National Go Center Tournament

Last Saturday the National Go Center held a four game tournament on the KGS go server. In spite of my record at the Canadian Open I decided to enter at my official AGA rating, which is 9k. I might add that I am a very weak 9k having just managed to squeak by from 10k to 9k at the Madison Go Congress in 2019.

Though some might have thought that failing to self promote was wrong, I had a suspicion that the CGA ranks were a bit soft compared to the AGA ranks. My results bore that out, though I may have simply had a bad day. I went 2:2 winning my first and last games of the day.

Below I will post a hand written index card that I used to set up games and document results, the final board positions, and links to the games on the ai-sensei site. The round labels after the screen captures are clickable links to the game records.

Round 1

Round 1

Round 1 was a clear victory at 92.5 points. The opening was baffling to me, but I managed to isolate a large number of white stones. It was then a matter of holding the lead.

Round 2

Round 2

I suffered a crushing defeat in Round 2 by Robert Qi who won by 46.5 points. I came to find that Robert is the father of a go playing child. He got tired of just watching his son at tournaments, and decided to take up the game himself to fill the time. I also discovered that he and his son were in attendance at the Go Congress in Madison last year. What a small go world it is.

Round 3

Round 3

I lost Round 3 to Marion Edey by 13.5 points. Upon stalking Marion on the AGA database I discovered that she has a very low AGA number. She has been playing a long time, and she knows her way around a go board. 

Round 4

Round 4

I won Round 4 against Angel Zhou by 17.5 points. Angel was my opponent in the 6th Round of the Canadian Open. I did not assume that I could win against her again. She is a young player from a go playing family, and she could easily have improved significantly in the weeks separating these two events.

Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed playing in this tournament. It was well run by Gurujeet Khalsa and Garrett Smith who met the challenges of running a tournament online very well. They used Zoom to check players in for rounds. Games were played on KGS, and I am sure that fun was had by all. I look forward to future AGA online tournaments.