My Week of Go Activities: The U.S. Go Congress

 

My post this week will be very different from most weeks because there will be no charts. I did not bother to keep track of my time with the Now Then App as I usually do. It was all go all the time at the U. S. Go Congress. If I wasn't playing go or attending a lecture I was talking with friends about go.

The photo above shows me along with my friend Don. He met up with me in Denver the evening of the 29th, one day before the official start of the Congress. I had planned to stay one night in Denver in order to acclimate to the altitude before going up from 5,000 feet to 8,000 feet the next day. Don rented a car and kindly offered to be my ride up and back from Estes Park.

I'm going to try to give you a taste of what being at the Congress is like by sharing a few of my images from the week.

Above is a view from the car driving up to Estes Park. Photos don't do it justice.

It did not take me long to come face to face with Shawn Ray (Clossius) one of my teachers. He came up to me at registration with his wife Kara. I was so pleased to finally meet them both. All of my teachers except Ben Mantle (BenKyo Baduk) were present at the Congress this year and I will provide pictures of them too.

Things were a little different this year because the Open only had five rounds as a result of the Assembly Hall being unavailable to us on Sunday. Self Paired games started on Saturday. Broadcasting did not begin until Monday morning I believe.

Monday morning I managed to win my first round of the Open by resignation. I am black. See if you can find the last move. I am told that I was ahead before the tesuji.

I did not fare so well in the next three rounds. I ended up going into the fifth round with a record of 1:3.

I made friends with my worthy opponent from round 2. 

Apparently I had been ahead in our game up until I blundered. Unfortunately Yilun Yang, one of my teachers, came around to view my board after the blunder. I spent time talking with my opponent after the game. I took that as an opportunity to promote both AYD and the BenKyo Baduk community. Brett decided to attend the special event that In-seong Hwang held Friday night for AYD members and their friends who are considering joining AYD.

It is worth mentioning that In-seong was invited to attend this year's Go Congress with all of the benefits and responsibilities of a Pro. He did his usual lectures, but in addition to that he did all of the things that the Pros usually do like Dan Review sessions and Kyu Review sessions, etc. Last I heard he had already gotten ten new registrations for AYD for the next season.

I recorded my games this year with the SmartGo One app. I had shared my recording of the 2nd round game with Brett. We attended a Kyu review with Yilun Yang, and though I was embarrassed by my results I encouraged Brett to put our game up on the board with Yilun Yang for review. 

On the final day of the Open Mr. Yang came up to me with a gift.

I am really glad I started up lessons with Yang again before the Congress. It was the right thing to do.

I think I should get these books spiral bound. Opening the book fully puts too much stress on the binding. Some go books just need to be spiral bound. These are dan level problems.

Above is the view from the General Assembly building.

And another view from the General Assembly framed by the porch details.

Above is Shawn Ray making sense of one of his losses. He was streaming during his games which is pretty exciting.

Some people were using OGS to record their games, and when the Broadcast team learned of this they decided to recruit some of those people to have their games be broadcast on Twitch. That was pretty cool.

Fairly early in the week In-seong held a special meeting just for AYD members to review games.

Of the nearly 200 go players in attendance about 50 were current or former AYD members. In-seong met with us for the first time on Sunday and provided us with shirts. You can see these shirts in the bottom right on the photo above. They say at the bottom "You may be tough, but you're not AYD tough" This was smart marketing. He essentially made us into billboards.  He also had our KGS user names printed out for us to add to our name tags. The slips of paper had a gray background which helped them to stand out. We were able to easily identify each other during the Congress by looking for the KGS user name papers. 

It was really nice to get so much personal attention from In-seong during the Congress.

I played in the Die Hard Tournament on Wednesday. Ordinarily I would have used the official day off to sight see, but I decided to play in the Die Hard instead this year for the first time in a long time. I went 1:4 in the Die Hard. Games were under handicapped by one stone deliberately to favor White. It doesn't make sense to me, but I guess the White players like it that way. The only game I won in the Die Hard was the one game I played as White. All the games I played as black I lost. I lost games by 1.5, 5.5, and 8.5 which further reinforces my dislike of the -1 handicapping because I would have had a good chance of winning those close games with one additional stone. I did lose a game legitimately by resignation as black, however.

Above is the one game I won during the Die Hard. This is one of the few games that I was able to record all the way through to the end. Below you can see how we got information about who we were playing and at what handicap. This is software created by Baduk Club.

My recording ability was hit or miss during the Congress. I would sometimes screw things up rather early and have to abandon recording. I attribute that to being unused to playing across the board. In the past 10 years I have probably not played a single game across the board except at a Go Congress, and that means that it has been three years since I played across the board at the Madison Congress.

