dfan's quest for competence
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dfan
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
Aha, thanks. So my move does work but the official solution is better because it is more robust to small changes in the position? Should we consider the presence of the stone at A3 a bug in the problem? (I just double-checked and it is part of the problem, not an extra stone I typoed in.)
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Bill Spight
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
dfan wrote:Aha, thanks. So my move does work but the official solution is better because it is more robust to small changes in the position? Should we consider the presence of the stone at A3 a bug in the problem? (I just double-checked and it is part of the problem, not an extra stone I typoed in.)
I suggest that the stone on A-03 is a typo.
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins
Visualize whirled peas.
Everything with love. Stay safe.
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins
Visualize whirled peas.
Everything with love. Stay safe.
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Uberdude
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
I'm inclined to agree with Bill that there's probably a mistake in the book: this is a realistic looking position and black getting a stone at j1 is a plausible thing to happen in a game because it might have some follow up to the right. So the problem is basically: show why j1 is sente on the white corner group (and if it was sente to the right as well you got a nice double threat). Conversely black getting a stone at a3 is very unlikely to do anything useful towards the left side given black already has stones at b4, c4 etc so it's very unlikely a stone will end up there in actual play.
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dfan
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
US Go Congress Day 0
Uneventful flight to Richmond followed by 1-hour minivan shuttle to Williamsburg. Many Boston players were attending the congress, including on my plane Mr C 5d, an older Korean gentleman who moved to the US 4 years ago (I'll generally use initials for relative anonymity). Mr C regularly put me to shame all week by fearlessly plunging into conversations with new people where I am likely to hold back.
The rain was torrential as we arrived, and throughout the week the weather alternated between heavy rain and mere 100% humidity. Luckily we were inside most of the time. After a mediocre meal in the cafeteria (next time, no meal plan!) was the opening ceremony, during which I started a casual game with fellow Bostonian SM 6k, which we finished up after the ceremony ended. It was highly entertaining and featured the largest number of big exchanges of territory in one of my games that I can remember. I wrapped it up when, after sacrificing a big group on the right to totally shred Black in the lower left, I managed to save a fair portion of the sacrificed group:
If Black plays at a, I can connect under with b, so he played c, after which I played a. In the end I won by 16.5.
I had finished up my latest AYD season with even-game wins against a 4d (!) and a 1k (AGA), giving me a lot of confidence, but then hadn't really played for the last week, so I was happy to play this game to get my Go juices flowing again. I headed back to the depressing converted-motel dorm (next time, Airbnb!) to rest up for my first US Open game the next morning.
Uneventful flight to Richmond followed by 1-hour minivan shuttle to Williamsburg. Many Boston players were attending the congress, including on my plane Mr C 5d, an older Korean gentleman who moved to the US 4 years ago (I'll generally use initials for relative anonymity). Mr C regularly put me to shame all week by fearlessly plunging into conversations with new people where I am likely to hold back.
The rain was torrential as we arrived, and throughout the week the weather alternated between heavy rain and mere 100% humidity. Luckily we were inside most of the time. After a mediocre meal in the cafeteria (next time, no meal plan!) was the opening ceremony, during which I started a casual game with fellow Bostonian SM 6k, which we finished up after the ceremony ended. It was highly entertaining and featured the largest number of big exchanges of territory in one of my games that I can remember. I wrapped it up when, after sacrificing a big group on the right to totally shred Black in the lower left, I managed to save a fair portion of the sacrificed group:
If Black plays at a, I can connect under with b, so he played c, after which I played a. In the end I won by 16.5.
I had finished up my latest AYD season with even-game wins against a 4d (!) and a 1k (AGA), giving me a lot of confidence, but then hadn't really played for the last week, so I was happy to play this game to get my Go juices flowing again. I headed back to the depressing converted-motel dorm (next time, Airbnb!) to rest up for my first US Open game the next morning.
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Knotwilg
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dfan
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
Good eye. Black did indeed get in 
later on and erased a lot; it was embarrassing of me not to have blocked that off earlier. However, I think he could have done a lot more damage than he did, and that may be coloring my view of how much territory White has at the bottom.
During this period I was attempting to count and was consciously avoiding looking too hard at that region, I guess fearing that the result would be disappointing. This is no way to play go, as Kageyama would say.
later on and erased a lot; it was embarrassing of me not to have blocked that off earlier. However, I think he could have done a lot more damage than he did, and that may be coloring my view of how much territory White has at the bottom.During this period I was attempting to count and was consciously avoiding looking too hard at that region, I guess fearing that the result would be disappointing. This is no way to play go, as Kageyama would say.
