Yesterday I participated in my third go tournament. The 2017 Gotham Go Tournament took place at Hosteling International NYC at 103rd Street and Amsterdam. The venue was smallish so space was limited to 84 players. I actually found out about it quite late and was number 7 on the waiting list. Luck was on my side and I got an email last week confirming my spot. The registration was a reasonable $30 dollars considering you got free coffee, bagels, and a tournament t-shirt. The tournament was 4 rounds, AGA rules, with time control of 35 minutes of main time plus 5 periods of 20 second byo-yomi.

Boards ready for players

Registration started promptly at 9am and I arrived by train around 9:10am. The tournament was slated to start at 9:30am but due to some issues with the 1 train, the tournament started quite a bit later. I said hello to familiar faces from Mostly Go and I got interviewed by someone from BadukTV. If I’m luckly maybe I’ll get a few seconds of screen time in December.

Warming up!

My first opponent was someone I knew from Mostly Go. The last time we chatted he claimed he was a 7kyu. I myself had entered the tournament as 6 kyu, a rank somewhere between my KGS rating of 5 kyu and my AGA rating of 8 kyu (down from 7 kyu as I did badly at the Sakura Matsuri Tournament at Stonybrook). Thus I took white. This game went pretty smoothly for me. The game didn’t involve too much excitement and I won by about 20 points.

After the first round there was an hour break for lunch. I walked a couple of blocks over to Xi’an Famous Foods for a delicious helping of Spicy and Tingly Beef Stew. After a relaxed lunch I went back for round two.

My second game was against a young kid rated at 5 kyu. Due to an early game blunder I lost this game. I tried to recover but I couldn’t close the gap. I lost by komi.

Ryan Li commenting on the top board

The third round was the most interesting of the day. I played against a fellow from the Stonybrook tournament who had entered as 5 kyu. We were pretty evenly matched and I had a pretty nice sequence in this game that turned the tide in my favor. However, I think I played it a bit too safe after that and my opponent was able to chase and I eventually lost the game by half a point. This game was a ton of fun so the loss didn’t really sting as much as the first one.

The final game was against another kid I played at Stonybrook but this time I won. It wasn’t particularly interesting. While the kid had good fundamentals and I made a couple of mistakes, I just made more territory in the end and he didn’t try to counter my plans and take control of the situation.

So I went 2-2 and I’m perfectly happy with that. Hopefully that can at least correct the damage of Stonybrook.

There’s not much other news to report of late. I’m sticking with my regimen of playing fast handicap games against the dan level bots on KGS as well as fast games on WBaduk and Foxy. I have a slight preference for WBaduk as the players seem a bit stronger and less picky about their opponents. I did crack open Naoki Miyamoto’s Breakthrough to Shodan. When I picked it up many months ago I found it a bit too cryptic for my taste but now that I’m playing more often a lot of the points in the book are resonating with me.

I’ve also been revisiting John Fairbairn’s Kamakura. One thing I’ve observed is that as you improve what strikes you in professional game records changes quite a lot.