Surrey Teach-In and Handicap Tournament

The Surrey Teach-In was on Saturday 6th December and was based on teaching with British dan players. Nick Krempel did life and death, Paul Barnard looked at a pincer joseki, Sam Aitken common splitting attacks and Tony Atkins covered some material from the now out of print Enclosure Josekis by Takemiya (although this is available as part of the Kiseido digital bookshelf).

Nick gave us this wickedly hard under the stones problem. I showed it to a 4 dan player and he had quite a few attempts to get it! Here it is, Black to force a ko for the life of the white stones:




On Sunday we had the handicap tournament, where, I think, the draw is conducted basically at random and stone and time handicaps are applied. I had to play a two stronger players and two weaker players. I won only one game. Two I lost due to silly mistakes (failing to make two eyes just before filling dame, and failing to see an oiotoishi) - other than that I had a clear lead in both games. The other game I lost I had to give six stones to a player that I don't think is that much weaker than me! I'm glad to say that in a more recent game I did spot the oiotoishi and was rather smug in doing so.