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dfan
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
US Go Congress Day 1
My AGA rating going into the tournament was -4.1 (4k), though I have been up to -3.6 in the past. I intended to enter the tournament at 3k to get more challenging games, and I thought it would better reflect my current strength given my recent online and live non-tournament games, but the tournament director decided not to allow any self-promotions of fewer than 3 stones, which although disappointing was a decision I can understand. So I was in the tournament as a 4k and faced a veteran 4k in my first game (I don't think I played anyone between 25 and 70 the whole tournament). I was Black, and the defining position was this, after she played a 3-3 invasion in the upper right and made some weird followups:
I can block at a, killing White locally but allowing her to push and cut giving me a weak group on either side, or do something like extend at the top, make her play a move to live, and try to outplay her from there. My weakness in generally is playing slackly, so after a fair amount of cogitation I decided that I had to try to play the principled move and indeed played a. I played well in the subsequent fight but did use up a lot of time. At one point she apologized for not resigning, which is the kind of behavior I really don't approve of; either resign or play on! Anyway, she got a fair amount of center territory during the counterattack as compensation for the kill, but I thought I had more than enough points on the board, so coasted to the end of the game, even playing a couple of those DDK -1 point in gote moves to make absolutely sure that I didn't lose the game due to a stupid endgame error... and lost by 0.5 points. I told you my weakness is playing slackly! Neither of us could believe it. She very kindly noted that she didn't beat me, I beat myself. Thanks!
I get really wound up before tournament games but while I'm playing them I'm usually relatively calm, and I tend not to flip out about the result. Still, this was pretty disappointing, although I think I was supernaturally gracious in defeat. It didn't help that I went to a pro game review session after lunch to get it reviewed but someone cut me in the virtual line and the session ended before the pro got to my game.
I had thought about not drinking all week in order to really maximize my ability, but at that evening's dinner with Boston folks I really needed a beer, and had one. After that it was off to a lecture of In-seong Hwang of the American Yunguseng Dojang, where I have been a member for over a year. I had never met him in person, and his live lecture was even more engaging than his online ones. Afterwards he set up in the lobby and did live game reviews for AYD members, which was a really great experience. As good as his online game reviews are, it's a qualitatively different thing to have him in front of you. I think he really enjoyed having a bunch of live humans around instead of just talking into a headset in his home, and was kind of hamming it up, which we all lapped up. I managed to get a review of my first round game (basically, I played well, including the decision in the above diagram, but then really slacked off), so in retrospect I was happy not to have been able to get a review earlier.
Energized by the reviews and my fellow AYD members, I went back to the dorm still feeling happy about go despite my loss and excited to do my best the next day.
My AGA rating going into the tournament was -4.1 (4k), though I have been up to -3.6 in the past. I intended to enter the tournament at 3k to get more challenging games, and I thought it would better reflect my current strength given my recent online and live non-tournament games, but the tournament director decided not to allow any self-promotions of fewer than 3 stones, which although disappointing was a decision I can understand. So I was in the tournament as a 4k and faced a veteran 4k in my first game (I don't think I played anyone between 25 and 70 the whole tournament). I was Black, and the defining position was this, after she played a 3-3 invasion in the upper right and made some weird followups:
I can block at a, killing White locally but allowing her to push and cut giving me a weak group on either side, or do something like extend at the top, make her play a move to live, and try to outplay her from there. My weakness in generally is playing slackly, so after a fair amount of cogitation I decided that I had to try to play the principled move and indeed played a. I played well in the subsequent fight but did use up a lot of time. At one point she apologized for not resigning, which is the kind of behavior I really don't approve of; either resign or play on! Anyway, she got a fair amount of center territory during the counterattack as compensation for the kill, but I thought I had more than enough points on the board, so coasted to the end of the game, even playing a couple of those DDK -1 point in gote moves to make absolutely sure that I didn't lose the game due to a stupid endgame error... and lost by 0.5 points. I told you my weakness is playing slackly! Neither of us could believe it. She very kindly noted that she didn't beat me, I beat myself. Thanks!
I get really wound up before tournament games but while I'm playing them I'm usually relatively calm, and I tend not to flip out about the result. Still, this was pretty disappointing, although I think I was supernaturally gracious in defeat. It didn't help that I went to a pro game review session after lunch to get it reviewed but someone cut me in the virtual line and the session ended before the pro got to my game.
