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.