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.

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 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.

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.

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.    

That being said, the league is growing, and there are several mid-dan players in B group.  At 2kyu, I'm clearly not a much for them.  While I think that technically I ought to have been able to remain in B group, I have no doubt that given the competition in B group I would almost certainly end up being demoted at the end up the month.  It's possible that I would beat all 4 players promoted from C group this month, but most likely I would simply use the chance to play as many of the stronger players as I could, leaving myself at the bottom of the group.

In any event C group should be interesting.  There are many players who I know I can beat, and there are no players who I think clearly outclass me.  If I don't at least end winning 2/3 of my games, I think I'll clearly have underperformed for the month.  My goals are to end higher than 66%, and to end in the top 4 earning my spot back in B group.  

The other interesting thing about C group is that now I will play the simultaneous games with breakfast and roln111 at 3 stones.  I'm eager to see if I can use that extra stone and finally get a win against one of the teachers.  We'll see...

Tonight was my big chance, and I got closer than I have ever gotten before against breakfast.  Until move 131, the game is quite close, and breakfast suggests black is probably slightly ahead.  Take a look at the position here.

Dealing with a clamp like this is not difficult, but for some reason I couldn't correctly read the sequence here.  I was certain that breakfast would not play this move unless it were a real threat, but I just couldn't read it right, so I responded with the block below.  Of course the clamp does work, as white kindly demonstrated for me in the game.  After this, the close game and potential win turned in to a loss by 9.5 points.  Devastating!  

Despite my mistakes, I'm really happy with the way I played.  I can't wait to get this game reviewed so I can learn from the painful blunders.  

So far I am 2-8, which is not a great record.  But, I'm really happy with that.  If it weren't for a stunningly bad endgame mistake I'd be 3-7, and I felt I kept my last two games close despite playing stronger players.  Although I'm not yet winning these games, I'm definitely not losing them as spectacularly as before.  As an example, here's a game I played this morning against a new league player maronscan.  She's been doing well in the group and will likely be promoted to A group at the end.  Her style is fairly aggressive, and I don't often do as well in heavy fighting games.  

In this game, I made a good stand, keeping it close until around move 177, where I crumbled.  After this exchange, I'm losing by about 15 points.  I'm rattled enough that later I make a silly mistake in the lower right corner and resign rather than playing it and scoring.  Despite the poor endgame, I'm very happy with this game.  I think it shows the great progress I'm making.  I'm hoping to get this game reviewed later to see what I could have done to turn this game into a win.

Right now I'm sitting in the 9th spot in the group, which puts me at risk of being demoted to C group at the end of month.  However, the 3 players directly above me are all players who I am capable of winning against.  Assuming I can get some games in with them, I shouldn't have a big problem getting a win or two to boost my percentage enough to not risk demotion.

I do happen to have one book of Cho Hunhyun games, so I thought I'd check it out some of those first.  I was quite surprised that the first game presented was one of his early professional games versus a young Takemiya Masaki, who is one of my favorite pros.   This game was interesting because not only did it show Takemiya taking white in a very non-moyo game, Cho Hunhyun lost this game.  The book, of course, explains some of the mistakes he made, and he even mentions places where he would clearly play differently with his current style of play.  

Outside of that, I'm not entirely sure how beneficial this particular game is to study, but I did enjoy playing through it enough to enter the game record in and post it.  Enjoy!

The viewer looks like it's working well. The only function it seems to be lacking is the ability to jump to a specific location in the game tree from external javascript. Ideally I could make comments outside the SGF referencing specific moves that the user could click on and go directly to. It does have the ability to jump to a specific move on load, but that only gets me so far.