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© 2009 John Fairbairn

The Go Consultants

Suzuki Tamejiro and Segoe Kensaku Against Kitani Minoru and Go Seigen

John Fairbairn & T Mark Hall
The Creators of GoGoD

Buy the full book at gobooks.com

Have you ever wondered what pros think about during a game? This book gives you a unique opportunity to find out and you will frequently be surprised. The book follows a game between two teams: Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru (the young hot-shots) versus Segoe Kensaku and Suzuki Tamejiro (the established top players). The members of the teams were allowed to consult with each other in another room between moves, and a reporter made notes on what they said and what they did on the practice board. As a result we have an incredible record of what the players were planning and hoping for, what they thought their opponents were doing, and what they decided not to do as well as why they made the choices they did. There could not be a more thoroughly commented professional game.

Copyright Page

This e-book has been published as a print book of the same name by Slate & Shell (www.slateandshell.com).

Copyright © 2009 John Fairbairn. All rights reserved.

Special thanks are due to Larry Russ and William Gundberg for help with proof reading.

Cover design by Laurie Crammond

ISBN of print edition: 1–932001–46–8

Contents

The Go Consultants
Suzuki Tamejiro and Segoe Kensaku
Against
Kitani Minoru and Go Seigen

Copyright Page

Introduction

The Game

– Day One

The chapters in gray are included only in the full book.

– Day Two

– Day Three

– Day Four

– Day Five

The Player’s Post Mortems

– Suzuki Tamejiro and Segoe Kensaku

– Kitani Minoru and Go Seigen

Buy This Book

Appendix: Books by John Fairbairn

About SmartGo Books

Introduction

Inspiration from the West

Western chess held a special fascination for Japanese go players in the 1920s and 1930s. Many ideas were copied, including chess clocks and tournament rules. The convoluted points system for the Oteai (professional ranking tournament) was supposedly inspired by Western chess’s mathematicians. Indeed, a link has never been formally made, but it is not specially fanciful to wonder whether Shin Fuseki (new openings) was partly inspired by hypermodern chess. It is ironic that while Japan was rushing headlong into major confrontations with the West, it was absorbing Western ideas and snapping up Western words. One example was “consultation game”. We know this came from chess because Hochi Shinbun newspaper go writer Ikoma Kosho, the author of the 1935 book on the first consultation game in go, said so.

Western influence is strongly evident throughout the preface to the book by Hochi Shinbun newspaper go writer Ikoma Kosho. The borrowed words “telepathy”, “sensation”, and “business-like” crop up in the first few pages, but the whole book betrays the spirit of the age. This was the era of the best seller, Mathematics for the Millions, by the Marxist Lancelot Hogben, and dozens of other works aimed at self improvement by the working classes.

Yet it was a creative and energetic rather than a ponderous age. The vibrancy imparted by today’s Internet may be something similar. Apart from the new ideas of Shin Fuseki on the go board and experiments with komi, entrepreneurs like Shoriki Matsutaro were bringing go to the masses through the Yomiuri Shingun’s ten-game matches, spectacularly presented on a traffic-stopping billboard.

Newspapers, then as now the main sponsors, were actively competing with each other to attract readers to their go columns. The Hochi Shinbun had long run a “win and continue” tournament, which was the main cradle for the experiments with komi, but it needed something new to keep up with the Yomiuri, and also with the Mainichi Shinbun, which had its hooks into the emerging Honinbo tournament. The novelty was consultation go.

The Players

Since one aim of the Hochi Shinbun was an attempt to get the “perfect” game, it made sense to use only the best players. Technically, Honinbo Shusai was still the top of the pile, but he was retired and not in the best of health—and who could claim to be his equal as a partner?

As it happened, there was a very neat pair of pairings available—a PR man’s dream. Segoe Kensaku and Suzuki Tamejiro were both 7-dan, the highest rank apart from Shusai’s Meijin title. They were effectively the top players.

Suzuki Tamejiro

Suzuki, 51, was one of the better educated go players. He enjoyed excellent patronage and was well established as a prolific author. His famous massive Great Joseki Dictionary was just about to appear. He had only recently stopped playing in the twice-yearly Oteai.

