Norman Richards

This weekend, I played in the 4th Annual Wildflower Classic Go Tournament in Austin.  It's only my 3rd live tournament, and possibly my best performance yet.  Although I only won two of my four games, I thought I played very well overall.  My first loss came about after playing a player who chose to play very tricky joseki, and I managed to get tricked early and couldn't recover.  While I was clearly outplayed, I don't care much about that type of loss.  Of course it shows the need for me to study more, but you can't make too much of the results.  My other loss was in my only handicap game of the day.  I took 2 stones, and tried to play an agressive attacking game.  I kept the battle going and kept my opponents groups struggling for life.  Unfortunately I couldn't kill any of the weak groups, and was unable to profit from my attacks enough to have a clear lead.  I resigned after misreading a corner life and death situation, though I can't say I could have made up the point difference had I not made the mistake.  I'll post all 4 of my games when I get them reviewed by my teacher.

The tournament was full, with 24 players in attendence.  I was very encouraged to see the large number of strong players in attendence.  Well, relatively speaking.  We still top out around 3-dan, but a significant portion of the players were on the dan or almost-dan range.  It's quite encouraging for the local scene.

During the holidays, I'm a little more free to go to the local go club.  I've been able to go these last few weeks, and I've had several good games.  There hasn't been much of an opportunity to play stronger players.  Besides the 1 dan player last week, it's all been handicap games of varying degrees. 

One of my games last night was a 7h game against young Korean kid who claimed to be about 8k.  I'm guessing he's about 11 or 12 years old, but since he wasn't very talkative I didn't inquire too much.  Playing him was quite a different experience from playing an older player with the same handicap.  His strengths and weaknesses were exactly opposite of adults I've played in that same range.  

What impressed me most was his apparent sharp reading ability - far surpassing that of a typical kyu player.  He played a fairly conservative opening (far too conservative for a high handicap game) without a very co-ordinated game strategy beyond that, but his tactical attacks at my group showed really good insight into shape, severely punishing a weak group of mine in a way I didn't expect of someone of his rank.  That combined with some textbook playouts of a couple of non-trivial josekis, as well as their followups, suggests he's been studying a lot.  I don't expect that from any 8k, especially a kid.

His reading broke down later in the game with a couple of endgame mistakes, which allowed me to come back.  I thought I had a small margin to win after that, so I tried not to be too severe, but in the final count black was ahead by 2 points, making me wish I had been a little more careful in my endgame.  

It was a very interesting game.  I'm very curious to see if other young players who've achieved his level of strength show the same patterns of play.  

I haven't been able to play much lately.  I've been a little too busy in the evenings to play online, and it's tough to make the local go club on school nights because of family things.  Besides my weekly teaching games, I have hardly played any games these last few months.  So much for my goal of making 1 dan by the end of this year.  

I did find some time to play some live games today with a friend.  We played a couple 9x9 games to warm up and then a quick 13x13 game.  He is probably a little stronger than me, but having not played in a few years he was a bit rusty.  I won 2 of the 9x9 games, as black, and the third was a tie.  I took black again on 13x13 and won.   

Playing over a real board today was a lot of fun.  I think I've almost reached the point where I can play as well on a real board as I can online.  I don't make the crazy reading mistakes I did at first, but at the same time I think I've learned to try and control my positions better so I'm not forced into as complicated situations as I can be when I play online.  

I think I'm actually starting to enjoy live play, at least in a non-competitive environment.  I hope I can do more of it.

When I started playing Go again a few years back, there was one particular player I played against in China that I had as my target.  I jokingly called him my Touya, in the sense that he was a stronger player I was striving to improve to beat.  At the time, there was at least a 2 stone gap between our levels.  Although I've made 3 or 4 trips to China since then, I was never able to find a time to play him again to test how far I have come.  

That changed last week, when I found myself in China for a few days longer than I planned to be.  It was unfortunate, but it did give me time to get in two games with this player.  Since he had so handily beat me before, I took black in an even game.  He may have been surprised when I didn't take the same two stone handicap as before, but if he was then his Chinese sense of politeness held him back from suggesting a handicap. 

I won the game handily.  I was ahead out of the opening and ended up cutting a big group, capturing enough stones to force a resignation.  We played a second game.  I politely took black again.  I did make one very careless mistake which left a group of mine vulnerable to attack, but even though my opponent profited greatly in the attack, I still was ahead by a large enough margin that he was forced to resign early.  

Now that I've achieved my task at hand, it's time to chase another Touya.  This time, I'm going to aim for a local player who is a few stones above me.  When I first started playing again, I lost to him at 4 stones.  Recently I've beat him at two stones, so I'm not far away.  However, this player is also serious about improving, so chasing him will be a bit harder.  It'll be fun.

Due to time issues, I've cut way back on my playing.  I'm not doing the league now.  I play one or two games a week and spend most of my free time on problems.  But, I'm still taking my weekly lessons.  I started when I was a weak 4k/5k players, and I played against my teacher (a KGS 7d) at 6 stones.  That's way under handicapped, and the results showed.  It was quite some time before I scored my first victory in a teaching game.  I'd have to check, but I may have just barely gotten to 2k by that time.   As long as it took for that 1st win, it took nearly as long for me to win frequently enough that it was time to move to 5 stones.

My first 5h game was around new years.   I lost by a mere 1.5 points, but then I followed it up with three straight resignations.  I'm a stubborn player, and I like to score games.  But none of these games were even worth scoring.  Last week I lost by 7.5 points, a game which had I not made an endgame mistake I think I could have won.  

I was disappointed, but I was able to follow that up with a win tonight.  Even though it was a win, I got more than a little lucky during the game.  We didn't have time to review the game, but aside from my good luck, I think this win can largely be attributed to the more aggressive style of play I've been taking in these games.  It seems that as long as I can keep the pressure up, I do well in this games.  Whenever I start playing defensively, it seems that I can be sure I'm going to lose the game.  Of course I guess that the fundamental lesson of handicap play is learning how to build strong positions and use them to attack strongly.