One of my reasons for playing in the Die Hard was to practice recording. I got a little better at it. I finally decided to create folders in SmartGo One in iCloud to organize my Congress files. Below you see the contents of the Go Congress 2022 folder at the root of the SmartGo One folder within iCloud. It has three sub folders. It is really easy to organize your files in SmartGo One, and all of that organization will sync to your iPhone and other iPads if you have more than one, which I do. 

The game you see on the right of the image below is a game that I was winning up until I failed to help a weak group in time. I have been attempting to avoid unnecessary moves recently and this type of thing is going to happen once in awhile as I attempt to avoid over protecting.

I attended the Lifetime Members' Dinner on Thursday night which was followed immediately by Pair Go with my long time partner Gurujeet Khalsa who is the president elect of the AGA.

Above are GoTrevor and his partner who Gurujeet Khalsa and I faced off against in the first game of Pair Go. Trevor needed to answer my moves. Gurujeet and I won this game and went on to win the next game to win our table. We won both games by resignation. We received recognition for our wins at the Awards Ceremony, and got a ten dollar prize.

I spent my prize plus ten extra dollars on a shirt that will greatly annoy my husband.

Why should today not be like any other day?

I attended the barbecue on Friday night. Unfortunately there was limited seating so those late to register were unable to attend but they got a meal paid for at the cafeteria.

I managed to win my final game of the Open giving me a respectable record of 2:3

I managed to win this game by cutting off a group of stones during end game. After the game was over I did find something involving multiple cuts. I ended up not recording the very last few dame, but there was trouble at L11 once the L13 dame was filled by either player. I didn't need this Trouble Master though. It would have caused some damage, and I was pleased that I did see it after the game was over when I glanced at the record. I need to get better at finding these things during the game.

Here are quite of few of my friends from AYD and the BenKyo Baduk Community at the Awards Banquet. Many of us were 2:3 in the Open. Some of us did better. My new friend, Brett, is near the middle of the picture peaking out from behind Steve who is third from the left. Brett has found his people. 

It is worth losing a game when you can bring a new friend into your group. This is what playing go is all about.

I ran into Keith Arnold at the banquet and he apologized for not spending much time with me this year at the Congress. I informed him that he would just need to make up for it next year. He smiled and said that he plans to do that. He then informed me that I am well known because of my time management related to go. I am sure that is because I post my blog to the Go group on Facebook. It has to be the only way people see it. I guess more people have read it than I realize. There was enough buzz about it (pun intended) at the Congress for it to have impressed Keith. Pretty cool. It makes it feel like it is worthwhile doing.

Anyone at any rank can enjoy this game and spread the word about it. I am proof of that. It is all about community to me. It is about promoting my teachers and making friends. It isn't about getting stronger. The tag line of this blog was chosen for a reason... Enriching My Love of the Game. That is what it is about.

Some of my friends played Big Brother Go at the Awards Ceremony. In the blue shirt is Nick Sibicky the well known go content creator and teacher. This game involves two weaker players, two stronger players, and two even stronger players.

Don and I called it an evening rather early Saturday night since we needed to wake up at 5:00 AM to meet at 6:00 AM for our ride back to the Denver airport. I finished most of my packing by 11:00 PM and scheduled my wakeup call. Don and I were on the road before 6:00 AM the next day.

I got to the airport at 9:00 AM. Three flights to Newark left before my scheduled flight which got cancelled. I should have changed my flight to one of the earlier ones, but I was going to have a limo waiting for me, so I figured I would stick with the schedule. They rescheduled me automatically  for a 11:15 PM flight, but I changed it to a 5:30 PM flight to LaGuardia. So my luggage did not arrive. That was too confusing for them. My luggage was recovered within two days so it was okay.

On the way home I was wearing a shirt from the 2007 Go Congress in Millersville. While in line waiting to board my flight to LaGuardia the person behind me admired my shirt and asked if it was a Pente board. I looked at him really funny and asked, "Were you at the Go Congress?" It turns out that he wan't. I told him that I thought that he was pulling my leg because it is a standard joke among go players that people confuse the game with Pente and it was just too funny. I ended up promoting the Online Go Server to him because he had actually heard of the game before. I told him that he should look for buzzsaw and he was really surprised by my name. People usually are.

I'm really lucky that my luggage was found because I had go shirts in it dating back 25 years. I would have been very upset if they had been lost. Next year the go shirts will go in a carry on just like cash or jewelry.

I'm taking the next week off from go and relaxing to recover from the week. My ankles are slowly returning to their normal size. Altitude sickness is real. I was huffing and puffing most of the time. Maybe I am too old to do 8,000 feet.

Although I did not do any go charts this week I will close with screen captures of my personal schedule from the Yapp App we used at the Congress.