Segoe Kensaku

Segoe, 45, was still active as the top-ranked player in the Oteai, but was also taking on many of the necessary background administrative and social tasks of the Nihon Ki-in. Some of this involved China, or at least the portion that Japan had invaded, and it was he who had engineered Go Seigen’s arrival in Japan in October 1928. It seems he was also the main conduit for organizing this game.

These were the old men.

Kitani Minoru

The new men were Kitani Minoru and Go Seigen. Kitani, 25, was already 6-dan. Like Go Seigen, he had made a name for himself through adopting Shin Fuseki—the new (or, perhaps better, hypermodern) style of openings that emphasized the sides and center far more than traditional go theory had.

In 1933 and 1934 Kitani had experimented relentlessly in the Oteai, but did not play Suzuki and only met Segoe once in that phase (winning with Black by two points, no komi). Go had met neither of the older men, but his experiments were often more spectacular than Kitani’s.

Go was a special case in several ways. Obviously the fact that he was still a Chinese citizen (he was naturalized in Japan in 1936) was significant at a time when the Kwangtung Army was trampling over China, but Go himself, at this time, showed little interest in political activity. His special status in this game had mainly to do with the fact that he was still 5-dan. However, the game was planned for December 1934, shortly after the Autumn Oteai. Go had not done spectacularly well—he finished in ninth place (Kitani was third, Segoe twelfth)—but he had accumulated enough points to earn promotion to 6-dan. However, he was not due to be invested until 15 February 1935. The Hochi Shinbun appealed to the Nihon Ki-in and was allowed to treat him as 6-dan for this game. That made the handicapping tidy.

Another convenient aspect was that Kitani was a former pupil of Suzuki, while Go was—what? It seems to be a common understanding that he was a pupil of Segoe, and he certainly lived with Segoe. But there may be a wrinkle involved.

Go Seigen and Segoe Kensaku

Ikoma says, “Kitani was a pupil in Suzuki’s school from a young age and owes him much as a teacher and mentor” but then goes on to say of Go: “In his earliest days, from the time he was still living in Beiping [Beijing], he received recommendations and guidance from Segoe 7-dan, and when he then came to Japan the preparatory work before and after he entered the Nihon Ki-in was undertaken exclusively and vigorously by Segoe, so that there are ties of friendship there almost like teacher and pupil.” There is obviously a nuance of status there but precisely what will need more research.

This convenient old/young, teacher/pupil relationship had a third strand. Kitani and Go were the main proponents of the Shin Fuseki, though coming at it in very different ways. Suzuki and Segoe were traditionalists. Suzuki was more diehard. He once famously said of Black 3 at the star point, making the nirensei (two star-points) pattern, “too ambitious”. He had, of course, studied the sanrensei, the three star-points pattern which had come to symbolize the “mature” Shin Fuseki after the early excesses, simply because he had to play against it. However, he was unmoved. Segoe, however, was more pragmatic. He recognised the distinctive features of Shin Fuseki but still defended the claims of the old joseki, which stressed profit in the corner and on the sides.

So, apart from producing a perfect game, a second aim of the project was to see whether they could settle the old versus new fuseki controversy.

Rules and Regulations

Having secured a neat 7-dans versus 6-dans pairing, the next problem for the Hochi Shinbun to sort out was the handicap.

The Hochi Shinbun had a long-running “win and continue” event in which the winner of a game kept playing a new opponent until he lost. There was no event winner, only esteem (and extra cash, of course) for scoring a long sequence of wins. It worked because there were rather few pros, and a player’s turn came round often enough to keep him happy.

But these were single games, not the mini-matches normally required under the traditional handicapping arrangement. With no komi, players of equal rank played each other in units of two games, once with Black and once with White. With a one-rank difference, as in this consultation game, the rule was to play a three-game match, with the lower-ranked player taking Black in two games and White in one.

To overcome the unfairness of a player taking Black in a single-game match, and naturally to have a PR ball to bat, the Hochi Shinbun had introduced komi. The komi varied according to Black’s rank, but in this case it would have been three points.

