A game played today between Ueno Asami and Tamura Chiaki in the 第8回扇興杯女流最強戦1回戦 (1st round of the 8th ???).

Once in a while, it is nice to see a professional game in which one player is completely outplayed from the start. And I mean really outplayed, none of the usual "she was utterly outplayed and ended up 3 (gasp!) points behind" stuff. A lot easier to follow than the usual games.

White's sequence in the upper left doesn't feel great and the ko fight in the upper right felt really easy for black.

What interested me most is move . I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to play away from the corner, letting white separate my two groups while going into the corner with moves to . A valuable lesson.

It's the 8th Saikyo Cup (aka Senko Cup, because of the sponsor).

You are right that B25 feels strange. Because black is "giving up the corner". But actually, gets a good wall in exchange, and white's shape is not good at all, after all. A heavy dragon that, although looks safe, is going to have to make a small life.

I'd say this is a good example of an attacking play: gain thickness, attack a weak group, gain more in the process, attack again elsewhere... and all started from a safe position.

This tournament might be interesting. Ueno Asami will most likely play Fujisawa Rina in the semifinal. They seem to be even now. And the winner will face perhaps Sumire in the final.

The chart is here:

https://gotoeveryone.k2ss.info/news/jp/fsaikyo/8/

I think the point is that is gote, and has little effect on either black group. I suspect that White actually didn't have time for that, even if letting Black take it in sente hurts a lot.

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

I agree, black playing at 40 would be painful. And even if w takes sente with 40, it's not clear to me how her shape in the upper left can become really good (f12?...). Painful all around.

I was also "impressed" by . Maybe it is the best move locally but it seems so slow. White has eight stones there and not even an eye, while b has played interesting moves.

edit. I just put the game into Katago and it turns out w64 is the correct move, aiming at b's stones above and the keima. My bad!

It may be the correct move, but still painful to play.

White does seem to get very busy. Even creates a new group with and black's ko threats are mostly moves that black is happy to make anyway.

I haven't looked at the game with the computer but what I have noticed before is that it's possible to become very busy with handling different groups when following something that the computer might play. The computer sometimes plays very active and keeps solving harder and harder positions, but it can be much more difficult for one side than the other.

I can understand . If white doesn't play then there won't be a sente on the A line to connect under to a white extension or block black in sente from connecting the C12 peeping stone. Later it will be sente for black and in the meantime it can become too slow for white, that is maybe white's chance to play it is right now. At least I think I understand how white can play it in gote. Basically, changes many things in white's favor. It could be a case of playing the maximum (or perceived maximum rather) move, believing you can keep solving the situation that follows.

I wonder if white wasn't better off to go into this variation. If the tenuki was an attempt to setup something that would work well for white it appeared to fail. Still I'm anyway not sure where exactly white went wrong.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc
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$$ | . . X , O 2 . . . , . . . X . , X . .|
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$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . , O . .|
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$$ +--------------------------------------+[/go]

btw you are also welcome to post such game in this thread https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=18475 with or without analysis.

Thanks for the details about the tournament, pajaro!

kvasir, your comment about the computer playing actively is interesting. Maybe Tamura tried to do something of the kind, maybe she had studied this position (or something similar).
Yes, same here. After putting the game in Katago, it doesn't seem like there's one egregious mistake. Instead white steadily loses points.