It Was a Soft Battle on a Warm Saturday Afternoon...

It was around one o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday morning in Korea, and around noon in China, when two 9d (almost undoubtably both pros) sat down at their computers to play.  The weather in Asia was partly cloudy, but still warm at about 23В°C.

The two opponents that sat down to face one another were 공짱타약 9d and tmch 9d.

tmch 9d:

We've heard about tmch 9d before here on GoSensations - he's one of the top Chinese players on the server.  He's widely believed to be one of the stronger Chinese professionals, and doesn't hold back at all in displaying his skill on the server.

공짱타약 9d:

His opponent on this warm Saturday afternoon, 공짱타약 9d, was a player that was new to me.  I hadn't seen a lot of his games, so I decided to investigate a bit about him online.

I came across the following article, which did just that - an investigation on this strong and mysterious player:

http://baduk.donga.com/news/news/viewpage.asp?pagec=1&seq=10458&gubun=C

To summarize the article, the author speculates the reason for 공짱타약 9d's username.  He suggests the meaning of his username to be a play off of a phrase like, "공격은 짱인데 타개는 약하다", which translates to something like, "Strong at attack, but weak at making a comeback in a dire situation".  As you can see, the underlined components form 공짱타약 9d's username.

The author goes on to explain that 공짱타약 9d is not your typical Tygem 9d - he's a super strong Tygem 9d!  He recalls a Tongyang tournament that happened in 2004, where 공짱타약 9d placed second only to green1234, who is widely believed to be Kong Jie (green1234 is believed to be Kong Jie, that is)!

The other spectacular thing to note about the Tongyang tournament that 공짱타약 9d participated in is that some records were set.  First, there were over 2600 observers for the game, with Seo Nunwook 9d (believed to be joonki: http://www.gosensations.com/?id=2&server_id=3&new_id=864) giving commentary on the game to over 1500 observers on Tygem. 

In addition, 55 billion T-points were bet on the match, players were confident enough in 공짱타약 9d's strength that one player even set a record for the amount of money bet in a single match by betting 7.5 billion T-points on 공짱타약 9d!  The author of the article notes that, in order to make such a bet, if he clicked only on the 10,000 T-point pieces on the betting screen, he would have to click for 750,000 times simply to make the bet!  It's unbelievable that somebody would make that much effort to bet on 공짱타약 9d, but it happened!

As a side note, one of the comments of this article indicated that rumor has it that our famous 공짱타약 9d is none other than Park Yonghun 9d (http://senseis.xmp.net/?PakYeongHun).  Could this be true?  Well, take a look at this game, and you tell me!

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The Showdown:

 The two players of this match certainly have sensational backgrounds, but does today's game live up to expectations?  With an interesting 188 move battle, filled with interesting tesujis, I certainly thought so!

The two opponents start off with what looks to me as a normal fuseki up until 공짱타약 9d's move 10, which was new to me.  It may still be a joseki, but I'm more familiar with a white play at g17, for example.

In any case, the game proceeded quickly, with white quickly jumping in for action on move 14 with R12.  Things turned into a bit of a chase against white, as he hopped out with moves like P12 and N11.  The chase died down a bit, however, with an interesting (though perhaps common) tesuji at S10.  

The battle continued with black staking out a framework on the bottom, so white jumped right in with an invasion at L3.  There was a lot of space, so 공짱타약 9d lived easily - in sente at that - and moved on to extend along the left side with C13.  tmch 9d did well to split white up, but white connected to the top group without a lot of trouble at K14.

The game seemed around even at move 117, with KGS's ever-so-accurate score estimator seeing the game as being within half of a point.

But lightning struck as 공짱타약 9d slammed down C9 to disrupt black's eyespace, and bring white to what I thought was a slight lead!  Is this what 공짱타약 9d meant by "공짱" - what some believe to be short for "strong attack"?

The rest of the game seemed like yose to me, each side stretching for as many points as possible.  But tmch 9d couldn't pick up the difference in score, and finally resigned after 188 moves.

Player Stats

tmch 9d

Win rate as 9d: 283 wins, 215 losses

Win rate overall: 1691 wins, 1283 losses

Last 20 games: 13 wins, 7 losses

Ranking points: 36764