2018 US Go Congress

Long time, no post!

I thought I should post about my first-ever Go Congress (at least, the first one at which I've been an attendee), but I was so busy while I was there that I never got a chance to blog about it.  So I'll just summarize with a few highlights. 

This was the Colonial Go Congress in Williamsburg, VA run by Diego Pierrottet & Nate Eagle.  I've always thought the US Go Congress would be too big for me (too many people), but it turned out to have a comfortable and familial feeling.  That might be because, after 17 years of playing, I know quite a few Go players.  Also, a few of our local VIPs were running some of the tournaments (including the US Open), which made it feel like home.

One of my favorite parts of Congress was getting to finally meet In-seong Hwang in person.  He teaches the excellent online Yunguseng Dojang in which so many of us in the MGA have been enrolled. 

In addition to meeting In-seong, we got to meet other YD participants who we see and play online but had never met in person.  In-seong reviewed games for us during his time off and took all of his YD students out to the pub on Tuesday evening.  I think there were about 30 of us there. 

I spent a lot of time with some friends from our local Boston area meetups.  We'd get together for meals and check in to see how everyone did and compare game stories.  I really appreciated the opportunity to get to know these guys better.  Congress would not have been anywhere near as fun without them. 

We were all very happy to have Mr. Cho join us at Congress.  I got to play with him for Pair Go.  We had fun, even though our styles are completely different and probably not a good match for playing Pair Go.  (We lost both of our games.)

In our second game, we gave 3 stones to this 2 dan pro and his young partner.  We were all surprised when we saw this on the game sheet, but the best reaction came from the little girl, who said, "YES!!"

Even though Pair Go was fun, I would not do it again at the US Go Congress.  It's just too late in the evening for me, and it definitely affected my play in the Open the next morning.

I also played in Adult-Youth Pair Go.  My partner was one of several Sophia Wang's at the Congress.  This particular one beat me in the women's tournament and then asked me to be her partner for the Adult-Youth Pair Go tournament.  She was actually the third or fourth person to ask me to play in this tournament.  I kept telling everyone I'd think about it.  (I wasn't sure how Congress would go and whether I wanted to commit to another tournament.)  By the time Sophia asked me, I said yes just so I could say no to anyone else who asked.  :)  But I was really glad I said yes.  I like Sophia a lot, and we had fun playing.  Here we are facing off against Neil and Charlie:

We won both of our games (one on time), so we got to choose prizes.  I took an AGA patch, and Sophia got the entire set of Hikaru no Go books. 

Overall, my record in the US Open was 3-3 playing at 2 dan.  All of my opponents were 2 dan or above.  An even record at 2 dan is not exactly on track for my 5-years-to-5-dan plan, but I do have other evidence of improvement:  I'm at 2d on IGS and I've also won a bunch of even games against several different 4 and 5 dans at my local club.  I think my confidence interval is wide (I have also lost even games to lower-ranked players).  But I'm definitely reaching higher than I have before.  I think the big thing I need to do is bring the lower end of my play up.  I think I primarily need more game experience and better reading ability.  So this year I'm really going to focus on playing more and doing more tsume-go.  (In addition to keeping up with my Guo Juan problems, of course.)