I would still be ahead in the game by about 2 points.

With N4 instead of O4, one enters constant worries about whether Black S3 works. IOW, N4 is not proper.