Western Mass. Go Tournament

Yesterday, three people from our go club drove down to Massachussetts for the Western Mass. Go Tournament. We had my trusted GPS to actually get us there in time, as opposed to the time when I did not have my GPS and got lost in a snow storm. Uphill both ways!

The first game, I played my friend Rich, who is a nidan. We had a wonderful game, even if we both missed a big move, and I ended up resigning during byo yomi madness. Lots of study material in that game though.

Second game was against Bill S., a shodan. Before we played, he had lots of questions to ask me. 'How much do you study? What is your AGA rank? Who is your teacher? Do you go to the woodlands every time? Do all your kids have the same father?' I was so tempted to blame our mailman! Or the milkman. But I behaved. Mostly, that is.

We play. I find out his knowledge of joseki has room for improvement. But I leave a weak group so he takes advantage of that and I live with 40 stones and 2 points which annoyed me greatly. Now he had my attention. Up until now, I had been amused. At this point, I got serious.

I was wearing my new sweater. That should have warned him.



He invades. I attack. He says 'that will NEVER work!' I smile at him sweetly and say 'Prove it.' We fight for a while and when the dust settles, his invading stones are dead. Then I cut off more stones. In the process of that, he puts down a stone killing even more of his own stones. Stares at the stone for a few seconds. Goes 'Oh SHIT!' and takes the stone back...

I let it slide, I was winning already anyway. I was enjoying myself too much. He complicates, trashes around, and tells me he is going to live, pointing to his one-eyed group. He says that if he dies, he will resign. I play one more stone and he realizes that yes, he is really dead.

Last game I gave 9H to a 9k or 10k. He played reasonably well for his level, but I mst gameanaged to eke out a win by 12.5. Wasn't easy. But good challenge.

So I ended up going 2-1 and placed 2nd place in dan division, which sounds a lot more impressive than it is. The tournament was tiny, only 10 people, but it sounds good, right?

Fun thing, I got to meet db1 from KGS in person. I have known him on KGS for ages, but never knew he actually was a REAL person ^^ Very nice person too, I enjoyed meeting him.