JP Consul: Alexander Dinerchtein (breakfast) vs. Ilya Shikshin (roln111)

Here you can see the most exciting game (fourth round, first board) from the 9th Annual Cup of consul general of Japan (in Saint-Petersburg, Russia): Alexander Dinerchtein (Black) vs. Ilya Shikshin (White).

The game was broadcasted by EuroGoTV on KGS, and it reached 470 observers.

As always in his recent games, Ilya played the two-stars opening as White, allowing Alexander to try an interesting fuseki (moves 1+3+5).

Ilya has a very powerful and sharp reading ability, and he likes to fight very much. So, in the past, Alexander's strategy when playing him would be to keep the game "as simple as possible", in order to beat him in yose (which apparently used to be easy for him; not anymore).

In this game, however, Alexander did not walk away from any fight. He insisted on showing his determination by slamming the stones on the board and pressing the clock really hard (which was quite amusing for us, the observers). We don't know if the clock stopped working; if it did, Alex will have to buy a new one :)

Once the thrilling ko fight ended at move 182, Black played at H2, and the game was looking good for him. But his next play, B6, was probably the losing move...

Ilya kept his cool throughout the game, always waiting for his chance to strike. Combat is his natural environment, and he can always come up with surprising plays, like the G9 tesuji (move 208). After that, Black's position started collapsing. He did manage to live at the left side, but anyway he was behind by 20+ points in the end, so Alexander eventually resigned.

Recently, Alexander is having a hard time winning against Ilya Shikshin, although his overall score against him is still quite good.

It seems that beating Europe's Lee Sedol is an almost impossible task now for other European players.