I had thought about not drinking all week in order to really maximize my ability, but at that evening's dinner with Boston folks I really needed a beer, and had one. After that it was off to a lecture of In-seong Hwang of the American Yunguseng Dojang, where I have been a member for over a year. I had never met him in person, and his live lecture was even more engaging than his online ones. Afterwards he set up in the lobby and did live game reviews for AYD members, which was a really great experience. As good as his online game reviews are, it's a qualitatively different thing to have him in front of you. I think he really enjoyed having a bunch of live humans around instead of just talking into a headset in his home, and was kind of hamming it up, which we all lapped up. I managed to get a review of my first round game (basically, I played well, including the decision in the above diagram, but then really slacked off), so in retrospect I was happy not to have been able to get a review earlier.
Energized by the reviews and my fellow AYD members, I went back to the dorm still feeling happy about go despite my loss and excited to do my best the next day.
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dfan
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
US Go Congress Day 2
In the morning was round 2 of the US Open. This was a McMahon tournament, so as an 0-1 4k I was going to play either another 0-1 4k or a 1-0 5k. It turned out to be the latter, who was another veteran (at the awards banquet, he was given a prize for largest age discrepancy between opponents for a game he played with some kid). Playing Black, I was immediately suspicious here:
I wanted to play a, and thought I remembered that this was supposed to be the "punishment", but was unaccountably worried about White b (I just cut and have a fun fight while White scrambles to live in the corner), so I tenukied. Later on I got to split White's group on the left and had fun chasing it for a while. I think the turning point was this sequence, which I was pretty proud of:
In an instant, White's top, which used to look like a nice framework, has become no points and two weak groups. In-seong pointed out later that
should have been one point higher and 
should have been one point to the right (to separate better), but I was still happy to have come up with the concept. I attempted to kill the top left group and failed, then attempted to kill the top right group and succeeded. This time I counted carefully and knew for sure that I could afford to give away plenty of points while making absolutely sure all of my groups were strong, and then when everything was winding down peacefully and I was in byo-yomi while filling dame, my opponent plopped down this:
My heart rate doubled over the next 30 seconds, but everything continued to work by one liberty and I won by 35.5 points.
In the afternoon I went to another couple of In-seong's lectures. At one point the fire alarm went off during what was downtime for me but was the middle of round 2 of the Senior Tournament. I hope everybody knew how to stop their clocks. Outside I spotted DN 6k (swannod here) who I had briefly met in the 2016 Congress in Boston, along with his friend IC 9k, and had a very nice conversation; we continued to hang out regularly while they were around (they both had to leave before the event was over). You can read his own account of the Congress starting here. When the smoke cleared (see what I did there?), it turned out that my Boston compatriot Mr C 5d was now 2-0 in the Senior Tournament, which he was pretty pleased by.
Another pleasant dinner ensued with Boston folks and AYD member LS 7k and her husband DG 10k, who happened to be at the next table over when we arrived, and then it was off to see In-seong face Facebook's AlphaGo Zero-inspired ELF OpenGo at 7pm. Facebook was running "simuls" for a few days where lots of people got to play ELF and I had already seen a few friends get slaughtered. In-seong was clearly taking it very seriously, thinking for a long time at various points, and the game got very complicated, with lots of possible exchanges in the air all the time. Unfortunately there were some errors on the ELF side (not clear whether it was due to the operator or the interface), and a couple of times the operator had to back up and replay a move, which wasn't always the same as the one ELF chose last time! One of these happened right after In-seong had thought for a really long time, and if I had been him I might have ragequit. I intended to stay for the whole thing but left near 10pm when it was clear that things were still going strong, and I guess it went well past 11pm. ELF ended up winning by 1.5 points, but as you probably know it plays very slackly in the endgame when it knows it will win, so it wasn't quite as close as it looked.
I was happy to have pulled myself out of my 0-1 hole and was looking forward to my round 3 game the next morning, but perhaps looking forward even more to the off day that came afterwards.
