Alejo's Tenuki

Since the network configuration at my job place is somewhat restrictive, all real-time servers such as KGS don’t work. The solution I came up with is playing through turn-based servers like Dragon Go Server.

Unfortunately, my account was created in 2006, as a 30k. And still has the same ranking. So I’m rapidly climbing in the ladder, but I’m just playing a very interesting game with a couple of life-and-death problems.

The game started very peacefully, both of us creating big moyos, which didn’t last too long before being invaded. My invasion seems to have reached success since it has been finally connected to a stone freely placed in tengen. But I felt a lot of pressure from my opponents attack, so I had to run for life…

His invasion is still on the go:

As you can see above, black is somewhat into trouble because of the surrounding white strength, but white does have some weaknes which could be exploited.

It took us over a day to make the last 15 moves, so most moves are well-thought. They may be wrong, but I’ve carefully thought about this situation.

The move sequence on the real game was this one:

As you can see, B 77, tried to connect and scape. B 81 created a possible ko-eye, which was turned into a false eye by W 82. This last move was unnecesarily answered with B83, since it was a bamboo joint and allowed me to make an extra move: W 84, and thus removing some extra eye space, but allowing black to take W 82 and convert the false eye into a real one.

After this exchange, black is trying to escape by peeping on a single jump. According to popular wisdom: “even a moron connects against a peep”, I happened to … block it on the other side… assuming there is more danger coming from the weak stones around O14.

Having never before played in a turn-based server, it seems like this players have a better level than an equal rating from KGS. Obviously, the amount of time given for each move in both servers isn’t as quite as the same, but I still can’t imagine a KGS 14k making me suffer like this when playing without handicap.

Related posts:

1. 6 dans bloody game
2. Suspicious opponents
3. Attack is the best form of defense
4. Real life tsumego
5. Winning a lost game