The Hochi assumed that komi would apply, but for some reason the players decided not to use komi. Irritatingly, Ikoma does not say why. A plausible reason is that the younger players would wish to show respect to their teachers, and the novelty of the consultation format would probably compensate Hochi for losing their komi gimmick.

Next came the time problem. There was a meeting to decide on the regulations. Suzuki and Kitani both wanted as much time as possible. They maintained that, in a game of this sort, more time was needed for the endgame stage than the opening. Suzuki had wrested a special concession from the Nihon Ki-in so that time limits in his Oteai games were sixteen hours each whereas everyone else was happy to make do with twelve hours or less.

The long games had not done much to protect Suzuki’s health, and that was probably part of the reason he was not currently active in the Oteai. The strain on other players was great, too, and there had been some relaxation in the limits, but in 1934 they were still eleven hours each (over two days).

Although Ikoma drily points out that the reason behind the claims of Suzuki and Kitani was contradicted in practice—they routinely used all their time on the opening and middle game and then played a hundred or more moves in five minutes—there was no sense of resistance by the other two players, in what he writes, when it was agreed to apportion sixteen hours each.

The actual time spent by Team A (Suzuki and Segoe) was fifteen hours and thirty-nine minutes. Team B spent fifteen hours and thirty-seven minutes. But as each team had also spent most of their opponents’ time thinking about their moves, say twelve or thirteen hours, they had really thought for twenty-seven or twenty-eight hours. Since they would actually be discussing the game while they were elsewhere in the Ki-in, the total time each side spent on site was more like thirty-two or thirty-three hours. However, as they would also use time at home or in the car taking them to the game, the total time spent was at least sixty hours each. And this was solid time, although spread over five days with rest periods in between. The eleven hours each in the Oteai, where you didn’t have a partner bending your ear, was substantially reduced by players watching nearby games or talking to other players, wandering down the corridors or having a shower, and so on. You could maybe knock off five hours for that, thought Ikoma.

The players were allowed to place pieces on the board when thinking, and Ikoma’s estimate was that they looked at up to 1,000 moves an hour. But taking 500 moves an hour as a criterion, the two sides together had looked at more than 30,000 moves (there were 245 moves actually played). Of course, many lines looked at were repetitions or dross, so excluding these—90% of the total according to Ikoma—some 3,000 serious moves were looked at. However you slice the cake, his point was simply that no game in history had ever been so exhaustively analyzed during play, and no game had ever been more fatiguing.

Location, location

As we have said, the players were allowed to place pieces on the board when discussing their moves, and that is precisely what they did. This unusual provision and the need to speak determined the layout for the game. Musical chairs was the solution. Two rooms were used, one of eight mats and one of six. One was called the game room and one the consulting room. In reality both were consulting rooms, of course, but the game room was as shown below.

The game room

Suzuki is on the left. Behind him is Segoe. Go is playing a move and Kitani is on the right. At the back, on the right, is Hashimoto Utaro, also a pupil of Segoe. The scribe is not Ikoma but Seki Setsuzo, another Hochi Shinbun reporter. Seki, who used the pen-name Seigetsu, was formerly editor of the Igo Doshikai’s journal Igo Sekai, then edited its replacement, Kido.

Seki was responsible for recording the game and timekeeping. He was also charged with taking notes of the discussions in the game room. Hashimoto Utaro was present as referee-cum-advisor and would pass from room to room, comparing the analyses of the two teams for use in the final book. Ikoma Kosho remained in the consulting room to take note of what the consulting pair were saying. When the team in this consulting room was ready with its move, it moved into the game room and the other side there noted the move played and then transferred to the consulting room.

However, this was not quite a seamless process. The team in the game room would have many extra stones on the board from doing their own analysis, and these had to be removed before the consultants could be allowed in. This had ramifications for timekeeping, of course, but the real worry was that a stone left inadvertently on the board might betray what the other side had been thinking about.

