Thursday morning’s session at the AGA Professional Qualification Tournament featured just two games, Ben Lockhart vs Aaron Ye and Sarah
Yu vs Andrew Lu, in a battle to move onto the semi-finals. Lockhart had an early lead but then played a couple of slow moves and Ye was able to pull ahead; a huge semeai then developed and Lockhart missed the critical move to win the capturing race (click here to see Myungwan Kim’s brief video commentary). Sarah Yu, who had played tengen in her Wednesday night match against Lu, played a similar center move Thursday, explaining afterwards that she felt the 7.5 komi was heavy and this would lead to more favorable josekis. However, she failed to make effective use of her unusual move and Lu gained the advantage. This game also developed into a crowd-pleasing semeai (click here for Myungwan Kim’s video commentary).
In the afternoon matchups, Eric Lui defeated Andrew Lu by resignation, advancing to the semi-finals. Daniel Gourdeau won against Aaron Ye; he lost against Ye in the round-robin, so they’ll play again on Friday morning to determine who advances to the final with Lui. Ben Lockhart beat Jeremy Chiu, tying their match at 1-1; they’ll play on Friday morning. Sarah Yu beat Manuel Velasco, knocking him into the bottom bracket; she’ll await the winner in the Lockhart-Chiu game. The live KGS broadcast will start at 9:30a PST.
– report/photo by Chris Garlock, with technical support from Dennis Wheeler. photo (l-r): Sarah Yu, Danny Ko, Manuel Velasco, Daniel Gourdeau, Andrew Lu and Ben Lockhart.
CORRECTION (1/8): Our original report did not indicate that Eric Lui is in the finals and that the winner of the Gourdeau-Ye game will advance to the finals.
