Enriching My Love of the Game: 2024 Western Server Challenge

I have chosen to play again this year in the Western Server Challenge on OGS this March. The challenge is in its third year, and is run by Clossius who is one of my go teachers.

I participated in the WSC last year and also the year before. I have the Achievements on OGS to prove it.

At the end of the challenge last year my rank had fallen to 9 kyu and I decided not to play rated since that time, so there is a bit of a flat line on my OGS profile graph if you set it for time. The graph below shows that I was at the 7k level shortly before the challenge began. Notice the flat line after the challenge ended.

If you set my graph for rated games things look different.

I only have 548 rated games on OGS. About 200 of them are from the two sessions of the WSC in which I participated. That is roughly 40% of my games devoted to the Western Server Challenge. That shows how little I actually enjoy playing rated.

Does this mean I care about my rank, or does it mean I don't care about my rank? I think maybe I don't care. If I actually did care then I would surely have scrambled to get myself back up to 7k after the WSC rather than allowing the damage to keep my rank at 9k for a full year. If I did care would I play in the WSC again? I think not.

The WSC is about fun and not caring about your rank. I intend to do both. This year the emphasis is on the auto match button and on blitz play. That will make it fairly easy to meet the 100 game requirement.

Here are my ranks before WSC 2024. I don't even have blitz ratings at all.

It will be interesting to see how my rank changes as a result of my play in March.

Here are the settings used in the various board sizes. It is my understanding that blitz auto match will use those settings.

You can read up on the specifics of the challenge on the website including the optional grand slam you can achieve by playing 100 games on all three board sizes.

There are those who might be horrified (mostly my teachers) that I have chosen to participate in a blitz challenge given the fact that I already play at nearly blitz speed in my 40 minute tournament games. It is a habit that my teachers would like to see me break. I'm hoping that one month of blitz isn't going to make much of a difference.

As far as I know you need to get 100 games in one of the board sizes to meet the challenge. I don't think you can combine board sizes to get to 100 games, but I may be wrong.

Consider joining me in the Western Server Challenge this year. Perhaps we shall meet across the board in an auto match game.

Now for my usual Go Activities content:

It was a fairly typical week for Go Activity with over 21 hours spent.

Nearly half of my time was spent on Live Play with 15 games played. The bulk of those games were BenKyo League Title Tournament Games.

Two AYD games look like bookends on my week of games.

I finished off the 7th season of NAOL with a 3:2 record which is pretty good considering that two of my losses were to 7k players. My final game was a decisive victory of 24.5 points. The NAOL games are played with AGA rules which means filling dame. Glancing at the ending position of this game it doesn't look like as big a win as it was, but I always feel like I have less than I do as White. I am getting more comfortable with white though these days.