Once the game had progressed to a certain stage, it could take a fair time to re-establish the original position. A decision was made to charge this time, tyically one or two minutes, to the side that had disturbed the board. It is not clear what the arrangement was in the consulting room, but it seems safe to assume the players there, out of self interest, tidied up the board (or boards—at least some of the time each player in a pair used separate boards) before they announced their move.

There was no prescribed way for discussions to take place. Obviously the two players in each team did talk, but Ikoma comments that they also spent considerable periods thinking alone. That must have been frustrating for the journalists, but there seem to have been no question-and-answer sessions.

When the teams did converse, they did it in very different fashions. The B team, Kitani and Go, were “forthright and vibrant, with the jauntiness that comes from being young.” They cracked jokes and rarely turned anything into a problem. Though they did spend some time alone in quiet thought, for the most part they “disgorged their opinions without reserve” and displayed all the characteristics one might expect of a consultation process.

The A team, however, even managed to overawe the observers with their seriousness and reserve, but they were calm and their discussions ranged wide and deep. Within this team there was a notable difference. Segoe, when he faced the board, would first of all try selecting the points where he might be able to play a tesuji. Gradually, as the trial stones accumulated on the board, he would shift into assessing the profit and loss or other merits of the position. He would do this in great profusion, rapidly and in a “business-like” manner. In this he was probably unequalled, said Ikoma.

In contrast, Suzuki did not roam as widely as Segoe. He chose fewer points to examine, but then examined them very deeply and thoroughly. In this process he would look even at moves that other pros would dismiss instantly as bad style, with the result that he could find unexpected brilliancies. Segoe had a tendency to dismiss Suzuki’s discoveries because he fastened onto the bad shape aspects first. Suzuki then had to press his claims and show the results on the board. If Segoe considered the results unfavorable, he would again dismiss them. Suzuki, however, would patiently press on for another ten moves or so, and again solicit approval. Yet even when, at long last, he got the thumbs up, he did not stop there. He kept looking. He was a “superb prospector” in Ikoma’s peculiar phrase (perhaps influenced by Japan’s relentless search for oil at the time).

Whenever Suzuki and Segoe had a difference of opinion, Segoe displayed an “admirable earnestness and scrupulousness” in explaining his views, and if both players came to conclusions of equivalent merit, Segoe would defer gallantly to his senior. This “loftiness of feeling and splendid attitude” evoked the admiration of the observers.

For “admiration” read “relief”, perhaps. Ikoma said that the thing they most feared when they started planning the consultation game was an intractable difference of opinion. Go, after all, is an individual’s game. The individuality stems not just from reactions on the day of the game but from the long years of training. Yet, Ikoma asserts, not only did the newspaper’s fears prove quite unfounded, the individual characters of all the players still shone through in the commentary. He gives an example where Go Seigen convinced Kitani, mainly by wearing him down, to play a move, Black 89, that was in accord with Go’s style. That is, it was imbued with more optimism than precision. It turned out rather unexpectedly, however, and it was Kitani who showed the tenacity to find the saving resource, Black 113.

Did this event produce the desired result of the perfect game? Well, Ikoma obviously wanted to say so. At least it was “a game worthy of being left to later generations for a long time to come.” Specifically, he said that the nature of most games is decided between about moves 80 and 100. By “nature” he seems to mean the likely outcome. In this case, however, the nature of the game did not become clear until beyond move 120, in the endgame stage. Furthermore, it was not until move 199 that both sides knew the precise result.

The game was played on 10, 17, 24, and 26 December 1934 and 5 January 1935. During the game and afterwards, Ikoma, Seki, and Hashimoto would get together to agree on a digest of the day’s discussions. After the game, Segoe also joined in their meetings, of which there were around ten in all. The other players, of course, also gave a post-match summary but did not participate in any meetings. What struck Ikoma most was that Hashimoto never took a single note but could rattle off discussed sequences even two months afterwards.

The book of the game was completed at the end of March 1935 and published on April 22nd. A magnificent effort in pre-computer days. We will gratefully be using the book to present the game, but will also refer to other works, such as autobiographies, that have since become available.

The Game

Day One

Before the actual game began, the players were given some extra time to plan their general opening strategy.

