The mimicry continues a little longer here. Fujisawa blinks on move 54.



50-54

Yamabe said it was also good to push on at Black 1 in the diagram below in place of Black 53.



Variation Diagram 1 (1-17)

If White then continues mirroring, Black 17 signals a major success for Black.

If White tries to steal a march on Black by occupying the centre point first, that is by playing White 1 in Variation Diagram 2 instead of White 12 in the previous diagram, White's stones will be swallowed up in the vortex of a good old-fashioned gurugurumawashi.



Variation Diagram 2 (1-6)

Summarising his approach so far, Yamabe said his intentions were to aim for an early contact fight, in which case it was a good idea to start with the sanrensei formation, so as to reap an early benefit from Black's advantage of first move. Being on the backfoot, White would then find it hard to make the komi tell. Fujisawa clearly agreed that it was now time for White to take independent action. If he continues with mimicry, as in Variation Diagram 3 (that is, in place of White 54), the result is not dissimilar from the previous variations.



Variation Diagram 3 (1-18)

Replacing White 17 of the above diagram with White 1 in Variation Diagram 4 also gives a bad result for White.



Variation Diagram 4 (1-2)

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