24th US Go Congress - Post 1

Portland, Oregon is providing a beautiful venue for the 24th US Go Congress. This is Go on an awesome scale - nearly 500 players and 17 professionals! There is so much Go being played/analysed/lectured on that it's impossible to keep track of it all. The basic format is one game per day in the US Open, starting at 9am, then lectures, reviews and other tournaments in the afternoon.

The time limits in the open are a generous 90 mins each with 5 x 30 seconds byo-yomi. The one annoying thing is the clocks used emit a bleep every time they're pressed which when multiplied by ~250, means the hall is continually noisy. Not good. Apparently they had to use these style of clocks due to some sponsorship or something. Hmmm. I've lost 2/2 games so far - I either blame the bleeping or the jetlag or both.

I had a personal lesson with Guo-Juan and that was great. There were six of us and she went through our games. The key message was - hane at the head of two stones!

There was some live commentary by Takemiya 9p which was very amusing. The two players (9dan and 7dan IIRC) had a really short game - white resigned after just 39 moves as he messed up a complicated joseki. I'm glad even the experts get it wrong. He gave a little talk at the beginning of the commentary and said that in order to improve your Go in the long term you should play the moves you want to, not the ones you think "the books would recommend" - this way you will be playing your own game and enjoying Go, rather than simply trying to win by playing moves which you think are correct.

Well, hopefully I have recovered enough from jetlag today in order to think straight and have a decent chance at winning my first tournament game in America!