Cambridge Trigantius Tournament

Apparently Trigantius was a monk, although what that has to do with Go or Cambridge, no-one knows, including the organiser Alex Selby or the founder of the Cambridge Go Society, British legend, Jon Diamond. A mystery to be solved.

We arrived in a real hurry wandering around a poorly signposted Addenbrokes hospital getting thoroughly lost. Also, there were train engineering works on my line which meant I had to get up at 5.15am which was rather 'invigorating' shall we say. Also for some reason couldn't sleep the night before (excitement?!) so actually only got 4 hours shuteye. Sleep deprivation actually stimulates the brain it is said, which is perhaps true considering my improved playing strength.

This was the first tournament I have entered as single digit kyu, namely 8.

First game as white was ok, but lost by 7.5 points by failing to connect a group in the centre towards the yose (and losing 12 stones in the process), but up to then was in the lead by at least 20 points, so I didn't feel too bad about it. My BGA Shodan Challenge mentor told me I'd played better than my opponent and really deserved to win, so that was encouraging! Gambare!

Second game as white was more interesting; I played quite actively and split a group into two which made my opponents position very weak, and he could only just defend one of them, but not both. Unfortunately for him he kept adding a lot of stones to the group I killed and I came away with a huge prize. I won with about a 50 point margin.

Third game I won as black by 25 points or so. My opponent made a rather large blunder in the centre which meant my group which was invading her moyo suddenly became unconditionally alive instead of teetering on the edge of ruin. A rather handy advantage! Here was my winning move:



White really shouldn't let me take these three stones. Actually, I've looked at this position afterward, and had white saved the stones instead of cutting through my hane, I would have connected the hane and been 'out' towards my stones at the top - however white could have got a lot of sente by chasing me. Still it would have been objective accomplished anyway, namely scrubbing the moyo in the bottom left (that was devoid of black stones 20 moves ago).

And here is some Go being played on the train by my friends on the way there, on a bendy portable rollup board:



Notice Essential Joseki by Naiwei Rui, 9 dan propping the board up! Click on the image for high-resolution. You can really see how the board undulates, like playing on a mathematical surface!