The jetlag made it a bit difficult to get a truly restful sleep, but I was able to squeeze in about 7 hours. I got to the Assembly Hall about 30 minutes before Round 3 started, snarfed down a light breakfast and poured myself a big cup of coffee. I felt less jittery than yesterday, but definitely still felt a bit nervous.

Our game ended up feeling complicated though overall I felt like I had the lead. After white (me) made some fairly large early gains my opponent did take the right strategy which was to make the game complicated and try to force a mistake. This made the game go on for a bit longer than expected but eventually they resigned.

In my own estimation, allowing white to surround the lower black group in sente pushed the game strongly into white’s favor. The white cut at move 124 more less finished the game. Black tried hard but the overplay of 139 simplified the game even more. There was simply no place for black to run.

In-seong Kyu Reviews

Still I didn’t find myself taking anything for granted in the game. In the last three games due to being around 6.1 kyu, I had to take white. I always feel slightly uncomfortable with white because in some sense the goal is to counter black’s plans. So while I felt positive during the game and perhaps even a little impatient towards the end when it was clear black had no chances, I never assumed that I might not make a mistake and give away a clear win. This has happened to me so many times before. In fact, In-seong sez I have a hard time converting my level of play into results - and that when I’m winning I often become paralyzed rather than just looking for the most obvious things to do. Some of that of course has to do with time trouble, but a considerable part of the issue is definitely psychological.

As far as time control, my first three rated games have been reasonable. I definitely hit byo sooner than my opponents but it was consistently well into the middlegame or late middle game. In the US Open game I still had 20+ minutes on the clock.

Later in the afternoon while taking a break from In-seong’s kyu review session, I reviewed the Open game a bit myself and noticed some minor things but nothing show stopping. Running the game through KGS AI confirmed my feeling that black was never able to find a chance and the gap at the end was quite large (60+ points).

After dinner, I was really flagging. It’d been a hot day, and perhaps I hadn’t stayed quite hydrated enough. I almost called it quits, but in the end headed over late to observe the Pair Go and see if I could muster myself to a self-pair game. Walking around checking out the boards I of course ran into some old Go friends and made some new ones. Feeling pretty beat I decided to turn in and save my energy for the next day.

I may or may not play an IGS blitz game before I fall asleep.