A 9d Sai appears!

Several new 9ds have appeared in the past few weeks, the most recent of which that I have seen is lsai (with an L); not to be confused with Isai (a 13k). He has only lost 1 game on KGS, to supertjc [7d], a very strong Asian amateur (Tan Jia Cheng). His client shows that he is from China. He registered on February 2, 2009, but has not played many games in all. In this game against Hutoshi, lsai shows that he can win with style by creating a huge center moyo.

After the game, Hutoshi explored a few variations. I have made no comments on these variations and but have labeled them in the SGF.

The game seems to start off normally, with White aiming at a big moyo on the top. In the joseki with Black 13, Hutoshi pondered a different variation he could have taken. It seems better than the game assuming Hutoshi's variation is correct. However, the moves in the game seem fairly normal, even if Black might be a bit slow. The interesting battle happens with White's initiating the taisha joseki on the lower left. Hutoshi seems to make a mistake with 37 (if White now presses at E6 with 38, it reverts to the famous mistake by Shusaku in the Ear-Reddening Game). However, White decies to extend and the new variation is something I've never seen before. Not sure what to make of it. Black decides to use his two stones immediately, but it seems to be a mistake. Up to 50, the result looks terrible for Black. White continues to create his center moyo, and after a few forcing moves up to 70, the moyo is truly massive.

Black invades relatively lightly, but White seems to back off with 72 before initiating a clever sequence in the lower right corner, enclosing it in sente. The rest of the game Hutoshi seemed to have no chance as White won by 11.5 points. Such a big moyo is rarely seen and even rarer for the moyo player to achieve victory. lsai seems to be really strong, watching the game I felt like Hutoshi never had a chance.