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.

My Week of Go Activities

 

It was a big week for Go Activities this week with over 37 hours spent.

My post is very late this week because I had to be picked up Friday morning by my limo to the airport to head off to the U.S. Go Congress.

I am going to make this short because I am currently hanging out with go friends at 8,000 feet.

More details about that in next week's post.

My Week of Go Activities - I broke 100K Clossius Channel Points

 

I have been watching Clossius teaching on his Twitch Stream since at least December of 2020. I took a screen capture last week of the moment I broke 100K Channel Points,  and I want to provide Clossius with a shout out today. 

By the way, Clossius is going to be at the U.S. Go Congress next week, and I will get to meet him in person for the first time. This is after taking 70 lessons with him over the course of  a year and a half. 

In order to help finance his trip to the Congress Clossius has offered a fantastic deal on a package of lessons. This package should still be available on his Kofi website as of this writing, but it may disappear at any time... for certain by the end of August.  He is selling a package of 12 lessons for only $400.00 which is a deep discount over his single lesson price of $50.00 Do the math people.

The advertisement is over.

Here is how my week looked:

I put in over 29 hours on Go Activity last week with live play taking up over six hours even though I played only four games.

One of the things I did last week was to prepare for the long time limits in the U.S. Open by playing a game with another BenKyo Baduk student using 90 minutes of main time. That game took an amazing three hours to play. We had many observers come and go during that epic game. They left comments and variations in the game which we were able to view later.

I decided to have Ben Mantel review that epic game using 90 minutes of my Twitch Time. Dedicated Twitch Time is a benefit of my membership to Ben's Patreon. My time with Ben on Twitch is available to me as Highlight Videos. I'm posting a link to that review. 

If you are interested in getting dedicated Twitch Time like that with Ben please take a look at his Patreon Tiers. Personal Twitch time starts at Tier 4. Additionally, you can earn Twitch Time as a prize for winning 1st or second place in your League at the Tier 3 level. If you choose to join one of Ben's Tiers please mention that buzzsaw sent you because I can earn some Twitch time through Ben's new Referral System if you stick around.

I've been playing less, and studying more, as the Congress approaches. I've completed three private lessons with In-seong Hwang this week and really enjoyed the experience.

I can't wait for the Congress.

I hope to see some of you there. Look for the gray haired elderly woman with the number 8 on her name tag, and tell her that you have followed her blog. I would be happy to meet you.

My Week of Go Activities - Watching Hikaru No Go

 

This week I added a new Category to my Go Activities. I've decided to finally watch Hikaru No Go. I had watched a handful of episodes previously, but never got very far with it.

The rest of my go week looks like this:

It was quite an active week coming in at nearly 38 hours for Go Activities. 

Something I have added back is Watching Others Play. I had stopped counting that time, but I am trying to observe the games of others in a more active way so I feel it is worth counting it.

I played very few games this week so my Live Play was down.

Live Play will be down again next week because I am going to concentrate on replaying my games on a real board. Clossius has wanted me to do that and I was resistant to the idea, but with the Congress coming up, I think it would be helpful to me to be looking at real stones on a real board. Replaying those games is going to take time. Additionally, I want to devote time to playing out some recent lessons with Ben Mantle on a real board, especially memorizing a few sequences he wants me to commit to memory.

It is two weeks now until the U.S. Go Congress and I am getting excited.

My Week of Go Activities - Playing a BenKyo Baduk Lesson on a Real Board

 

In one of my lessons this week with BenKyo Baduk (Ben Mantle) we went over a joseki. He wants me to begin practicing its use in my games. I said I would play it out a real board first so I decided to watch my lesson video with a real board. I also played out a few other highlights of the lesson.

I was especially interested in starting to play things out on a real board because I have not played a game across the board in nearly three years. The last time was at the 2019 Go Congress in Madison. I don't want to be at a disadvantage when I sit down to play at the Congress.

