I got out of the bed at 7 AM and freshened up. Ien Cheng slept in as he was on the 9 AM Amtrak back to New York. I grabbed the usual quick breakfast and headed to the Sadler Center.

About sixty players had signed up for the Diehard so the pairings would likely start even and handicaps would appear as the day progressed. The time controls were too short for me to record the games via SmartGo. With the exception of the final game I entered byo-yomi relatively early in the middle game.

The first game was against Robert Gilman 6 kyu, another AYD member and frequent opponent. The fuseki started very badly for me and white succeeded at splitting me into two weak black groups. Robert’s style doesn’t often involve severe attacks so I was able to salvage both groups but not without white gaining an horrifying amount of solid influence in the lower left and center of the board. I played cautiously, slowly encroaching on white’s influence from afar.

White ignored the cold hard cash and instead tried to play a bit more actively. I slowly chipped away at his lead and in the end was able to cut off some white stones and secure quite a bit of territory. The game ended with me having a comfortable lead.

So now I was 3-1.

Unrelated to the outcome, Robert pointed out that that I had a horrible habit of hovering a stone over the board when I was in byo-yomi. I was embarrassed and I made a mental note to keep my hands either on the bowl or on the table unless I was absolutely ready to make a move. Unlike a lot of other attendees, I don’t actually have that much experience at tournaments or clubs and my over-the-board etiquette has rough edges.

The second round started at 11 AM. This time I was paired with an opponent I’d faced at US Go Congress 2016, Tevis Tsai, now a 6 kyu. I’d lost horribly to him in 2016. Now that he was a bit stronger and I was a bit stronger, I was curious to see how things had changed.

Tevis had black and took both star points. He focused on building his own framework but not before leaving a weakness. I cut through and due to a misread by black I was able to create a lot of strength on the left and severely limit his framework. I took sente to claim the right side of the board and he immediately invaded. This kicked off a running fight that I misjudged and if it wasn’t for a missed cut by black it would have been a short game.

Once I connected the game was much more straightforward. I ended up with a considerable amount of territory and black with very little. We started to count but stopped as it was clear that white’s regions dwarfed black’s. Keith Arnold 4D, who runs the Baltimore Go Group of which Tevis was a member, stopped by and helped with the review. It was a fun game and, I admit, a bit of a lucky win. Again, a good portion of the game happened in byo-yomi due to some time burned in the opening.

I was now 4-1.

I walked over to the coffee shop next to the Sadler Center and wolfed down a sandwhich and headed back for Round 3 at 1:30 PM. This time my opponent was Joe Kimball 4 kyu (I believe, self-promoted) from Tennessee around the Nashville area. His style was the most active of anyone I’d played so far. He had white and he prevented me from playing the Chinese. He was able to create a lot of influence and break a lot of my chances to gain territory early on. However, deep into the middle game he missed a weakness, and I was able to cut off a large string of white stones and swing 20 or 30 points in my favor.

In the endgame I made a silly blunder and lost 8 points, however I still won the game by more than komi.

The fact that Joe may have self-promoted does introduce an interesting aside as far as ranks and the AGA. For US Go Congress 2018, Andrew Hall, the tournament director, wouldn’t allow players to self-promote any less than 3 ranks (at which point you are considered unranked). In the past, players would often want to self promote one stone, but at scale this simply deflates the AGA rank. There was some grumbling about this, but I agree with Andrew Hall. There’s no value in a ranking system if climbing the ladder isn’t actually challenging. I had at one point intended to play as 5 kyu and changed my mind. If I was going to be 5 kyu I should prove it by winning all my games as 6 kyu!

Now I was 5-1.

My final game was against Larry Russ 3 kyu, a New Jersey fellow that frequents the Mostly Go meetup. It was a 2 stone game that I should have won, but at this point I was flagging a bit and I just couldn’t put on my best show. White had two weak running groups but I couldn’t make any real profit from it. White finished the game with a comfortable lead.

So the end result of the day was 5-2, a 71% win rate.

After the tournament, Tevis Tsai invited me to dinner with some single digit kyu players from Albuquerque and another nice fellow from the Baltimore club who was just starting to dig into Go and was playing as a 17 kyu. We took a walk to a decent Thai spot and as expected talked about all things Go.

An interesting moment

After dinner we headed back. A 4 Dan whose name escapes me at the moment that I met through Nate asked if I wanted to play a casual game. On Monday evening I’d played a casual game with Nate Eagle in which I somehow managed to lose only by 4.5 points.

I wanted to play the game relatively quickly, so we played even. For the most part white kept control of the game but we got into a very exciting reading situation that I snapped a picture of. In the end, I made the wrong choice between salvaging some stones and saving the corner. C’est la vie.

Now I was definitely tired. I went downstairs and said farewell to In-seong, who was departing the following morning, and then headed back to the hotel to catch some much needed sleep before my final Open game.