Go Congress Trouble Master Problem

This is the third round of the Open in the e-Go Congress.

This game was clearly lost, but I found something at the end of the game that could win it for me.

I am white. Here we have a clearly lost game. I played poorly and there is nothing left but dame. Is that true? Is there some trouble for white to find. Hwang In-Seong has a lecture series he calls “Trouble Master” in which he asks students to find situations near the end of the game that can result in an upset of some sort.

At this point in the game I realized that I could capture a great many stones with an atari at s11, but only after the liberties at o16 and p16 are filled. AGA rules provide a great opportunity to pull off this type of sneaky play because they require the filling of dame. If I filled those dame under Japanese rules my opponent would get suspicious. Even in an AGA game one would not want to fill them in succession.

I read out the whole sequence. I knew that I would be able to gain enough liberties by driving black to his stones at t6. I knew that I could then atari the q13 stones. If black connected I would then play at m19 to capture a shitload of stones, and win the game. Of course, black could choose to not connect and protect the larger portion of stones, but I hoped that would not happen.

Black cooperated with my plan up to this point though later in reviewing the game we determined that he could have sacrificed a couple stones if he had seen the larger danger.

I followed through with the atari at r11.

Black connected as expected.

M19 should have come next, and the game would have been over. But it didn’t.

A happy story became a tragedy because I saw something. I saw the throw in at r7. I got greedy and foolishly thought I could have them both. I got distracted from my plan. 

I played the throw in. 

Black forced the capture with r9 and then protected against future loss with j18. I suppose he could have just played j18. Once j18 was played I realized I had missed my chance.

Here is the final board position. I lost this game by 1.5 points. 

It was painful. What should have been an epic win became an epic loss. I do take great pride, however, in having found the weakness and having read it correctly. That is a step in the right direction.

My opponent told me in chat after the game that his AGA rating is outdated and that he is 3 or 4 kyu on KGS. So I don’t feel too bad about having been pushed around in this game.

The game can be found here.