Smartrobot's 14 Game Winning Streak!

In the last article I wrote that smartrobot was probably not strong enough to be a solid 9d. I was quite wrong. He is currently on an impressive 14 game winning streak (overall record 23-4) and has defeated some well known KGS high dans in this streak, including: bloodarena (7d), supertjc (7d), Hutoshi (7d), kghin (7d), roln111 (8d), and zchen (8d). Currently is undefeated as a 9d, though he has yet to play another 9d. Not much can be gleamed from his profile, merely that his client is Chinese. In this game he played miaaffa, another recently registered player who seems to be a solid 8d with a Chinese client and the surname Wang. Miaaffa has also defeated some well known KGS dans such as kghin, zchen, and about2d (8d).

The game started very normally, following common patterns both on the left and the right. Black 25 is somewhat interesting, usually it is played at L17. Black 31 was played to prevent the Q12 tesuji. Black 35 aimed at S15 and White 36 prevented that. Next, White attacks the weakness from L17 by playing at J17 it quickly evolves into a fight. Through 65 the local variation comes to an end and it seems White is fairly happy, having captured one black stone in a big wall, more or less making his group alive while Black had to connect on the second line at S10. Next with 66 and 68, White showed no mercy and continued to attack Black's group. I am not strong enough to really comment on this fight, but the result seems much better for White, who captures 4 stones in the center and more or less seals Black in despite Black being able to connect by eating 3 stones.

Black's sequence starting from 109 to 115 seems questionable to me as White gets the vital point at P5 with 116. It feels like it would have been easier for Black to play N4 or M3 or such similar moves to reduce White's center potential. After 126, White has carved out a big center. Black tries to make some noise in the lower left corner, but White handles it without any problems. White also is able to make the tesuji of 172 later due to Black's mistake in answering 170 and gets an easy ko to reduce the lower right corner. After that mistake it seems like Black has no chance.

What do you think? Is smartrobot strong enough to become one of the top KGS 9ds?