Kitani: “We will need most of our time once this game passes from the middle game to the endgame, so we need to economize on time at the very beginning. What should our overall fuseki policy be in that case?”

Go: “Let’s go with the ’37 shape.”

Kitani: “Agreed! So come what may we will play Black 1 and 3 at the star points and then take whatever measures are necessary according to circumstances.”

Ikoma said he sometimes found himself flummoxed by Go’s words. In this case he didn’t know what Go meant by the ’37 shape (and, perplexingly, the reporters didn’t ask him), but he thought it likely that it referred to the years 1935 and 1936 as being years of coming international crisis, only for a New Japan to burst through in 1937. In other words, Go was suggesting they create a “crisis” by playing Shin Fuseki, ride the storm, and hope to come through at the other end.

Words like battleship and submarine often pop up even in go texts at this time. It is easy to imagine that the immigrant Go would take a special interest in this kind of talk and discuss it with his friend Kitani.

In the consulting room Team A were rather more ponderous.

Segoe: “Our opponents will probably come at us with their usual sanrensei. The josekis in that case are characteristically played high and are overwhelmingly aggressive. I’ve managed to get some fairly good results against this by playing on two 4–5 points. What do you think of that strategy?”

Suzuki: “Not bad at all, as far as it goes. But star-point stones and 4–5 point stones merely fill up the open space. They have no connection with actual profit. I’d rather play two 3–4 points and occupy some solid territory first, and then eventually ambush the opponents when they come in to attack. Retreating to the support of a secure base and then counterattacking the attacking enemy battleships that have no secure base seems like a sensible strategy.”

Segoe: “Indeed, that’s logical. And when we consider that a guiding spirit behind the Hochi’s sponsorship was to compare old and new fuseki, I think it’s appropriate to follow your opinion. Let us opt for two 3–4 points.”

The two teams then entered the playing room. Two boards had been set up side by side. Lots were drawn, as a result of which the playing order was fixed as Suzuki then Segoe in Team A and Kitani then Go in Team B. This seems to have had no significance whatsoever in terms of the game. It was probably just a way to avoid wrangles over precedence of seating order.

Moves 1–4

Kitani took a black stone and slapped it down hard on the star point in the top right corner. Suzuki placed a white stone in our lower left corner.

It was a white 3–4 point stone. Briefly the faces of the two youngsters betrayed a look of astonishment. It had become the norm from about the end of 1933 to resist the nirensei or sanrensei with moves at the 5–5 and 3–5 points.

This caused a discussion, but Kitani and Go did not retreat to the consulting room. Kitani simply stretched over and took hold of the game record. Showing it to Go, he pointed at the other star point in the lower right and said, “How about here?” Go replied, “Of course. It’s the only move” and then he immediately played Black 3.

Naturally he could have played at the star point in the upper left and still have made a sanrensei, but he chose to oppose White 2 in its direction of development.

Segoe at once played the second of Team A’s planned two 3–4 points with White 4. Ikoma makes the comment that this particular asymmetrical shape was slightly unusual for White but a special favorite of Honinbo Shusaku. Quite an impressive comment in pre-database days, but the significance was not so much statistical as that we really were seeing a clash of old and new openings.

Perhaps because White’s pattern was unexpected, Team B decided to confer over Black 5 rather than rush on with a sanrensei.

Kitani: “How about a one-space high approach in the lower left at A?”

Go: “No. It should be a two-space high approach (B). If White defends at C, Black plays D and gets an ideal shape.”

Since at this stage they still hadn’t left the playing room, they obviously weren’t really referring out loud to specific points. They were just pointing at the game record and then played Black 5 at B. However, their choice of an approach move instead of the expected sanrensei threw everything into confusion. Hand-to-hand fighting was now likely, and so a proper discussion was called for.

Move 5

Black 5 was totally unexpected and sparked the first proper discussion, with Suzuki about to play White 6.

Segoe: “The joseki move [for White 6] is to play the knight’s move at A, but that would be slack. There is a danger we’d be trampled on by our opponents.”

Suzuki: “It would give them momentum. Not very promising for us. Even so, defending underneath at B is weak, too.”

