Second day

Time for the second day of games. First I followed Girlwing to the house "Brandmannen" where she is playing. We said good luck to each others and then I went to the gymnasium which is the main playing area. I faught my way to the posters with the pairings and started searching for my name. Hmmm didn't find it but that is not so strange because there are so many names and you have to search both for black and white. So I searched more and more... and more... and nothing. Did they forgot to enter my name for the second round? I will not have anyone to play against? I search more following with my finger on each name and checking all players with 5 kyu. My name nowhere! I starting to get really nervous. Then I start searching lower among the 8 kyu players and higher up to the 3 kyu players and THERE! I am playing a 3 kyu player! Not a single 5 kyu anywhere close to my name. Strange... and it took me maybe 10 minutes to find my name. Later Girlwing and I talked about it and she came with a great suggestion. There should be a list with all players names (or registreation number) and next to the name there can be information about building and board number, maybe even opponent information. This would really be great for such large tournaments with hundreds of players.


I went up to my board and my opponent was (of course) already waiting for me. It was a tough game and my opponent always managed to get huge areas of territory. I worked to reduce it and he built new and I reduced and then he build another big area and then I play in the wrong direction and my invading stones died and I was way behind. I had no way to catch up again, so I lost...





After the game I walked around in the gymnasium and there I found an auditorium where they were showing the top board live through KGS. Then suddenly the screensaver started and the people watching didn't know what to do. Luckely Mohsart was there at the moment and could go down and wake the computer again and the show could continue.










I walked over to Brandmannen and Girlwings table where she was playing against a Polish 5 dan. I looked on the board and it looks quite good for her. I walk around and take some pictures and sit for a while and solve some problems from my go-book. Later in endgame I count the score and see that Girlwing is still ahead but when they are done and do the official count then is clear that Girlwing lost by 0.5 point. I am surprised and she is surprised because she had counted she was ahead for the endgame. But she counted wrong so she used the wrong tactic for the endgame. Too bad. But the abillity to count correctly and use the appropiate tactics is one aspect that defines a strong player so even she was better in every other aspect of the game and was walking a sure victory, it is not enough if you can not choose the winning path in the endgame.

It is getting quite late and we are soooo hungry because we didn't eat any lunch. So we buy Sushi! Yay! :D
At 18:00 is was time for pair-go and of course Girlwing and Boywing will play with each other. We both were a bit nervous while we waited for our opponents. They have the same last name so we were thinking that they might be brother and sister or maybe husband and wife. One of them were 4 dan and the other was 23 kyu and we were discussing if we read wrong or if it was an error on the card. Maybe is should be 2 kyu. Soon our opponents appeared and now we understood. The 23 kyu is the 4 dans daughter and she is maybe 4 years old and the father told us she learned the basics just three days ago. But when she started to play, it was amazing. She made no big errors you would expect from this sweet kid. She even made some moves that I had to think really hard on. During the whole game she was looking at me and Girlwing and smiled the most lovely smile with her whole face. I almost didn't dare to look into her sweet eyes when I made my moves because I felt a bit guilty to win over such a young girl. Not too long into the game the father suggested them to resign and we won the game. Girlwing fell in love with the girl so now I have to figure out how to win her back.

The second round of pair-go started at 20:00 and this time we play against a German couple of 3 dan and 2 kyu. A little stronger than us but we will try to make a good game. It is very confusing to play pair-go. Girlwing is a lot stronger than me and I have problems understanding the reasons behind her moves. We are not allowed to talk to each other during the game so most of the time I have to guess what my team mate have in mind before I make the move. I play some moves very good and some less good. About halfway into the game I got so tired that I could fall to sleep. At one moment I had to look what colour the stone in my hand was so I knew if I was black or white. So with no surprise I made a couple of big misstakes. I let the opponents capture our cutting stones and later I made the wrong follow up after our opponent ignored our ko-threat. Then the game was hopless to win and we resigned.