Tournament Tales I: The Preparation

So much to tell about the tourney. It was a wonderful day. I will have to do it in installments, as to also get some studying in. Especially for Ash, I'll start with how I prepared for this tourney.

First step was my familiar pre-tourney 'I will lose all my games!' stress-out. I talked about this with a friend and he helpfully told me that he still HATES playing tournament games (after soooo many years of playing them). He did tell me that it would help to play in a lot of tournaments, so that will be one of the steps of my recovery program :) I wallowed in my negative state of self-pity, till Flameblade slapped me out of it and told me to get over it already (paraphrased). He gave me helpful tips, and I replaced my whining with visions of Calmness, Focus, and Good Moves. Not to say that the fear of losing all my games was totally gone, but it was just a tiny bit of self doubt instead of an almost all-consuming worry.



I wanted to do extra tsumego before the tourney, but ended up doing my normal amount. I avoided 'non-thinking' games on mess-up accounts, only played serious games for the days leading up to the tourney. I spent a lot of time replaying pro games, feeling that the spirit of those games would help me in my tournament.

I did some joseki review, but not much. I figured that if a particular joseki wasn't in my head by now, would be hard to study it in a hurry just to not use it in the tournament anyway.

At go club, we played a serious simul instead of normal relaxed club games, which also helped me to get into the tournament mood. The night before the tourney, I watched one of Guo Juan's 'How to Win a Won Game' lectures, and attended the shygost lecture. I even went to bed before midnight!

Stay tuned for Episode II.