This week I spent exactly 40 hours on Go Activities. Saturday was the first day of the South Central Go Tournament with three games played.
I increased my games played this week to ten, bringing Live Play in at nearly six hours.
I decided to play in the South Central Go Tournament at my official AGA rating. I made that decision based on my performance at two recent online tournaments where I played as a 9 kyu. I went 2:2 in both events. I’ll give Bart Jacob credit for doing due diligence on checking online ranks and comparing them to established AGA ratings. I got an email asking if I had a reason to believe that I should play as a 9 kyu rather than at my 6 kyu KGS rating. After explaining that my online rank has always exceeded my AGA rank, describing my recent tournament performance, and describing my long standing tournament anxiety, he was fine with my decision. To avoid potential problems I disabled my rank on KGS this week. I did not want to create a psychological edge for myself by showing off my shiny 6 kyu rating.
Correspondence Play took on a larger chunk of time with the addition of a few new leagues. This proved to be a mistake. I’ve soured on correspondence play, and I have been opening the games and playing them as asynchronous blitz to dismiss them ASAP. I’ve also been timing out because some of these games expect a move within 24 hours. It’s hurting my rank, but I am okay with it. I'm just not enjoying it.
Essential Go Activities 13:02 (hours:minutes) about 1/3 of time spent
5:50 45% Live Play
4:43 36% Tsumego (Combined)
2:29 19% Reviewing My Games
Game List:
My win/loss ratio is a shameful 3:7.
I’ll be inserting a little commentary about some of these games, so things will be a little more spread out than usual.
For actual game links, and a more compressed view of game results, scroll down to the bottom of the post.
I played my first four games of the week over the course of two days on OGS. All five of the games on OGS this week had only 15 minutes of basic time. Playing under time pressure wasn’t doing my game any favors. My rank dropped from 7 kyu to 8 kyu on OGS, which I don’t really mind. I’ll accept it on faith that it is good for me to practice making decisions quickly, and I will continue to play these 15 minute games to practice this. I suspect that if I played some rated games on KGS my stale 6k rating would probably fall to 7k. That would be okay too. This may explain why I lose to AYD members who are two ranks lower than myself on a regular basis. They are probably playing more games, more quickly, and not guarding their ranks. Maybe I should do the same.
Win 2/8 OGS buzzsaw-johngp W+10.5 7k/8k
Loss 2/8 OGS buzzsaw-Nikita Pilshchikov B+7.5 7k/7k
Loss 2/9 OGS Rqke-buzzsaw W+4.5 6k/7k
I noticed when I reviewed the above game that white got 7.5 komi even though he is one rank stronger than I. If the komi had been correct I would have won that game. My opponent offered to show me the joseki in the lower left corner after the game. That was really nice. We reviewed the game and had a nice conversation. he played a joseki “mistake” that I thought I knew how to punish, but he turned it to his advantage. I recall Clossius discussing this joseki during his live stream a week or so ago with some caution about how it could be tricky if the player is stronger with a reason to make the “mistake”. He may be tricking you. This is probably something that I should be asking him to go over with me. I remember finding that discussion interesting at the time, but not fully digesting it.
I’m black. This was supposed to work out in my favor.
But it turned out like this, which was not good for me. WTF?
My opponent suggested that D2 is the correct response to C5. Maybe Clossius can offer more insight during my lesson. I’d actually like to track down the clip where he discussed this joseki in his live stream recently. I believe it may have been discussed during a game review rather than a lesson. That might be something for him to clip out from the video on demand for the day and post separately.
Loss 2/9 OGS syz756283-buzzsaw W+19.5 6k/7k
The komi was also wrong on the above game, though it did not change the result. I had my auto match preferences set to +/- 1 with automatic for komi. I was assuming that it would adjust komi for one rank difference, but apparently it was not doing so. I have since changed my rank preference to 7k only. I would prefer a three stone range if I could get the komi right. this works on KGS, why not OGS?
Win 2/10 KGS Rhett23-buzzsaw B+4.5 AYD 888-747
The above game scored as 0.5 on KGS because we forgot to mark a dead stone. 4.5 is the correct score.
Loss 2/11 KGS anonymous-buzzsaw W+18.5 AYD 1149-896
Loss 2/12 OGS Kiguchiterrier2-buzzsaw W+2.5 7k/7k
I felt as if I was winning the above game, but I was wrong. It was another fast OGS loss. I’ve dropped to 8k now. I'm amazingly cool with this. Protecting my rank was making me afraid to play.
South Central Tournament Games:
Win 2/13 KGS buzzsaw-AkiraGiang W+58.5 NR/7k
The above game was too easy. I was wondering if maybe I had made a mistake by not self promoting one or two stones.
Loss 2/13 KGS buzzsaw-Bradical B+21.5 NR/2d?
The above game dispelled my illusions. I asked my opponent if his rating was due to ratings drift. he said that it was, and that he only plays on KGS for tournaments. After we were finished, and he had soundly trounced me, I asked out of curiosity what his rating became on OGS after the update. He said it had become 5k. Well that explains things. I dropped to 8k on OGS this week. So he is three stones stronger than I. Looking at his a OGS rating once the day was over, however, it is 4k. I feel better now. Four stones separate us. I friended him. I’m going to learn from this guy.
Loss 2/13 KGS Jaydee-buzzsaw W+1.5 7k/NR
The above game was a tough loss. Jaydee and I are friendly rivals in AYD. It’s been a while since I’ve had a win against her. This game only had 0.5 komi because she is an AGA 8k, while I am an AGA 9k. If you take into account the decimal portions of our ranks we are actually about 1.5 stones apart. Last week we had a YD Free League game which I lost by 0.5 points, so I felt I actually had a chance to win this game. Gotta try harder I guess. I’ve already identified what I think are the two biggest problems in the game.
Thoughts on the Tournament:
After day one I am 1:2. In spite of two disappointing losses I had a great time in the first day of the tournament. The second day results will be a part of next week’s report. I am certainly glad I did not self promote. I will not do that until I manage to perform at a 4:2 level in a six game tournament, or at a 3:4 level in a four game tournament. Then I will self promote one stone and see how things go.
Goals for Next Week:
Play at least ten games.
Continue to play with 15 minutes of basic time on OGS.
See if I can get into byo yomi.
Game Links:
1. Win 2/8 OGS buzzsaw-johngp W+10.5 7k/8k
2. Loss 2/8 OGS buzzsaw-Nikita Pilshchikov B+7.5 7k/7k
3. Loss 2/9 OGS Rqke-buzzsaw W+4.5 6k/7k
4. Loss 2/9 OGS syz756283-buzzsaw W+19.5 6k/7k
5. Win 2/10 KGS Rhett23-buzzsaw B+4.5 AYD 888-747
6. Loss 2/11 KGS anonymous-buzzsaw W+18.5 AYD 1149-896
7. Loss 2/12 OGS Kiguchiterrier2-buzzsaw W+2.5 7k/7k
8. Win 2/13 KGS buzzsaw-AkiraGiang W+58.5 NR/7k
9. Loss 2/13 KGS buzzsaw-Bradical B+21.5 NR/2d?
10. Loss 2/13 KGS Jaydee-buzzsaw W+1.5 7k/NR
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