Aside from enjoying my lesson on a real board, this is how the rest of my week looked:

It was a relatively light week on Go Activity with about 23 hours spent. Nearly seven of those hours were spent on Live Play. Nine games were played. Many of them were League Games.

I'm looking forward to the U.S. Go Congress in a few weeks. I'm really excited. I'll be meeting friends I made over the last three years in the Yunguseng Dojang. I will also be meeting new friends from the BenKyo Baduk Discord server.

My Week of Go Activities - Special Training with In-seong Hwang

 

This summer In-seong Hwang is offering something very special. He is offering pre Congress private lessons and post Congress game reviews. I signed up right away when I heard about this. So did a number of others. The three lesson packages were sold out the same day they were announced. There were only 13 of the packages and they went very fast. This prompted In-seong to add more lesson packages in August. 

My 90 minute private lessons will take place on KGS using Discord voice. I'll get to speak in these lessons. I will get three of them on three consecutive days about a week before the U.S. Go Congress begins.

The second part of the Special Training consists of a two hour private review during which we will go over my five Congress games, or any five games of my choosing. it remains to be seen if I am going to do well with recording.

I'm going to have a lesson heavy month in July with private lessons from four teachers. 

I look forward to seeing In-seong at the Congress. I attended his lectures at two Congresses in the past but did not actually meet him before.

I am in the C1 league in AYD this cycle and expect to be losing all of my games. I have risen to a level where it is not really possible for me to compete, but I am going to try my best. In my AYD game last night I had to play even against a 3k. I failed miserably. In-seong asked me if I play mostly stronger players, which is the case. He suggested that I play 3 stone handicap games against weaker players to practice fighting back from a lost position. I believe that Clossius gave pretty much the same advice once. So I guess it is time to try to make those handicap games happen.

The is what my week looked like this:

It was a light week for go activity with only 23 hours spent.

Live play came in at first place at over seven hours.

I was asked to play some rated games this week, but I am afraid that Clossius is going to be disappointed. 

It was the final week of the month and I had to hustle to get in league games in the BenKyo Leagues. I expect to get a few titles in the BenKyo Free League (soon to be renamed the BenKyo Title Tournament). I also expect to win the BenKyo B League again.

Ben will be disappointed about something this week too.

He asked me to start playing different openings in my games that are not league games. Unfortunately, all of my games were League Games this week.

Tsumego suffered this week.

I must do better.

My Week of Go Activities - One Move Life and Death Problems

 

I generally don't spend a lot of time reading go books. This week, however, I spent over five hours with "Workbook: One-Move Life and Death Problems". This is an interactive go book available to read on the SmartGo One app.

The book provides detailed analysis of dead shapes. I found myself going back to it over and over again. And, interestingly, I found myself trying to find those dead shapes in some of my games this week. I'll be spending more time with this book and the others written by Thomas Redecker.

The screen capture below is a taste of the type of detail to be found in this book.

Otherwise this is how my week looked.

I spent nearly 31 hours on go activities.

Live play came in at a respectable 2nd place with nearly five hours of time clocked. That isn't bad for six games. I slowed down considerably this week. I'm going to try to keep that up.

My Week of Go Activities - Moving Up to AYD League C1

 

Last week In-seong Hwang predicted, "Something good is coming." Last night I played my last match of the current cycle of the American Yunguseng Dojang, and something good did come.

I won my final match by 1.5 points. This was an important game because if I were to have lost it I would have remained in the C2 League, but since I won it, I will rise to the C1 League.

The game was a good one including a fairly epic ko. In-seong saved the review until the end last night, and introduced it as the classic AYD match. That made me chuckle a bit.

Below you can see that I managed to win 14 out of my last 20 games in AYD, but more importantly, I managed to break the 1,000 level in the YD rating system.

My good friend, Drewch, had an important match last night too. It determined if he got to stay in C1 or fall to C2. Thankfully he won his match which means that Drewch and I will be going head to head again very soon. Ben Mantle streamed our most recent match which occurred in cycle 1 of the current season. Perhaps we can get him to stream the upcoming match.

