Commented game on free handicaps

[TMark]

I don't want to start up the possible aggravation and trolling in a separate thread, but I thought that this may be interesting.

While agreeing with those who argue for the merits of the traditional handicap placements, I'd like to remind readers of something that we at GoGoD have pointed out before: the Japanese are far from hidebound by this tradition. We have several games with unusual placements, going back quite some time. But one of the latest may be of special interest.

The arrangement in the attached game was allowed by the Kansai Ki-in 9-dan because Black said she was studying the Chinese fuseki. However, this game could also be seen as an argument that she ought to have stuck to tradition. I have included comments based on those from Yamazaki. As you will see from
both the game and his comments, Black perhaps needed to have studied the basic, traditional stuff rather than advanced fusekis.

I came across this game recently while trawling through Kansai Ki-in records. Fans of Sakai Hideyuki and Yuki Satoshi (we know of several) may be pleased to hear we now have in the GoGoD database many new games by these players from the same sources.

Best wishes.

[kusto]

that was interesting!

[SmoothOper]

So a 5 kyu played a 9 dan with a seven stone handicap and only lost by 9 points?

[shapenaji]

So a 5 kyu played a 9 dan with a seven stone handicap and only lost by 9 points?

This is not unusual,

This kind of game was played for teaching purposes, there's no way a 9 dan is going to go all out.