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May 31st, 2008

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That’s all folks

A poor finish to the tournament for me – I managed to mess up a comfortable win with some extraordinarily bad moves in the early endgame against Madagascar. That tumbled me down the table, and I got paired with the second last seed from Costa Rica. However, he missed the round (came to apologise with a present of some Costa Rican coffee), so I got a free teaching game against Mr Kubo 9-dan pro (Aketa-sensei’s sensei). At least the teaching game went well (3 stones in Japanese teaching style; he mostly played proper moves rather than trying hard to beat me, and he stopped the game once we had played the large endgame moves – at which point I was apparently still ahead by a small margin).

Final result: 3 wins out of 8 – could be worse I guess, but I’d have preferred to have earned my 3 wins against stronger opponents. I finished 49th out of 68, having been seeded 43rd. All in all an amazing experience.

ps: A heads up – I met a Japanese 6-dan amateur (absolutely crushed me in a friendly even game – I think he’s about Aketa’s strength) who wants to visit Cape Town for a month next year. I’m sure we’ll be able to give him a good reception. More when I get back to Cape Town…

Posted by konrad as SAGA, Tournaments at 1:27 PM, No Comments »

May 30th, 2008

Rounds 5+6

Wins are hard to come by. I overslept this morning and arrived 20 minutes late – a close shave given that you forfeit after 30 minutes and you get penalised by three times the number of minutes late. But my opponent was quite weak and I won by 45 points. An exhausting game though – starting with only 30 minutes on the clock I spent most of the game in byo yomi.

Round 6 was a long, tough game against a 4 dan from Poland. He played his second move (as white) at tengen and made a 100 point central moyo, giving me a similar amount of (almost) territory. This led to a difficult game of invading and counterinvading, the key thing being to count and try to judge how the balance of territory is shifting. It seemed to swing to and fro a bit, but in the end my yose was too weak – after a particularly stupid gote move I found myself 20 points behind and had to resign.

Round 7 will be against the shodan from Madagascar – I _should_ be able to win that one. (In a tournament like this with so many strong players you start thinking of shodans as easy picking – I’ll have to concentrate on not being overconfident…)

Posted by konrad as SAGA, Tournaments at 3:35 PM, 2 Comments »

May 29th, 2008

SA 4th Quarter Internet Tournament

Posted by Steve as Events at 5:29 PM, No Comments »

May 29th, 2008

SA Contenders

More details here

Posted by Steve as Events at 5:28 PM, No Comments »

May 29th, 2008

SA 3rd Quarter Internet Tournament (incl. SAGA AGM)

Posted by Steve as Events at 5:27 PM, No Comments »

May 29th, 2008

Stellenbosch Open

Posted by Steve as Events at 5:25 PM, No Comments »

May 29th, 2008

SA Candidates

Posted by Steve as Events at 5:24 PM, No Comments »

May 29th, 2008

SA 2nd Quarter Internet Tournament

Posted by Steve as Events at 5:23 PM, No Comments »

May 29th, 2008

World Amateur Go Championships, Tokyo

Posted by Steve as Events at 5:15 PM, No Comments »

May 29th, 2008

Rounds 3+4

A bad day for me at the WAGC – first I got thoroughly beaten by the 4 dan from Israel (he was a little surprised when I resigned early, but the game was going nowhere fast – I’d say resigning was one of the few moves I made that the pro reviewing the game agreed with).

Next I got drawn against a 2-dan from Vietnam, who I felt I had every chance of beating. I started with a terrible result in one of the corners, but managed to claw my way back and thought I was leading in the middle game. Through a combination of good play by him and stuff-ups by me he managed to run right through my main territory and the state of the game got rather confusing. But I may still have been leading going into the endgame. This changed with some confused ko fights, particularly when he played a ko threat of which I somehow failed to spot the purpose, and he snipped off a handy 5 stones. I still had a few chances, but suddenly everything started to backfire and he made several small gains, eventually winning comfortably by 13.5 points. (To give an indication of the many ko fights, my score after filling in the prisoners was minus 6.) Very disappointing, especially after three and a half hours of play. But probably not as disapponting as Cornel Burzo, 4th seed from Romania, who lost an epic ko fest to Fernando Aguilar from Argentina after about 4 and a half hours and 350 moves!

Round 5 will be against another 2 dan, this time a 68-year-old from Peru.

Posted by konrad as News, Tournaments at 2:31 PM, 2 Comments »

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