surging power. True to his own uncompromising aims he would from time
to time launch forth violently upon the offensive.
Yet however careful Otaké might be about keeping his ranks in order,
there should somewhere along the way have been a chance for the Master
to lay down a serious challenge. The Master initially staked out broad
claims in two of the corners. In the upper left corner, where Otaké had
responded to White 18 with Black 19 at “three-by-three,” C-17, this the last
match for the sixty-four-year-old Master was following the newer pattern;
and from that corner a storm presently blew up. There if anywhere would
have been the spot for the Master, had he chosen, to be difficult. But
perhaps because the match was so important to him, he seemed to prefer
the cleaner, less involved sort of game. Down into these middle phases the
Master replied to Otaké’s overtures; and as he moved ahead with what had
certain elements of the one-man performance about it, Otaké found himself
drawn into a close, delicate contest.
Such a match was probably inevitable, granted Black’s play, and so
boldness gave way to a concern for every possible point—which
development might in the final analysis be taken as a success for White.
The Master was not pursuing a brilliant plan of his own, nor was he taking
advantage of bad play. It perhaps told of his age and experience, the fact
that like the flow of water or the drifting of clouds a White formation
quietly took shape over the lower reaches of the board in response to
careful and steady pressure from Black; and so the game became a close
one. The Master’s powers had not waned with age, nor had illness damaged
them.
