Philadelphia Fall Open Tournament

Last weekend I played in the Philadelphia Fall Tournament in the handicap division. The playing field was a little sparse down at my level, 11 kyu. It was my first go event in Philadelphia since moving to Ewing, New Jersey. I was able to take a train directly from West Trenton to University City, which was about a three block walk to the playing area at the University of Pennsylvania.

Saturday I chose to play the first two games and bye out of the 3rd game so I could take the train home before dark. I didn't want to be traveling in the dark since it was my first time going into Philadelphia by train. My first game was with a 12 kyu who drew white. My opponent says that I won that game with my end game skills. My second game was with a 15 kyu. The tournament directors didn't seem to want to give handicap even in the handicap division, and I ended up as white in an even game and even got 7.5 komi on top of that. I would much rather have given four stones to my opponent since playing someone so underhandicapped put a lot of pressure on me to win to defend my rating. If I had lost a four stone game to the same opponent it would not have mattered much. And the win won't do anything for my rating since I would be expected to win under those conditions. I left before the 3rd round started and got home at about 5:30.

Sunday I went in by train again. My first game on Sunday was with 6 kyu and I got four handicap stones. I was surprised since this seemed to run counter to what had been happening the day before with handicap. This was the only game I lost at the tournament and was also the most exciting. My opponent was in byo yomi when I had at least 20 or 30 minutes left on my clock. But he eventually ran me into byo yomi as well, which was quite an experience for me since I think it was the first time in my ten year tournament career that I had been in byo yomi. I usually have a fair amount of time left on my clock by the end of the game. But I think I am actually trying to read more these days, and I am building up the stamina to do it, so it would make sense that I would be using my time. My second game of the day was with another 6 kyu, and once again I got four handicap stones. I managed to get a resignation when I was over 50 points ahead according to the score estimator when I loaded the game into cgoban later.

I recorded all four of my games on my tablet pc, and I will have them reviewed by strong players to see how I did. I already has Solaris review the game I lost. He did that during our group lesson yesterday on KGS.

My next tournament will be in Hoboken, New Jersey on October 14th.