Enriching My Love of the Game: 2024 U.S. Go Congress

Above is a photo of a gathering of most of the BenKyo League members who attended the Go Congress this year. We had 12 members in attendance which is about 1/3 of our currently active membership. We gathered for a photo before heading off to the Midtown Beer Garden for an outdoor dinner together Tuesday evening.

It has been nearly a month since I have posted. During the time since then I was busy preparing for the U.S. Go Congress, then attending it, and eventually recovering from it. I'm ready to resume posting now.

Today's post will be a summary of the U.S. Go Congress from my point of view.

The Portland Congress was my 21st Go Congress, unless you count the two virtual Congresses of 2020 and 2021. If so, it was my 23rd Go Congress.

My first Congress was in Lancaster PA in 1997. It was the 13th U.S. Go Congress with a shirt designed by my teacher, Yilun Yang. Since then I have missed exactly a handful of Congresses, five to be exact. They are crossed off below.

It was nice to see old friends again at the Congress and I think I must know at least 25% of the people in attendance from having met them at previous Congresses. I knew quite a few of the members of my 9k band.

During the Congress I never bother to keep track of the specifics of the amount of time spend on my various Go Activities, so there will be no colorful beachball today, nor a list of activities with their percentages. I found not recording the details of my activities to be refreshing, and have decided to discontinue doing so for the time being.

I did not take full advantage of the Congress activities.

I could have played in the Senior Tournament and also the Women's Tournament, but did not participate in either. It was my feeling that one serious game per day would be enough for me.

I did play in the Open, and I ended up with a record of 3/3.

I recorded all of my games in SmartGo One. I did a pretty good job of it considering that I only do it at the Go Congress once a year. I messed up one of my games and had to stop recording, but my opponent provided me with the record.

I wasn't thrilled with losing my first game, which was close. I made up for it by winning the next two games.

My second game of the Open was a BenKyo League pair up which I was lucky to win because I played loosely with a weak group, and did not get punished for it.

My third game was a 3.5 win.

I lost my fourth game to an 8k and won my fifth game with an 8k giving me a record of 3/2 going into the final game of the Open. It took the pressure off because I felt that 3/3 would be a respectable record. The competition was really tough this year. And being 0.14 points away from 10k didn't really. I was probably at a disadvantage in my games even against other 9k players since I was much closer to 10k than to 8k.

In my final game I was paired with a 9k with a record of 4/1. I lost that game and my opponent went on to win 3rd place in the 9k band. The winners of the band has records of 6-0, and 5-1, so competition was fierce at the 9k level.

I uploaded all of my Open games into my SGF Library on OGS so I could add them to my games spreadsheet.

Clossius, in my most recent two hour lesson, reviewed my first three Open games. He will review the last three Open games in my next lesson on August 2nd. I spent at least the first 15 minutes of my lesson just talking about the Congress. Anyone who is interested can watch my lesson. The lesson was streamed live. Anyone who would like to watch my lesson next week can tune in to the Clossius Twitch Stream at 2:00 PM EDT on Friday, August 2nd. My lessons with Clossius are always publicly streamed, and they are usually on alternate Fridays.

I did participate in one event besides the Open. I was a popular opponent in the Baum Tournament which involves children playing people who are at least 40 years older than themselves. My gray hair was a beacon to the children. I was approached often and ended up playing six games, and I have the twenty dollar bill to prove it.

I am fourth from the left in the top row holding up my prize money. Above are all of the participants in the Baum Tournament who won prizes. All you had to do was play five games, and if you were as old as me, you did not need to seek out the children. They sought you out. I knew Leonard Baum because he was local to me, and he is greatly missed. It is nice that there is an event to honor him at the Congress.

For me the highlight of the Go Congress was playing Pair Go with Ben Mantle AKA BenKyo Baduk. Ben is one of the three teachers I take lessons with. We were going to play Pair Go Last year but I came down with Covid before the event, and Ben had to find another opponent. This year we did play and won one of our games. We played black in both of our games which was great because it gave us the chance to use the Points Lover opening. We lost the first game by a mere 2 points and we were ahead on the board by 10 points in our second game, so we won that game. Our performance was particularly impressive because the time controls for Pair Go were changed to 30 minutes absolute. Given that Ben is often in overtime quickly in his games he and I both knew that absolute time was going to be a challenge. He assured me that he had it under control, and that I could actually take more time than usual on my moves. He was right because we were always ahead of our opponents on time.

One consequence of being at the Go Congress was that I got behind on my Spaced Repetition Problems for the Internet Go School. I tried to remember to do the minimal number of problems per day to avoid using vacation days, but I ended up using a vacation day because I was forgetful. That was the day following Pair Go, so I was especially tired.

On the way home from the Congress in the air I caught up on my backlog of problems. I chipped away at them until they were all finished.

Let's talk about Covid.

I caught Covid at the Congress in 2023 and 2022, so avoiding Covid this year was a priority for me. Last year I missed half of the Congress banished to my dorm room (rightfully so). In 2022 I merely came home with it and missed none of the Congress.

This year I wore a mask indoors at all times except those few occasions when I dared to eat indoors. I did not give in to the temptation be go maskless because most others were going maskless. I did that last year, and I knew the cost of doing so. I had learned my lesson.

I ate outdoors as much as possible as part of my Anti Covid Plan, but it became too inconvenient and too socially isolating to do it at all time. So I did eat breakfast in the hotel after the first couple of days, and I did attend the banquet on the last day. It was convenient though to have the park available right behind the Student Union as a place I could carry a sandwich to to eat outdoors.

I tested for Covid when I got home and was negative, although I did catch what we were referring to as the crud. It felt lousy but it didn't feel like Covid. At no time did my temperature even get as high as 98.6, and I never had a sore throat, which was the first sign of Covid the two times that I had it.

The Covid Policy at the Congress did not require masks, and only suggested the wearing of masks after a case of Covid was identified. I realize that requiring masks indoors is hard to enforce, but I'd like to see people wearing masks at least during their Open games, and perhaps other games. Game play is the longest period of time when people are in close proximity to other people indoors. Maybe masks in lectures would be good as well.

Since it has been a while since I posted I will add a list of the games I played since my last post.