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WAGC Game Report: Round 5

Tuesday, May 15: On Board 2, China's Qiao Zhijian chose a variation of the Dosaku opening and played his first ten moves in less than one second each, quickly constructing a huge black framework in the bottom half of the board...There were fewer fireworks on Board 1, but after a good opening and a bad middle game, Korea's Hyunjoon Lee outplayed DPRK's Ri Kwang Hyok in the endgame and then won the final one-point ko to prevail by 2.5 points...On Board 7, Samuel Aitken (UK, at right ) used his fifth move to make a three-space extension from the third line to the second line, a new pattern that has been appearing in professional games. He and Yuan Zhou (US) battled it out for the next two and a half hours, but in the end Aitken resigned...On Board 9, Lukas Podpera (Chechia) and Japan's Nakazono Seizo also battled it out for two and a half hours, but today Nakazono’s Japanese supporters had the satisfaction of seeing Japan’s amateur Honinbo score a convincing win in the longest game of the round. The fastest was the game between Mongolia and Portugal, over in less than an hour and described as ‘an easy win’ by Portugal’s Daniel Tome. The most dramatic involved the players from Romania and Singapore: "I had the game in my pocket for at least 90% of the time,’ said Romania’s Cornel Burzo after it ended, ‘but with the clock counting the time, I got stressed and tried to shorten the process by killing a group. The moment after I played the stone I realized it was a catastrophic mistake. I went from something like a hundred points ahead to a hundred points behind." Click here for the complete report on Round 5. Click here for Round 5 game records, including Taipei-China (commentary by YangShuang 3P); Czechia-Japan; DPRK-Korea; UK-US. - adapted from James Davies' Ranka Online report; photo by John Pinkerton