1001 GoGoD Games for your Coffee Break #22 (4 Feb 2013)

[John Fairbairn]

We saw an odd finish to an NHK game yesterday. Here is another one from 1997. The speed of play in this event has caused incidents a few times.

In this case Cho Chikun lost because his last stone fell off the board as he played it and he didn't get it back in time. The move he had putatively played was connection at P19, to gain time to think about his dead lower centre group. But he had a lost position anyway.

There was poetic justice in this. In an earlier round, Cho had won on time when Fujisawa Hideyuki failed to make a move at all. By this time the event had speeded up to 30 seconds a move.