A beginner goes to Congress

[rubin427]

Hi psk31,

I hope you won't mind if I hijack your thread for just a moment... It turns out you can get really nice photos of the main playing hall from upstairs near the children's room.

[POGO]

ok you have made me want something.

i want to go next year XD

as im new to the concept of us go congress, how much is it usually.

[Joaz Banbeck]

@Psk31: I'll review one or two of your games if you wish. I'll be wearing a t-shirt with
<-- this logo on it tommorrow. I'm probably the tallest guy in the room.

[psk31]

Today I had the pleasure of playing Marjorie "Su Co" Hey, who was honored at this year's Congress as Teacher of the Year. A very nice lady. Unfortunately I threw away all of the advice I have been receiving on my high handicap thread in the Beginners section and let the game get out of hand really quick. Still had the 9 stone handicap but I let her dictate the game from her first move. She played quickly and I fell in the trap of trying to answer her immediately (later a player told me to sit on my hands the next time that happened).

Unfortunately, letting her dictate the pace led to a lot of sloppy play on my part, way too many captures too fast (11 in the first 30 minutes). By contrast in my self-pair game on Tuesday the first capture didn't happen until around the 80th move. In no time I had lost three corners and while I still had a large area on the right side to work with I resigned early, catching her by surprise. But I had already lost the game and I wanted a chance to go over the game with her while the opening moves were still fresh in my mind. So we adjourned to the room upstairs that overlooks the main floor and went over the game.

Later went to Ryo Maeda's lecture and this one was getting over my head a lot quicker than the previous ones. But any little bit of info I can take away is good. Actually in this one, he showed some moves that even had the Dan players in the audience going "Ohhhh".

Spent more money at the vendor's room, at last today Kiseido and Yutopian showed up with all of their books and some equipment. So far the Congress book purchases have been The Go Consultants, How Not to Play Go, The Nihon-Kin Handbook of Handicap Go, and Get Strong at Handicap Go. And of course GoGod earlier this week. I have now banned myself from the vendor's room. Outside of Congress I have ordered Janice Kim's first three volumes of her Learn to Play Go series. Enough material to get me through the rest of the year. In case your wondering, I already have Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go and In the Beginning.

This afternoon I got to review my Tuesday self-pair game with my opponent of that day. He had recorded the game on his iPad. That was very helpful. Some SDK players stopped by and gave us their opinions as well.

Chew - thanks for the offer, so far I only have the sgf of my self-pair game. I thought it would come as an attachment but the email is the text of the sgf.

rubin427 - you were probably standing right next to me when you took that picture. Marjorie and I were sitting at the table going over our game.

Pogo - start saving now. Since I was commuting I only had to come up with the $325 registration. I'm not sure what the full cost of the housing package was.

Joaz - I'll keep a look out for you tomorrow. I have my avatar picture on my name tag.

[schultz]

Thanks for posting all of this information here psk31. Like Kirby said, it's almost like I'm there!

And now I'm oh so jealous.
I've never been to a Go Congress, and this just makes me want to go that much more.

This is what I get for considering going, and then deciding not to. Probably the closest the Congress is going to be to me in quite some time. The one consolation is the fact that I probably would have flown anyway, so how big a difference is it for travel expenses?

Make sure and keep up the updates! I love to hear them.

[psk31]

Live from Congress!

This morning I can say that I played my first real game of Go. I guess some of that information I've been soaking up this week is beginning to kick in. My Open opponent this morning was the same as my self-pair match on Tuesday, still with a 9 stone handicap. On that day he won by 113 points. Today's match the difference was around 53 points (I don't remember exactly). He even mentioned how I played much better. Of course still made enough silly DDK errors to cost me the game. I was down to a about a minute of main time when we finished the board, he still had about 30 minutes.

Instead of reacting to moves I was really beginning to at least try to think the moves through. Which way to defend, which groups to defend, which to sacrifice, etc. Made a world of difference. Still lousy at trying to read out variations but that will come with practice. I did manage to secure all four corners but lost territory on the sides to my opponent and later made a mess of some center influence I had and ended up losing some of that. In our quick review after the match, I found out I also missed several Ko battles. I manage to keep a paper recording of my game so as soon as I can get it loaded into SmartGo I'll post it over in the Game Analysis forum.

And another L19 sighting, ran into Joaz Banbeck just before the start of the Open matches this morning. It was his insistence that I record my game today and all of my games so I can review them.

