Interesting new moves

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Hi everybody! During the last few weeks I spent a lot of time replaying recent pro games and -as expected- found a lot of innovative new ideas and patterns which I want to share with you. Some of those I already studied in detail and I might give my conclusions later. For starters I just want you to check out the beauty of pro-thinking in the following diagrams.


Dia 1: A funny jump

This game was played as a part of the 2nd Japanese Yugen Cup at the 12th of January 2009. The players are Osawa Kenro 1p (White) and Kato Atsushi 8p (Black).

Black 7: Normally Black 7 is played at the lower edge, mostly at K4 which would form the famous "Kobayashi Koichi" opening. Here Kato decided to develop more rapidly, jumping directly to 7 which is consistently followed by the tsuke at 9 and the pushing moves of 15-21.

As a result Black 7 looks just perfect and Black won the game by 3,5 points.





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Dia 2: Breaking away from the conventional Joseki -a strong hane


This game is was played during the 3rd round of the 9th Chinese Ricoh Cup (8.2.2009). The players are Shi Yue 4p (White) and Sun Tengyu 3p (Black).

White exchanged 8 for 9 before attaching at 10 which is in itself still quite a new move, even though we have seen it for some years now.
As the ladder favors Black he wants to play the Joseki given below, trying the Hane at 11.
However White played 8 considering this possibility and counters with the severe Hane at 16.

Now there are quite some variations but as Black does not back off the fight results in a ko.



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Dia 2.1:

Up to 40 White takes the ko, giving him an extremely thick position on the top. Of course after 42 the game is still difficult, but based on what I think and -more importantly- what a pro I asked about this thinks, we can say that the result is better for White.

As a result W also won the game by 2,5 points.








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Dia 3: Push, Cut, Fight

The last game I want to show you today was played by Ding Wei 9p (White) and Zhou Heyang 9p (Black) as part of the 23rd Chinese Tianyuan Tournament (13.2.2009).

The opening up to the attachement of 14 is often seen in actual play, but recently some pros try the push and cut of 15 and 17 setting up a difficult fight.

The most important part is, that W can not use 32 to kill Black at 33 because the semiai in the corner will either result in ko or Seki which is both bad for White as Black already took the Ponnuki with 31. Black forces with 35 before playing the nice Tesuji of 37. Now W has to play 38 at the top because Black could play there blocking Whites path in Sente, which is inconceivable. However the general opinion seems to be -at least among the Japanese Insei- that this result is quite good for Black as Ws group on the right side is still weak and Black got a very strong ponnuki.

Black won this game by resignation.

Doing Tsumego with a pro

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Today once again I went to the Nihon-kiin to study Go. As I said before I am currently focussing on tsumego. When I have trouble finding the correct solution I sometimes ask professionals for help, but it's kinda depressing if you ask me, for the pros find all the correct solutions instantly. I'll just give you two examples:


Problem 1:

It was still early in the morning (11 am =P) when I entered the room at the 7th floor of the kiin, which is reserved for insei and professionals. I saw a pro who also gave me a hand for the joseki research presented in the last post sitting all alone reading the new issue of "Go weekly". I said my "konnichiwa" and sit down next to him, starting to do tsumego. When I laid the stones for my first problem (the one to the right) down on the board he had a short glimpse at it, immediately said "easy" (one of the few English words he knows) and then continued to read his newspaper.

Actually I found the problem not easy at all. Please try for yourself. It's black to kill.


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Solution 1:

After like 6-7 min I still could not find the correct answer and felt quite bad, because the pro obviously read it all out in an instant. I did one more attempt and after I failed again I asked the sensei to help me out. He asked for my best way and claimed that the first two moves where correct, then leaned back again to read the Go news.













After another few minutes I started to ask myself how pathetic it could get, but even though I asked one more time the pro just answered that it was too easy for him to help me.
When I finally did it I had spent more than 10 min on this problem though it is really not particularly difficult.

The pro smiled.










Problem 2:

Seeing the huge gap in out reading abilities I decided to test him with the most difficult tsumego I had in mind. I remembered that even a group of E and F-class Insei could not solve it. It took a C-class level Insei to finally do so.

If you don't have something else to spend your time on you can go and try for yourself without looking at the solution.







Solution 2:

I was happy, that he did not answer instantly.
When he stoped reading and leaned back, closing his eyes and thinking hard I was actually smiling, remembering all the trouble I had with this problem -especially finding the first move.












Unfortunately my happyness did not even last one minute, when the pro said: Ko.
And what shall I say other than: Yes he is correct.

What we can learn from this: Don't challenge a professional for a tsumego-match.








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The idea of 9 sacrificing as many as six stones seemed amazing to me, but the pro did not even falter for a second when showing me his solution.











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It ends in a ko.

The final comment of the pro, when he learned that it was one of the most difficult tsumego I have in mind: Chotto muzukashi. (A little bit difficult)