Dragons eating their own tails are almost as rare on the go board as in real life. We know of only two examples in professional play.
One was in a game between Shinohara Masami against Ishigure Kakuro nearly 40 years ago. The other was in 1988 when Hotta Seiji played Nakano Hironari.
We know of one further example, and a "tail" hangs thereby. At the 20th World Amateur Championship in 1998, Yi Ren Zhou, an Australian 7-dan, resigned as Black in the position below, thinking he had a dead group. But he could have lived with a "dragon eats its own tail" life by first capturing the last white stone then, after White makes this an apparently false eye, by connecting down the left side. GoGoD's own Mark Hall was Britain's representative that year and noticed this when he was looking at the game record. He tackled the winner, Injune Kang 6d of New Zealand, who had realised that he'd had a lucky let-off. He added that Mark must be very strong to spot that just by looking at a game record. Little did he know how many game records Mark has transcribed...
 |