Now for the usual weekly activities information:

I spent nearly 32 hours on Go Activities last week. It was a slow week. 

It may have been slow on activity, but sadly, it was fast in terms of my speed of play. I was having trouble making myself play, and I decided to go back to the Fox server Tuesday afternoon after having not played there in a number of months. I proceeded to play and lose six games in the course of an hour and 20 minutes.

I got some good advice from a strong go player though, who advised me to stop playing for the day if I lose two games in a row. That is a good idea and I will try to make myself do that in the future.

I actually played nine games on Tuesday. Late in the evening, after playing my MGA League match, I returned to Fox for revenge. I won two games that night on Fox.

During my Private Lesson with Ben Mantle yesterday he reviewed my first three Fox losses. I will save the final three for Clossius today in our streamed lesson which has been scheduled for 4:30 PM EDT.

My Week of Go Activities - Something Good is Coming

 

This is the board position of my game last night in the American Yunguseng Dojang at the point of resignation. I played a 4k and managed to get a resignation from her which felt really great.

Let me explain the sub title of my blog post today "Something Good is Coming".

I've been studying with In-seong Hwang through the American Yunguseng Dojang for nearly three years now. I've played over 130 games during that time and my ratings graph shows that I have gained nearly 200 ratings points in the system.

The rating system rewards you more for wins against players you are expected to lose to. It also punishes you less for losses to those players. You can see this in the chart below. It shows the various amounts rewarded or deducted due to my last 9 games.

My most recent win against a 4k earned me 17 points in the rating system while my loss against a 3k (2nd on the list) only lost me 4 points.

So what does, "Something good is coming" mean?

I've struggled with passive play. I've gotten a lot of feedback from In-seong on the need to play more actively. It has not been easy to do, and I keep working on it.

Last night I got the best review ever from In-seong. He had many good things to say and capped off his comments with the prediction that, "Something good is coming." I hope I will not disappoint him and my other teachers who have also been encouraging more active play.

In-seong Hwang is going to be in attendance at the U.S. Go Congress this year. I had attended his lectures at the Congress in 2018 and 2019, but I can't really say that I ever actually met him because we were not introduced, nor did we speak. I am looking forward to actually meeting him this year. He says that he recognizes a great many names of the attendees as current or former students.

Now for the usual weekly information...

It was a light week for go activity with only about 24 hours spent.

I took a bit of a break this week and played mostly only those games that I needed to play for leagues, though I did play one rated game on OGS.

Notably I spent nearly three hours editing and reviewing the file from my lesson with Yilun Yang last week. I want to get the most from my lessons with Yang during my third stint at lessons with him. I still have some lessons from seven years ago that have not yet been edited. That is not going to happen this time.

Something else I did last week was spending a good deal of time playing around with SmartGo One. I want to be adept at using it for game recording by the time I get to the Congress.

My Week of Go Activities - BenKyo Speed Run

 

The big event this week was BenKyo's speed run from 8 kyu to 8 dan on Fox. Actually he did not make it all the way to 8 dan because a lot of the weaker players didn't know how to resign. He devoted 12 hours per day to the Speed Run over the course of three days. I was in attendance for more than two thirds of that time. It definitely dominated my activities this week.

The Speed Run was supposed to be two days, but due to the generosity of the people in the stream, who gifted a great many subs, the event was expanded to three days.

An additional goal was created for a future 12 hour special stream event with a variety of activities. Once again, the stream stepped up, and that goal was met as well. This event will take place soon.

I clocked nearly 48 hours on Go Activity this week.

I had great lessons this week with Yilun Yang, Ben Mantle, and Clossius. I am truly blessed.

I'd like to do a special shout out this week for Ben Mantle's Patreon. Take a look at the great tiers that he offers.

If you check out the VOD from the last day of the Speed Run you can catch one of my lessons with Ben at about the 11:07:00 mark. This VOD will expire in about a week.

Get on Ben's Discord server and watch his live streams to learn if studying with BenKyo Baduk is right for you.