In the morning was round 2 of the US Open. This was a McMahon tournament, so as an 0-1 4k I was going to play either another 0-1 4k or a 1-0 5k. It turned out to be the latter, who was another veteran (at the awards banquet, he was given a prize for largest age discrepancy between opponents for a game he played with some kid). Playing Black, I was immediately suspicious here:
I wanted to play a, and thought I remembered that this was supposed to be the "punishment", but was unaccountably worried about White b (I just cut and have a fun fight while White scrambles to live in the corner), so I tenukied. Later on I got to split White's group on the left and had fun chasing it for a while. I think the turning point was this sequence, which I was pretty proud of:
In an instant, White's top, which used to look like a nice framework, has become no points and two weak groups. In-seong pointed out later that
should have been one point higher and should have been one point to the right (to separate better), but I was still happy to have come up with the concept. I attempted to kill the top left group and failed, then attempted to kill the top right group and succeeded. This time I counted carefully and knew for sure that I could afford to give away plenty of points while making absolutely sure all of my groups were strong, and then when everything was winding down peacefully and I was in byo-yomi while filling dame, my opponent plopped down this:My heart rate doubled over the next 30 seconds, but everything continued to work by one liberty and I won by 35.5 points.
In the afternoon I went to another couple of In-seong's lectures. At one point the fire alarm went off during what was downtime for me but was the middle of round 2 of the Senior Tournament. I hope everybody knew how to stop their clocks. Outside I spotted DN 6k (swannod here) who I had briefly met in the 2016 Congress in Boston, along with his friend IC 9k, and had a very nice conversation; we continued to hang out regularly while they were around (they both had to leave before the event was over). You can read his own account of the Congress starting here. When the smoke cleared (see what I did there?), it turned out that my Boston compatriot Mr C 5d was now 2-0 in the Senior Tournament, which he was pretty pleased by.
Another pleasant dinner ensued with Boston folks and AYD member LS 7k and her husband DG 10k, who happened to be at the next table over when we arrived, and then it was off to see In-seong face Facebook's AlphaGo Zero-inspired ELF OpenGo at 7pm. Facebook was running "simuls" for a few days where lots of people got to play ELF and I had already seen a few friends get slaughtered. In-seong was clearly taking it very seriously, thinking for a long time at various points, and the game got very complicated, with lots of possible exchanges in the air all the time. Unfortunately there were some errors on the ELF side (not clear whether it was due to the operator or the interface), and a couple of times the operator had to back up and replay a move, which wasn't always the same as the one ELF chose last time! One of these happened right after In-seong had thought for a really long time, and if I had been him I might have ragequit. I intended to stay for the whole thing but left near 10pm when it was clear that things were still going strong, and I guess it went well past 11pm. ELF ended up winning by 1.5 points, but as you probably know it plays very slackly in the endgame when it knows it will win, so it wasn't quite as close as it looked.
I was happy to have pulled myself out of my 0-1 hole and was looking forward to my round 3 game the next morning, but perhaps looking forward even more to the off day that came afterwards.
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Tryss
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
My heart rate doubled over the next 30 seconds, but everything continued to work by one liberty and I won by 35.5 points.
Isn't the capture clean enough?
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dfan
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
Tryss wrote:My heart rate doubled over the next 30 seconds, but everything continued to work by one liberty and I won by 35.5 points.
Isn't the capture clean enough?
It is indeed. I was in byo-yomi (and am not the best reader) and played differently, which ended with White extending that stone out but losing the capturing race. In fact many moves work for Black. Tell that to a 4k with 30 seconds on his clock, though!
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Uberdude
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
I'm hardly one to talk being quite the byo-yomi blunderer myself, but a general principle you could try to learn from this is that when your opponent starts doing funny business inside your territory it's generally a good idea to get his annoying aji stones captured asap as once they aren't on the board there's no more cuts/ataris/forcing moves from them. So that capture, or the tiger mouth connection below white's move, should be the first instinct of how to not mess up. (I had some similar heart-pounding at the end of forum/viewtopic.php?p=234105#p234105).
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dfan
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
The tiger mouth connection below White's placement was indeed what I played. My main worry was White being able to connect his three stones in sente, thus making his second eye, and I think I was also seeing ghosts of my whole corner group getting cut off and not being able to make two eyes. With two minutes to think I would have been much more confident in reading something out but byo-yomi plus the shock of suddenly having to think at all plus the disaster of the previous round had me sweating for a couple of moves!
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dfan
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
US Go Congress Day 3
My round 3 US Open game was against a 4k college-aged kid. Looking him up in the AGA database beforehand, I saw that he had self-promoted from 7k, which meant that his strength could really be anything. He had already gone 1-1 as a 4k so he clearly wasn't just making it up. Playing White, I had to laugh to myself when this position came up:
This time I knew what to do! In fact, things could have gone even better four moves later:
As Ding Wei 9p immediately pointed out in my game review later that afternoon, a is sente against the Black corner. It's a kyu game, so anything could still happen, but boy is that position good for White. Instead I played b, which I knew was small, but I was trying to put pressure on Black's lower group.
