MGA Spring Tourney

Last Sunday, three players from our go club drove down to Somerville to play in the MGA Spring tourney. It was a good tournament and one of our club members even managed to play a perfect 4-0 and win the tourney.

I didn't do as well, played 1-3, but one of the losses was yet again due to time.

My first game was even, and I got behind, but managed to pull back in an endgame exchange (mutual destruction). This was when byo-yomi madness got to me. I panicked and made a few bad moves, so I resigned.

The second game was another even game, and this time I managed to make enough bad decisions to get myself behind without coming back in end game. Another resignation.

Third game was more of the same, but the fourth game was better. The first three games, I didn't really care about winning or losing, but with the fourth game I did.

You see, the fourth game was against an opponent who I had played before. The last time I played him, I had killed a huge group of him. He continued playing and complicating in the hope of making me run out of time, and he succeeded. Yes, it is within the rules, but the way he did it felt kind of iffy. Especially when he later told me proudly 'The only hope for winning was to make you run out of time' Whatever.

This made me very determined to win my game this time. This was my only handicap game this tournament, I got 3H. I started out badly with a mistake in the corner, I was so annoyed with myself. I had some more doubtful moves, but I managed to pull off a solid win, even after I got into byo yomi. The MGA has a lot friendlier byo yomi than last week though. This was canadian, 25 stones in 5 mins. Much easier than the 4 times 15 secs we had last week.

I enjoyed all my tournament games, and did ok. Not as well as I had wanted to do, but good enough for now. I met a fellow KGSer, snip, which was very sweet. Only that was worth driving up to Boston already. The games were a nice bonus :)