Both players then gazed silently at the board for a while.

Suzuki: “We have to do something. How about blocking on the other side at C?” Exploration of C led to the following diagram.

Playable but not appealing

Segoe: “This is playable but somehow leaves no sharp moves for later. It doesn’t appeal to me.”

Suzuki: “How about attaching on the outside at A as in the next diagram?” This was considered a good, strong move and merited being played out on the board.

Reasonable, but

Segoe: “This diagram is reasonable, but there are some aspects I’m not too struck by.”

Suzuki: “We could fight well enough if it developed as in the next diagram, so let’s look at our opponents’ responses if we do attach at White 1.”

Fighting well enough

[See the next diagram.]

1927 opening

This is an opening that has since cropped up in little bursts over the years. Responses tried by Black have been A, B (mainly), C, D, E, and F. It first appeared in 1927 and enjoyed a burst of popularity prior to its appearance in this game.

Black’s main responses besides F at this time were considered to be B and C. These were examined. The conclusion, however, was that Black would play the hane at D and expect the opponents to cut at C. With that resolve, Team A returned to the playing room. However, they had not looked deeply at the fact that D involves a ladder breaker in the upper right corner. They just took the optimistic view that, “White can play two moves there so it’s all right.”

Move 6

Once Team A played the severe White 6, Team B retreated to the consulting room for its own first proper discussion.

Go: “For Black 7, extending to A is possible, then if White plays B and we get the next diagram that doesn’t look too bad.”

Will not happen

Kitani: “But the opponents won’t play this way. Instead of this White 4, they would probably cut at A. That’s a move I’ve been researching lately and if it works I’d thought about writing an article about it, but it’s difficult and I just don’t know.”

This cut had first been tried by Hashimoto Utaro in 1930 and there were a couple of instances in 1933, but since then it has been tried only a couple of times in the early 1950s.

Go: “Black’s pulling back at A isn’t right, is it?”

Kitani: “Moves like that are never right. We just have to hane as in the next diagram, don’t we?”

Favorable outcome for Black

Go: “Yes. This is best.”

Kitani: “If we do play this way, our opponents will probably get to play the ladder threat at White 6.”

Go: “The sequence that results is a favorable outcome for Black.”

Thus, Team B decided on Black 1 in this diagram for Black 7 in the game and in turn moved into the game room.

Moves 7–13

The result was a crosscut and a sudden burst of fighting as the game progressed swiftly to Black 13.

Because Black 13 threatened next to capture White 6 () in a ladder, the White team withdrew to the consulting room.

Segoe: “We get to play two moves in the ladder breaker, so we can look forward to that, but which is better: attaching at A or B?

Suzuki: “Both look possible, don’t they?”

The two players fixed their gaze on the board for a while, not speaking.

Suzuki: “Maybe our opponents will want to hane.”

Segoe: “Then we hane right back.”

Suzuki: “And if they come back with a double hane?”

Segoe: “That’s not possible as it wouldn’t be a ladder breaker then.”

The pair again sank into silence. For the first time they’d become aware of the inadequacy of their earlier ladder analysis.

Suzuki: “I don’t like the looks of this.”

Segoe: “It doesn’t have to be that bad. Let’s analyze it a bit.”

Suzuki: “What about a one-space approach move?”

He meant White 1 in the next diagram.

Black is thick

Segoe: “This way Black becomes thick. That won’t do.”

Suzuki: “Well then, can White 1 in the next diagram be a possibility?”

Cold comfort for White

This diagram shows the result of their research, but this proposal was rejected as being of only cold comfort to White.

They thus concluded there was no other option but to look at the shoulder hit at White 1 in the next diagram.

Possible trouble

Suzuki: “We’d be grateful if they captured the ladder stone () with Black 2, but they would probably push first at Black 2. Then we’d be OK if it were possible to play the hane at White 3, but we’d be in trouble if we were forced to extend to A.”

In the end they did choose the shoulder hit for White 14 and returned to the game room to play it.

