Upsetting common sense

It is common sense to believe that a professional is much more highly skilled than an amateur. Because a pro by definition spends most of his time working at improving his choice of sports or game, this is true for most sports. Go is no exception. However, even if the level of go professionals has gone up over the past decades, that of amateurs has risen even more dramatically. This is mainly due to the fact that information is more widely available now with books shining light on every conceivable aspect of the game.

The European Fujitsu Finals, played Dec. 11 and 12 in the European Go Centre in Amstelveen, Netherlands, provided a splendid example of how amateurs can sometimes cause an upset in the widespread belief that pros are unconditionally stronger than amateurs. This was the strongest field to ever play a tournament in Europe. Out of the 16 participants who had each earned a place by winning an important tournament or otherwise proven to be among the top Europeans, there were two pros currently playing in Japan: Hans Pietsch, 3-dan pro from Germany, and Catalin Taranu, 4-dan pro from Romania. Then there was Russian-born Alexandr Dinerstein, insei, or professional pupil, in South Korea who scored 10 wins out of 10 games in this year's European Championship.

In addition, an ex-pro 5-dan from China who has acquired Dutch citizenship, Guo Juan, and three ex-insei, Emil Nijhuis, Ion Flurescu and myself, were present. On paper Guo and Catalin were the strongest, while Pietsch and Dinerstein should be in the running for first prize. But when Victor Bogdanov from Russia first beat Dinerstein, then Pietsch, due to a technical mistake by the latter, it became clear he has a winning streak. But when Bogdanov beat Guo as well and I was fortunate enough to beat Catalin in the third round, an unlikely final was played out between two amateurs.

The final game was not of a very high quality with numerous mistakes due to the nervousness of both players, but after recovering from an early mistake, I was fortunate enough to clinch the win. The tournament winner will represent Europe in the 12th World Go Championship-The Fujitsu Cup in April 2000.

Since the final was not so interesting for study, I'd like to present my semifinal game with Catalin Taranu, who played White

In Diagram 1, white 4 to 8 are a rare combination. White 4 is usually played at 7. White 10 is a good, light move. Black 11 is a common answer to this move. But Black could also consider A, B, C in Variation 1. It is not clear which is the best answer. Black 15 could also be a pincer as 1 in Variation 1. The problem is that now the exchange of Black X and White X is bad for Black. I don not know the best way to respond, but I feel that this area of evaluation marks an important difference between amateurs and professionals.

White 20 forces black to play on the second line with 21. I felt I had fallen behind at this stage, although seen objectively the positions are roughly even.

In Diagram 2, black 23 marks the beginning of a long and difficult fight. White 30 is a clever move threatening the eyes of the black invaders 23-29. But Black does not give way and the fight spills over to the lower left corner. There are hundreds of variations in the moves to 87 but I would like to discuss only a few major variations.

After black 59, can White save his stone? Variation 2 shows what happens next. White 1 is exactly what Black wants. In the sequence to 18, Black manages to capture four white stones. This is clearly a disaster for White. There are some variations along the way, but basically Black can always capture one or more stones of the White group.

In Diagram 3, Black 61 may be a little simplistic but it allows for no variations and induces White 62 enabling Black to capture the all-important marked white stone in the center.

If Black 67 is played at 1 in Variation 3, Black will have no real answer after white 6. If black 7, white 8 puts Black on the spot making miai between capturing the marked stones and the pivotal stones at 3 and 5.

In Problem 1, Black 1 here represents black 75 in Diagram 3. What happens if White plays at 2 here?

In Problem 2, after black 1 (85 in Diagram 2), can White take away Black's second eye by playing at 2? Next week, we will look at the rest of the game.

Answers to last week's Problem 1

In Diagram 4, the combination of black 1 and 3 kill the white group. Because of a shortage of liberties, White cannot play white A, black B, white C.

In Diagram 5, black 1 is wrong because after white 4 we get the situation in Diagram 6. White has now made miai (playing one or the other) between the combination of black A, white B and black C on the one hand and playing at D to make two eyes at X and X. Answers to Problem 2 will appear next week.