Jusandan 2009

Girlwing and I went to the Jusandan weiqi tournament in Aspudden in the southern parts of Stockholm. We haven't been practising anything since the Linköping Open tournament in September 2008, so neither of us were expecting any good results. I would be happy if I managed to win two out of five games. Instead I told myself that I can take the loss and see it is practise and a nasty kick off for some study before the next tournament in Västerås next month.

In the first round I met a new guy who seemed to be at his first tournament. This game went quite easy for me and I won by a lot. It always feels good to win your first game in a tournament and this time it felt even better because of my low self confidence.

The second game was against one of my most evil opponents. Well... he is actually very nice but I have never won against him. So in this game I didn't have much hope. But I had the luck on my side. I had marked out a huge corner that never got invaded and I was able to secure the territory later and that was enough for me to win the game. I was so happy! Finally I won over this guy! I even have two wins in a row and already got the two wins out of five that I was aiming at. So now I can lose the rest and still feel ok.

Time for the third game of the day and I was starting to get tired. I had even felt something that can be the beginning of a cold. My head was heavy so I took another cup of coffee and sat down with my next opponent. The game started quite good and I felt that I had a comfortable lead. So I started to relax at the same time I was fighting to keep my focus while I get more and more sleepy. Then it happens... My opponent plays a move that threaten to invade the corner or cut of some stones. I got shortcut and play totally wrong and my opponent can jump deeper in to my corner and I play wrong again and have only one eye. Then I start to play desperate moves trying to capture something or escape. I read wrong and play sequences that does not work and my corner dies and I play to a huge loss.

Now finally it is time to go home and we are very hungry and I feel very weak. Probably both from my coming cold and because of the need for food. So we go directly to the ICA supermarket to buy something. I buy a skagen (seafood) sandwich, a chocolate drink and some dextrose tablets. Before I get home it starts to itch on my legs but it is nothing I think about but closer to bed time is start to itch everywhere. That night I hardly slept anything and the most problems were the itching of my hands and I almost scratched of all my skin. Later when I looked myself in the mirror I saw that I had red spots all over my body. Scary... It really look like an allergic reaction and it must have been something that I ate.

So after almost no sleep, it is time to get up again for the second day of the tournament. In the fourth game I play against my friend Pel. I have played him three times before and he won two and I only one. Last time we met, he won. This time I wanted to win! The game started quite well with my chinese opening and he invaded maybe a little too early. I could attack his stones and chase them out while I was building territory. I think I had a lot of initiative and that is always comfortable. I made a couple of reading misstakes but I was lucky and the sequences we played did not end bad for me. In the end I won and now our score is even at 2-2. Next time I take the lead Pel! ;)

By now I have a tournament score of 3 wins and one loss and I am more than satisfied. So I can relax and just have fun in my last game. In the last game we had a very large ko in a corner. I first believed that I lived when my opponent played a smart tesuji to create a ko. The only problem for him was that I had a thousand local ko threats while he had to search all over the board. So in the end he gave up and let me capture four stones and connect to my outer stones. This for sure game the victory in that game.

So there I won four of five games! That is really really good! Especially without practice. But I feel like I was lucky in this tournament. If I play these games tomorrow I will probably have more problems. So I am not sure if I deserve to be ranked up to 3 kyu yet. First I said that I can rank myself to 3k but Girlwing said that I should probably play another tournament to see if I am stable at this rank, unless I play more games online and see there what level I really am at.

Official results
Some pictures by Larske

Jusandan by Girlwing
Jusandan by Smernaz
Jusandan by Pel