Alejo's Tenuki

When I logged yesterday in KGS and started watching the highest ranked game I didn’t know how profitable would that game be for me.

The openning was unimpressive, a couple of pincers and some usual invasions, but it soon started to be a fighting game were stones were cut all over the board.

During the last month I’ve been reading the book on Tesuji by James Davies without realising any major improval in my level of the game… until I saw this game.

When I saw black’s move 103 on the image, I instantly realised what he was trying to build.

By the way, the game is loaded on the continue reading with all the solutions to the tsumegos I’m talking about.

Unfortunatelly, white also noticed black’s intentions, so he blocked the tesuji on the next move by playing at O15 and black took advantatge of it by attacking the right side, sliding downwards to S11.

A few moves later, after deciding what would happen with the stones placed on the right side, black decided to retake the attack on the cutting stones. Can you find the appropiate tesuji?

At this point of the game there was some discussion about if the tesuji didn’t work or not, mainly because it was announced by a 7k (me) and it received some good commentaries from dan players and some bad ones from kyu players. In the end, the game was cloned and we discussed there the tesuji till we found it would work on the current position of the board.

The middle game went on and the lower group of white was about to die in a huge ko where both of the players had lots of ko threats but was won by white after ignoring a cut at E4, which would have left the upper right group eyeless if black had played properly.

So this was the final situation where, after the ko, white attempts to live by playing 220. According to a 6d who was watching the game, there is a possible way to kill white, which went unseen by the 4d who was playing as black. Can you see it? Actually, it isn’t as hard as you would expect, but both players were already playing on a short byo-yomi basis.

For this tsumego, you should consider that the black group on the upper left corner is unconditionally alive, and that there isn’t any sort of escapatory tesuji around F14.

On the other hand, when black defended at A16 and white played A13, black decided to play A11 in order to remove the second eye. This tesuji is well-known as the throw-in tesuji, but does this work in this occasion? Can white live after the throw-in?

In the end, what surprised me the most was move 230. It reminds me of the game between Hikaru and the Korean child, where the first made a move who everyone thought to be an error and managed to get a nice result.

Here you have move 230:

Black resigned after realising the meaning of the H13 move. Sincerely, congratulations on white for this move. You have the solution at the real game.

Related posts:

1. Suspicious opponents
2. Life and death KGS tsumegos
3. Don’t keima while escaping
4. Capturing on a large scale
5. Improving little by little