I felt rather under pressure most of the game (he played tenuki a lot, which impressed me given that he was coming into the tournament as a 7k), but when I counted after one nice sequence I saw that I was well ahead (at least 10 points on the board), and the computers don't think I was ever in any danger. This is something that I need to continue to work on; it's easy for me to think I'm not doing well and panic, or think that I should be able to coast to a win and get a rude awakening. This is much less true for me in chess, where I may be wrong but I generally think I understand what is going on and have a strong sense of how to proceed. Anyway, at the end he missed a threat on a corner group and I won by 52.5 instead of "just" 25.5. That brought me to 2-1 for the tournament after my first round disaster and continued to rebuild my confidence.
That afternoon I went to the previously-mentioned game review session. There was a common theme in the game reviews where the foreign pros would express astonishment that we were just kyu players. I think part of this is mild rank inflation in Asia (which the pros mentioned) and part of it is that Western players in general, and especially those who care enough to come to a Congress, are more likely to have studied the game semi-seriously rather than played thousands of games for fun, so our first 50 moves are likely to look pretty good for our level before we inevitably screw up in the fighting.
After a fun dinner with the Boston crew along with DN 6k and IC 9k, I stopped by the event where Andy Liu 1p and Ryan Li 1p played pair go against each other, each partnered with ELF OpenGo. The game itself was very entertaining but the presentation did not live up to it. I want to give credit to the presenters for trying, so I'm not going to get into a big list of complaints, though. I took off after an hour to attend another informal In-seong AYD review session, after which a few dozen of us, including some Korean pros, went to the local pub and had a lot of beers, which In-seong very generously paid for the first round of. It was really fun to hang out in an informal environment with the beer flowing and chat with him (and others) for a while. I stumbled back to my dorm around midnight very happy that the next day was a rest day.
My round 3 US Open game was against a 4k college-aged kid. Looking him up in the AGA database beforehand, I saw that he had self-promoted from 7k, which meant that his strength could really be anything. He had already gone 1-1 as a 4k so he clearly wasn't just making it up. Playing White, I had to laugh to myself when this position came up:
This time I knew what to do! In fact, things could have gone even better four moves later:
As Ding Wei 9p immediately pointed out in my game review later that afternoon, a is sente against the Black corner. It's a kyu game, so anything could still happen, but boy is that position good for White. Instead I played b, which I knew was small, but I was trying to put pressure on Black's lower group.
I felt rather under pressure most of the game (he played tenuki a lot, which impressed me given that he was coming into the tournament as a 7k), but when I counted after one nice sequence I saw that I was well ahead (at least 10 points on the board), and the computers don't think I was ever in any danger. This is something that I need to continue to work on; it's easy for me to think I'm not doing well and panic, or think that I should be able to coast to a win and get a rude awakening. This is much less true for me in chess, where I may be wrong but I generally think I understand what is going on and have a strong sense of how to proceed. Anyway, at the end he missed a threat on a corner group and I won by 52.5 instead of "just" 25.5. That brought me to 2-1 for the tournament after my first round disaster and continued to rebuild my confidence.
That afternoon I went to the previously-mentioned game review session. There was a common theme in the game reviews where the foreign pros would express astonishment that we were just kyu players. I think part of this is mild rank inflation in Asia (which the pros mentioned) and part of it is that Western players in general, and especially those who care enough to come to a Congress, are more likely to have studied the game semi-seriously rather than played thousands of games for fun, so our first 50 moves are likely to look pretty good for our level before we inevitably screw up in the fighting.
After a fun dinner with the Boston crew along with DN 6k and IC 9k, I stopped by the event where Andy Liu 1p and Ryan Li 1p played pair go against each other, each partnered with ELF OpenGo. The game itself was very entertaining but the presentation did not live up to it. I want to give credit to the presenters for trying, so I'm not going to get into a big list of complaints, though. I took off after an hour to attend another informal In-seong AYD review session, after which a few dozen of us, including some Korean pros, went to the local pub and had a lot of beers, which In-seong very generously paid for the first round of. It was really fun to hang out in an informal environment with the beer flowing and chat with him (and others) for a while. I stumbled back to my dorm around midnight very happy that the next day was a rest day.
