Chinese National Team Championship

Pavol Lisy 1p and Ali Jabarin 1p are currently participating at the Chinese National Team Championship, thanks to the support of Mr. Ge Yuhong, founder of China's most prestigious Go school, Ge Yuhong Go Academy. (He happens to be our Li Ting 1p's student.) They are both playing in the 3rd league (out of 3), on board 4 in their respective team.

Prior to the tournament, the general opinion was "it's a success for Pavol and Ali if they can win even one game". This became inevitable when, by coincidence, their teams were paired together in the 1st round. Their match must have attracted many on-lookers. After 6 hours and a slack endgame by Ali (w), Pavol finally won the game by 3/4 stones, the equivalent of a half-point win.

In the 2nd round, Ali became more gelivable and promptly defeated Wang Niqiao 1p (w) by resignation. After Wang fell behind, Ali didn't leave her any chances to catch up and thus won the game without problems.

Meanwhile, Pavol (w) unnecessarily went all-in and lost against Qiu Jinbo 3p. According to the commentary, if Pavol hadn't gone for a ko-kill, Black couldn't have afforded to compensate the komi with a lead on the board of only 5-6 points. Pavol misjudged the game in byo-yomi.

With a score of 1 win each in the first two rounds, let's look forward to Pavol and Ali's further performance!

placed by sandmann on 13:50 Thu 14 May 2015