'Korondo' defeats 'bigbadwolf' in their first encounter!

   'Korondo' 9-dan registered on KGS a couple of months ago, and he is currently in the official Top 10 KGS Best Players. It seems that he is from South Korea, but it is still an open question whether or not he is a professional. What do you think of his strength, is it pro level? It is possible that 'Korondo' is just a strong Korean amateur - as we know, strong amateurs in Korea are very close to pro level, and many can actually beat pros.

   There was a funny episode last month where 'Korondo' made 'jove' 9d angry after beating him twice in a row in even games. Apparently, 'jove' wanted to show that he was the strongest, so even after losing those two games, he gave 'Korondo' two handicap stones in their next game (as we already analyzed in previous articles, 'jove' is very comfortable in playing handicap games). However, 'Korondo' was calm enough to play soberly and he ended up winning the game without any problems.

   In the game that you can see here, 'Korondo' started the fuseki with very calm and solid play (we can call it Lee Changho's style), but the game quickly became a battlefield. I think that 'bigbadwolf' was a bit greedy at the top when he allowed White to start the ko fight (with White 128 - J14). When White played 146 (O15), Black could not find a way to connect his groups, so he eventually resigned.

   Enjoy the game!