I played last weekend in the Virginia Open. Players below the Open level, such as myself, participated in a one day handicap event. I was lucky to have enough opponents near my own level that I was able to play all four games without needing to either take or receive handicap in any of my games. I guess that is the advantage of finally making it to SDK.
I will be posting index cards which I used to record results of the rounds. I will post screen captures of the final board positions as well as links to the games on OGS where AI reviews of the games are available. I will also provide a link to the AI Sensei reviews, which have a different type of game review. I’ll follow that up with any reflections on the game.
Round 1
I was surprised that I was playing someone outside of my division for this round. I was in the Intermediate Division composed of 9k to 5k players. My opponent was in the Novice Division composed of 10k to 30k players. Though my opponent started off with a tough game outside of his division, he went on to take second place in the Novice division. My prediction to him of a good tournament turned out to be accurate.
Round 2
I went into Round 2 expecting to lose. I know that is not the right attitude to take, but this guy beat me up fairly well in the the Canadian Open, and I was expecting more of the same. He may have been expecting an easy game. I actually got a resignation, so I was especially pleased.
I went into Round 3 with high hopes, but those hopes were soon to be dashed.
Round3
Based on the screen capture I missed the opportunity to pull off what Hwang In-Seong, my teacher in the Yunguseng Dojang, calls a “Trouble Master” problem. The AI Sensei Record link will show details. It would not have been enough to win the game, but I wish I would have seen it. I need to develop a sharper eye.
Round 4
My last round was with the same opponent I played in the last round of both the Canadian Open and also the NGC Fall Tournament. I won against her both of those times. Our match in this tournament was no surprise since we were both 2-1 going into the last round. Looking at standings before our game, I thought that our game might have been a match to determine 3rd place in the Intermediate Division, but that was not to be the case. It turned out that it WAS a match to determine the 2nd placing Woman in the tournament.
I did not go into this game with confidence because my opponent appears to be about nine years old give or take a couple of years. She comes from a go playing family and her siblings were playing as well. I have experience with young players who get two stones stronger in a month.
She beat me soundly in this game and deserves her win. After the game was over I ended up chatting with one of the observers who, it turns out, knows me from my KGS account “goddess”. Goddess plays in the European Yunguseng Dojang and this observer is a participant in EYD as well.
Thoughts On The Tournament
I really enjoyed this tournament a lot. I felt good about winning my first two games. In spite of some disappointment over not winning at least three games, I am happy with a 2-2 record that starts with two wins.
It was nice to play a couple of players I had played in previous tournaments. It feels like a community rather than the randomness of online auto match play.
The first game started at 11:30 am, and my last game ended at 9:00 pm. It was a long day, but I really liked that the games were spread out allowing faster players to get a little down time between rounds.
Main time was 40 minutes. Overtime was seven periods of 30 seconds each of byo yomi. I thought the byo yomi was excessive, but I guess it worked to my advantage because I ended up with the time between rounds. I was able to eat lunch and dinner and also relax. I think some players who used all their time did not get much time to recoup their energy between rounds.
The games were played on OGS using the Baduk Club interface. This is the same setup as was used for the Canadian Open. There were fewer glitches with Baduk Club than there were with the Canadian Open, but there were a few.
One of my friends ended up playing a match on KGS due to technical difficulties, but that worked out okay. My first three games opened properly, and game results were recorded automatically. However, my last game was another story. It did not display the “Open in OGS” button to click. The exact same thing had happened to me in the Canadian Open. The first time it happened I had no idea the game had started. By the time I knew it had started, and found the game, I had lost 15 minutes of time because I was white and my opponent had already moved. We restarted that game again. This time I went looking for the game right away and found it within a couple minutes because I knew what had happened before.
The Baduk Club game pairing interface has come a long way and I like it. I would recommend though that anyone who signs up for a tournament using it familiarizes themselves with how to find one of their games in progress on OGS incase they need to do it. They should also familiarize themselves with how to set up a challenge on OGS, and where to look for a challenge incase they need to bypass Baduk Club to start a game.
One other thing... I really enjoyed the fact that I was playing in this tournament along with two friends from the American Yunguseng Dojang. We chatted throughout down time on a Discord server that we use to study together. I am hoping that I can get a few more of our AYD friends to take part in the next tournament in which I play.
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