'suicidal': new KGS 9-dan!

   You may add 'suicidal' to your list of players "to watch" if you like players who pay special attention to shape. His style has a modern touch, and there always appear interesting shapes in his games.

   'suicidal' reached 9d early this month but 'kghin' 8d (the 'guardian' (-:) beat him down to 8d right afterwards. He then went up and down (from 8d to 9d, and then to 8d again) by beating 'Rosario' 9d and losing to 'Hutoshi4' 8d. Finally, today, he reached 9d again by defeating 'hkkyeen' 8d.

   You can see his last game here - he beat 'zchen' 8d by 3,5 points, making his 9d rank more stable. This game too has some nice shapes (see moves 70-72, for example).

   After the game I had a small chat with 'suicidal'. I thought he was from China (because he uses the Chinese client) but he told me he is actually from the US.

   I was also curious about one of the shapes that he made in the game (move 40) which I thought was a mistake, so I asked him about it and, to my surprise, he agreed to answer my question. I added the variations and comments we made in the game file. In short, he agreed with my proposal that E12 instead of F11 (as played in the game) would have been better for White.

   As you can see, 'suicidal' is very kind. In his 'Personal Information' page he wrote 'I suicide', conceivably not to be taken in the literal sense :-).

   I think he has what it takes to attract many fans (he certainly attracted me). Hopefully he will keep playing on KGS for us.