It started very innocently. I was black. I wanted mini Chinese, but he didn't give it to me.
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I said 'Sure, I'll go for territory and we'll see about your potential, shall we?'
When he approached at 22, I wasn't sure about best play, but thought pincer would be fun. I chose one space low.
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We played one of the 'boring' joseki, until he played 12 and I said 'Yeah, I guess he does have the ladder, doesn't he?' So we followed up.
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Here, I stupidly forgot to play A, and played B instead.
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He pounced, and tried to kill my stones.
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But! He kind of must have forgotten to read this other ladder, starting at move 4, for which I had a really beautiful breaker stuck to his White wall.
He still didn't realize the trouble he was in and stubbornly played out the ladder. He even stopped a few times, presumably to read the ladder again, but kept convincing himself he was fine. Till the last move when he must have used not so choice words. And resigned.
I was a bit surprised that he didn't seem to be able to read this ladder. It is not a particularly hard read, I know it kept giving the same result for me every time I read it. And if opponent insists on playing it out, usually one would double check the results. Oh well, I had fun anyway ^^
4 comments:
I must admit, if I hadn't read your text, i would have misread that one, too.
Sure, it is easy to misread by a quick glance. But once your opponent seems to read different result than you do, wouldn't you read it very carefully and then hopefully realize the truth?
I don't know, it just was interesting experience. He was kgs 2k, so not an extremely weak player. At that level, I expected this ladder to be readable before one runs into the ladder breaker by playing it out.
Oh well ^^
Nanny
Lesson du jour: calculate the ladder playout CAREFULLY.
:)
In my first real live tournament game ever I misread and played out a ladder all the way too, at move 30 or so..
I was 3d!
MERRY XMAS!!
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