Favorite Moment 5
Ekberg: I have only played Go for a couple of months and haven't studied a lot of pro games. As a DDK I can't fully appreciate the sublime beauty of ear-reddening moves or ghost moves, but I know a good fight when I see one. And this game is awesome.
It is between Takemiya Masaki and Cho Chikun from the Quarter-final of the 43rd NHK Cup. It can be found as 1996-03-03.sgf at this site:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~rongen17/Cho/
A semeai on the top must be decided in a ko fight. In move 186 white threatens to make black's big dragon in the center one-eyed.
(Can anyone explain why this is a ko threat, i.e. what could Black do if White played
without
?)
Should Black ignore this Ko threat and start a new, even larger semeai between the black dragon and the white one just above? Hint: to get the answer you have to read 120 moves ahead and end up with a difference of one liberty (or is it 1/3 when it is ko?)!
If black defends, white must ignore two ko threats where black can make points. As far as I can count, black will be ahead in points even if white wins the ko.
But Cho ignored the ko threat and took the ko.
The following semeai includes a large, exciting ko fight with only local ko threats.
![[Diagram]](../../diagrams/50/96b40ef424d8045aa816e79d4e494558.png)
![[Diagram]](../../diagrams/49/3b22cecfa73ffd1bede8cba3064d0c24.png)
![[Diagram]](../../diagrams/20/3dd65489f3580798c7b51b6c142649a6.png)
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