Maryland Open

I played in the Maryland Open last weekend. I played four games, winning two, and losing two.

I wasn't too unhappy with my results, since my losses were both less than ten points, and my wins were close to 20 points. I was pleased that my victories were more decisive than my losses.

Upon checking the KGS ratings of the two opponents that beat me, I found that they are 5K and 6K on KGS compared to my own 8K, so I feel as if I performed well against them. I did feel rather pushed around by both of them.

An interesting reunion occurred during the third round with an opponent who remembered me from the San Francisco congress eleven years ago in 1999. We had played that year. He must have been a mere child at the time since he is in graduate school now. That was eleven years ago. I was quite frankly surprised that we had progressed at the same pace given the difference in our ages. He recalls that we were both about 15K at the time of our previous game. Now he is 10K and I am 9K. Our game at this tournament was interesting in that he was way ahead, but I managed to isolate and kill a number of stones leading to my victory. He tells me that something similar occurred eleven years ago, and even pointed to the area of the board involved. I was impressed that our game had been that memorable for him.

I had my iPad with me and I recorded my games with it. But even more interestingly I played a 9x9 game with another iPad owner over the internet on KGS while we sat across from each other at a table at the Maryland Open. We accomplished this through the use of remote desktop software. I was using LogMeIn Ignition. We both have 3G iPads so we could log in to our home desktops (both 24" iMacs) even though we did not have wi-fi access at the playing site. I won that 9x9 by 1.5 points even though my first move was an obvious miss click.