[psk31]

This afternoon I thought I would try to be a good AGA member and attend some of the meetings scheduled for today. I missed the first couple of meetings, but I made the point of making to the 3:00 meeting that was addressing growing membership, retaining members, etc. I figured here I was a new player and new member so I would go see if at least they wanted to pick my brain.

The good news, another L19 sighting with rubin427 attending the meeting. The bad news, he and I made up two-thirds of the audience. So there we are, myself, rubin427, another gentleman (who actually belonged to the same club as Allan Abramson) and AGA President Allan Abramson. I personally was disappointed in the turnout and I know Allan was.

In a nutshell, one of the big issues was how can the AGA serve it's remote members (like myself and rubin427) who don't live close to a chapter club and who would have problems trying to get over the board games, especially rated games. The subject of AGA on-line ratings came up and Allan did say it was being explored. I really stressed this point especially from my perspective of showing up for Congress and playing in the Open without an official AGA rating. Other issues that came up was the voting structure for directors, ways to add value to an AGA membership so more people would be willing to join, and on-line tournaments.

Honestly, although our group was small, the opportunity to meet the the President of the association was quite cool. How many times does the membership of any kind of national group get to have a close conversation with their president?

After the meeting rubin427 and I met up and he gave me a partial game review of my game earlier and then we went through some corner plays.

And then I corrected my Go-addict mistake and met my wife for dinner.

[psk31]

Well, last day. Walking in the door this morning I ran into daniel_the_smith and he asked if I wanted a warm-up game. It quickly turned into a teaching session on some corner work and it was quite helpful. My last Open match today was against a 17K with me of course getting a 9 stone handicap. It resulted in a 30 stone loss for me which represents another improvement for me. I recorded this one on paper and once I get it loaded into sgf format I'll post it.

After lunch I went to the game analysis room being hosted by Xuefen Li. It was really interesting to hear the pro go through the games being presented by others. And while I've heard of people memorizing games, this is the first time I've seen it in action when a 4D player replayed about the first 60 opening moves from his game this morning all from memory. It was cool to watch that.

The main event of the afternoon was a pair Go match between four of the pros. In was Myungwan Kim and Cathy Li against Ryo Maeda and Xuefen Lin. Conducted as a fun game, it was held in the main playing room with players, commentators, and audience all together. The highlight though was the running commentary of Seong-Yong Kim from South Korea. I can see why he is so well known now. He would stop the action every so often and ask each of the players questions such as what were you thinking? Is your partner any good?, etc. He even had Myungwan Kim doing push-ups on stage. A good time was had by all.

During the day I did manage to grab some autographs on my fan (I had learned it is somewhat of a tradition). Autographs gathered included Yasumasa Hane 9P, Cathy Li 1P, Myungwan Kim 8P, Xuefen Lin 1P, Mingjiu Jiang 7P, and Ryo Maeda 6P. I tried to get Seong-Yong Kim's autograph but he vanished pretty quickly after the pair Go match.

So, all in all, for someone who barely knew his way around the board in the beginning going to Congress was a blast. I do have more confidence in my playing now and the help and guidance I received was immeasurable. Special kudos to daniel_the_smith and rubin427 for the teaching moments and game review. And while a lot of the lectures and game analysis were still over my head I found myself picking up little snippets of knowledge that I used in my matches and hopefully in my future matches.

There was one thing I wanted to comment on. During the week I've had game reviews and teaching moments with 14-17Ks, 7-8K, and a 1D. Up until now I hadn't really understood the difference between the different levels but working with people at three distinct levels has enabled me to catch a glimpse of that difference. And it's amazing. It was like they were looking at different boards but it was the same game. The items and concepts they commented on were significantly different. And I know now what it will take to advance.

So where to go now? Well more real-time games on KGS. I also have a load of new books to go through. I just know the journey is just beginning but now I'm ready to start.

[xed_over]

So, all in all, for someone who barely knew his way around the board in the beginning going to Congress was a blast.

glad to hear you had so much fun. I really enjoyed reading your stories. It made me miss not being there even more.

[Kirby]

Keep at it, and don't give up! I look forward to seeing you as a rival in the future.

[Horibe]

About that time a couple of young ladies walked in, he explained what I needed and off we went. Didn't get to finish the game (the one I was playing was 5K) but we accomplished what we set out to do.

Sam was easy to work with and very helpful as was the two young ladies (who I can't remember their names now).

Based on the helpfulness, the "young" and the rank - I would guess maybe Karoline Burrall...

[psk31]

Based on the helpfulness, the "young" and the rank - I would guess maybe Karoline Burrall...

And we have a winner! Yes, it was Karoline.