Yeah C12 is huge, followed by sente at B13 (so black could well get C12 in sente). If he is sure that his group is not in danger, he could play P6. White would have to play K4. With the sente at O3, the value of Q2 is greatly increased.

Just read some comments from Chinese sources. Some seem to agree with the comments I made above. Also mentioned that B167 should block from the side.

W198 is the winning move, black cannot use force there:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

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

So We will have all the three countries in the final stage, great news!

Dang won. Ichiriki made too many weak groups and couldn't save them all.

Ichiriki Ryo has a good chance (up to 70% FineArt) until his main time began to run out.
There is no sudden change in the plan, tomorrow Dang Yifei's opponent will be Kim Myounghoon.

From the John Power's report, Ichikiri also mentioned that Iyama outplayed him in byo-yomi. Perhaps he needs to improve it to be able to compete in a higher level.

Ichiriki's play does seem to deteriorate under time pressure more than other pros. And I seem to recall when I joined one of the Tengen/Oza broadcasts he had used about 2h30m to Iyama's 1h15m of 3 hours, though I'm not sure how trustworthy that info is.

Would love to see the top 4 ranked players battle it out in the final stage. Could get there if Dang beats Kim Myounghoon and loses to Iyama Yuta, and then have Iyama beat Kim Jiseok. Who knows, maybe KJ will surpass Mi Yuting at Goratings by the time the final stage comes around to set up an all-out battle between the top 5 players.

Looks like Dang will win again. There was lots of fighting between groups with little territory and at one point I thought it looked good for Kim but in the end his attacks yielded nothing or even lost points (duff ko threat lower side?).

Update: indeed Kim just resigned.

That move 193 though

Anyway, third stage February 26 - March 2, 2018 at Shanghai. VS. my favorite player Iyama Yuta if Japan really win this there'll be no doubt of his international performance for a decade.

I think Iyama (#3 3587) could get a win or two, but little chance to plough through the rest of the competition Nie Weiping style. To do that he'd have to beat the following. I've put rating and win % from goratings in brackets, I'm sure ewan/by78 will come along to gleefully tell us how goratings overranks Iyama:
Dang Yifei (#46, 3402, 74%)
Kim Jiseok (#6, 3536, 57%)
Ke Jie (#1, 3640, 42%)
Shin Jinseo (#4, 3566, 53%)
Park Junghwan (#2, 3630, 44%)
Win all: 4%. (a bit more than the 3% you get for 0.5^5 for all matches even).

Mamumamu ratings (at end Oct):
Iyama (#27, 9.80)
Dang (#43, 9.57, 56%)
Kim (#13 10.058, 42%)
Ke (#1, 10.86, 24%)
Shin (#5, 10.29, 37%)
Park (#2, 10.70, 27%)
Win all: 0.6%

Yes, I know the difficulty. That is why if he can do it, no one will asking about this topic ever again. (And we can close iyama Yuta world ranking discussion thread forever)

Well, if Iyama can really win it, I guess someone will open a thread saying that he indeed deserves the #1 spots on mamu or Dr.Tail Bae ranking

Anyway I tend to agree with Uberdude regarding to his chance. Japan still hasn't scored any win this year, so now all the pressure is on him. He is somehow the slight favourite to stop Dang Yifei, and if he lives up to the expectation, then he can think about getting his revenge on Kim Jiseok (who beat Iyama the last time they met at the Nong Shim Cup). After it will be extremely tough.

Sina analysis establish Dang Yifei as hero because he has to win otherwise Chinese team will failed because Ke Jie is currently in 'poor state'. I agree with them that Ke Jie has poor form now, but I think he can recover when around February.

Ke Jie's "poor form" is a bit exaggerated. Yes, he has lost 7 of his last 10, but all of them against quality opponents. The lowest ranked player he lost too since October is Jiang Weijie, a former world champion who is still in his mid-20s. Ke Jie has definitely been underperforming against his expected wins recently, but it's not unusual to see a top player go through such a stretch. He himself had a stretch earlier this year where he lost 4 out of 7 and 6 of out 13, before going on that 22-game winning streak.

his poor form is for the whole year, I think. Compared to '15, he's doing worse in the A leagues, he got 0 int'l titles (possibly 1, compared to 3 in '15), it is... kinda disappointing.

Plus, I don't know, he just doesn't give off a really safe, sturdy feeling. Like, if it was Lee Changho in his prime, even if the other country still had 3 or 4 players, whatever. Stone buddha is still going to win it for us.

But Is Ke Jie going to plow through Iyama/Shin/Park? I hope so, but I really doubt it.

As for Iyama, I don't know why pookpooi keeps on wanting people to recognize him as the world no.1 or something. I mean I think it's pretty clear his rating is slightly inflated on goratings. but really, in a relatively fast tournament like the nongshim cup, all of the players in the top 50ish would have close to a 50% chance of winning against each other. A lot more of a luck/"flow" element in it; like it depends on the conditions of the person that day, and whether they are too nervous, or excited, or focused or whatever.

Your information is incorrect. Counting by when he actually won the final game, he won 2 international titles in 2015, 2 in 2016, and he won the Limin Cup this year. Thus, he is on track to win 2 a year for 3 years in a row. I say he is on track because he is facing Zhou Ruiyang in the finals of the Xin'ao cup, and he's currently 8-1 against Zhou. As for his record this year, it's actually not bad. Up until the past couple of games, his record was significantly better than last year, and is still slightly better even with the recent losses. Let's not forget his 22-game winning streak earlier this year.

That being said, with Korea fielding their #1, #2, and #3 players, I would say that they are clearly the heavy favorites.

WindCaliber, your information is incorrect too . It is Peng Liyao 5p rather than Zhou Ruiyang that Ke will face in the Xinao final. Of games in go4go Ke has 3-1 record plus Peng is lower rated so Ke is still heavy favourite.

Whoops, sorry for the hallucination!
I must have misread it.

We seem to quite different interpretations here, and if you look at Ke Jie's stats even more interpretations fly off the page. We also seem to have lots of mathematicians/statisticians on this forum (nothing's perfect )so perhaps someone can tell me how we are supposed to read stats like this. I suspect the answer is "with a salt mine full of NaCl" but still...

Some of the other stats to take into account for Ke Jie:

Against the two players who were so raved about very recently that a massively sponsored game was arranged between them (and also raved about on this forum very recently so that a huge book of the match appeared in English), Ke Jie has a massive plus: 8-0 against Gu Li and 11-3 against Yi Se-tol.

But against the players he has played more often he has much more modest scores: 11-8 vs Chen Yaoye, 10-8 against Shi Yue and 9-6 vs Tang Weixing. He even has negative scores against Qiu Jun and Jiang Weijie (not to mention Pak Cheong-hwan) and Tan Xiao has split him on 6-6.

He even has 0% against quite a few players. I'm relying on memory, but one of the features of Go Seigen's stats was that he only ever had negative scores against a very tiny number of players - much fewer than Ke Jie is recording, anyway.

So, how are we supposed to make sense of all this beyond a vague "Ke Jie seems a fairly strong player"?

In vaguely similar territory, it has long been a given among top pros that if they had to play God to save their lives, they would need four stones to feel totally confident of winning. It seems from the latest server reports that some pros are losing on four stones to a bot. Looks like pros may have got more of their understanding of the game wrong than they thought.

Never trust numbers, I say