While Team A were outside, Team B had been looking at the same position in the game room, using their opponents’ time. They too had been looking at various ladder-breaker sequences, but among them was an extraordinary one by Go Seigen. It was the white triple hane of the next diagram.

Triple hane

Go said that this suddenly made it impossible for Black to rest easy.

Moves 14–15

However, with Team A having played their shoulder hit, that became academic and Team B promptly pushed with Black 15. Seeing this, Suzuki and Segoe looked at each other and made wry smiles. Go looked at Segoe and said, “Sensei, we were worried about the triple hane.”

Segoe: “Eh?! What triple hane? No such move entered my mind. What on earth are you talking about?”

Go laid out the position of Diagram “Triple hane”.

Segoe: “That doesn’t work. The loss is too big, even if the ladder stone ( in the game diagram) is pulled out. You don’t need an abacus to see that. Anyhow, Suzuki-san, let’s confer.”

When Team A entered the consulting room there were signs of anxiety on Segoe’s face.

Suzuki: “It doesn’t look like the ladder breaker was very good. The safe move for White 16 seems to be to extend to A, although we should at least investigate whether the hane at B is possible.”

The results of the hane were considered to be as in the next two diagrams, but the first did not have a good continuation, and in the second the loss was too big so there was no value in threatening to pull out the ladder stone. That left the push to A and the jump to B in the second diagram to consider, but neither was attractive.

So they had to look again at the safe move, the extension to White 1 in Diagram “The safe move”.

No good continuation

Also not attractive

The safe move

After White 1, Black’s capture at Black 2 in this diagram is the only move. If White now turns with 3 at White 5, Black can play the knight’s move at A, which has little appeal for White. White would therefore press at White 3, to which Black 4 is the only answer, and then White turns at 5. It is unclear whether Black should then play the knight’s move at B or turn at C, but in any event they decided that White 1 for 16 in the game was best.

Segoe: “In this line, White is thick so it’s reasonable. Black will probably go through these moves and, in the end, play the knight’s move at B. White can then jump to D in the upper left.”

The best move

Suzuki: “This is good. Since White is fairly thick, we can accept a fight here. If, instead of a knight’s move with 6, Black plays as in this diagram, we can oppose Black’s thickness in the lower left with our white thickness in the upper right corner as in this diagram and still make a match of it.”

Moves 16–22

While the White team were cogitating in the consulting room, the Black team were examining countermeasures in the playing room. They expected White to extend at White 16 (whereupon they would take the ladder stone), just as White had decided. So when Team A came back into the game room and played White 16, the moves up to White 22 were rattled off in no time. However, when Kitani and Go saw this last move, their faces changed color. It came as a complete surprise to them. White 22 had been overlooked by Team B and they were in a state of some astonishment.

Go: “Let’s stay here and look at this for a while, then we’ll move once we’ve got a rough idea of what they played.”

Kitani: “OK.”

Both players were glued to the go boards, then after two or three minutes Kitani chuckled and looked around at Go. They then retreated to the other room to resume their second round of consultation.

Kitani: “White 22 was unexpected, but as soon as I saw it played I knew it was a good point.”

Difference of opinion

Go: “Yes. How about if we play A in this diagram?”

Kitani: “No. I want to play B.”

Go: “I want to play A. The idea is that if White then plays on the star point at C, we erase him by scooping underneath with D.”

Kitani: “No. That probably doesn’t work. I definitely want to play B.”

So there was a difference of opinion and Go looked rather dissatisfied.

Go: “If we play B, our opponents will surely cap at E.”

Kitani: “That’s not possible, because we extend with a block against the corner at F. So White is not likely to cap. My guess is that against Black B, White will play G or H. Then we play your A, and the idea will be that we can get along OK because of our thickness in the upper right.”

Go went silent and gazed at the board for a while.

Go: “All right. Since we can play the knight’s move at A even if our opponents do cap, I’ll give way to your opinion here.”

Move 23

With their two points of view eventually reconciled, Team B went back into the playing room and played Kitani’s choice for Black 23. The White team immediately stood up and began their fourth round of discussions in the consulting room.

End of sample chapter. In the book, this game is commented in detail to the end.