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Calvin Clark
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
dfan wrote:I took off after an hour to attend another informal In-seong AYD review session, after which a few dozen of us, including some Korean pros, went to the local pub and had a lot of beers, which In-seong very generously paid for the first round of. It was really fun to hang out in an informal environment with the beer flowing and chat with him (and others) for a while. I stumbled back to my dorm around midnight very happy that the next day was a rest day.
Sorry I missed that (and the whole Go Congress
). Thanks for sharing!-
dfan
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Re: dfan's quest for competence
US Go Congress Day 4
Wednesday is always an off day for the US Open. Some people see the local sights, and others play in the one-day 4-round Diehard tournament. I just wanted to chill, and it was another intensely rainy day, so I just headed down to the main building to watch people play in the Diehard and see if I could pick up a casual game or two. Watching the tournament, I instantly slightly regretted not entering it, but I knew that by the afternoon I'd want to nap much more than play.
After lunch, the US Open tournament director AH 1d was desperately looking for a game, since he hadn't gotten a chance to play yet all week. He was happy to play even (despite the 4-rank difference in AGA rating, both of us have relatively high variance in our performances). As White, I wasn't very happy with my opening, and didn't feel like I had much to show for my position besides some nebulous influence that seemed unlikely to turn into many points, though Leela Zero is much happier (it evaluates the starting position of the diagram below to be only 54% for Black). My opponent, though, being a fighter, decided to plop down a stone into the middle of the board and dare me to kill it rather than just reduce the center. The following comedy of errors ensued:
After creating that square-with-handle dumpling, I had to take a picture, which I gleefully showed to everyone I could for the rest of the day. Black ended up making a ko that let him connect to the bottom, but I got more than enough compensation and was already up by about 20 when he made an endgame blunder and resigned. A nice confidence booster!
That evening AH and other Boston-area folk introduced me to the nearby Culture Cafe, which basically concentrated 100% of the Somerville/Cambridge vibe of my home into a single building of Williamsburg: super laid back and comfy atmosphere, couches, delicious food, and yes, beer. It became my home away from home for the rest of the week. I played SM 6k again on his iPad in an extremely casual game while downing a couple of beers and won a game by 30 points that was, thankfully for you all, not very interesting.
It was In-seong's last day at the Congress before he jetted off to the European Go Congress, and he very kindly did some more reviews for AYD members, after which he was all excited for another pub run but everyone, including me, just wanted to rest up for the next US Open day. (Yes, I showed him the dumpling picture too.)
Wednesday is always an off day for the US Open. Some people see the local sights, and others play in the one-day 4-round Diehard tournament. I just wanted to chill, and it was another intensely rainy day, so I just headed down to the main building to watch people play in the Diehard and see if I could pick up a casual game or two. Watching the tournament, I instantly slightly regretted not entering it, but I knew that by the afternoon I'd want to nap much more than play.
After lunch, the US Open tournament director AH 1d was desperately looking for a game, since he hadn't gotten a chance to play yet all week. He was happy to play even (despite the 4-rank difference in AGA rating, both of us have relatively high variance in our performances). As White, I wasn't very happy with my opening, and didn't feel like I had much to show for my position besides some nebulous influence that seemed unlikely to turn into many points, though Leela Zero is much happier (it evaluates the starting position of the diagram below to be only 54% for Black). My opponent, though, being a fighter, decided to plop down a stone into the middle of the board and dare me to kill it rather than just reduce the center. The following comedy of errors ensued:
After creating that square-with-handle dumpling, I had to take a picture, which I gleefully showed to everyone I could for the rest of the day. Black ended up making a ko that let him connect to the bottom, but I got more than enough compensation and was already up by about 20 when he made an endgame blunder and resigned. A nice confidence booster!
That evening AH and other Boston-area folk introduced me to the nearby Culture Cafe, which basically concentrated 100% of the Somerville/Cambridge vibe of my home into a single building of Williamsburg: super laid back and comfy atmosphere, couches, delicious food, and yes, beer. It became my home away from home for the rest of the week. I played SM 6k again on his iPad in an extremely casual game while downing a couple of beers and won a game by 30 points that was, thankfully for you all, not very interesting.
It was In-seong's last day at the Congress before he jetted off to the European Go Congress, and he very kindly did some more reviews for AYD members, after which he was all excited for another pub run but everyone, including me, just wanted to rest up for the next US Open day. (Yes, I showed him the dumpling picture too.)