Stockholm Open 2010 - First day

Summertime and time for the Stockholm Open summer go tournament. This year there are not so many players participating but I think there were around 25 players today.

I were up late working on a cool ARS function while Girlwing was out partying downtown.So we were both very tired this morning so we came about 15 minutes too late. We had called in for registration and luckily enough the first round hadn't started yet. We even had time for some coffee and a short chat with some of our friends. It is always fun to see our weiqi friends.

So the first round started and I was paired against the organizer booru. Here you can see hem in deep thought. Is he trying to kill my corner? Actually he managed to kill my lower left corner after a blunder from me. Any move would make the corner live except one and that one I picked after some consideration. So then I had to become really creative to come back in to the game. I the end I managed to capture the white stones in the upper right and in the process destroy the upper left area for white. So my opponent resigned.

In the second game I got owned. I was behind from the beginning to the end. I started throwing stones around everywhere on the board always keeping sente. This playing style leaves a lot of stones to cut off and capture and it is often a sure way to lose but if you make it complicated enough then the opponent might do some critical mistake and you can turn the game in to a victory. But not this opponent... he played very steady and safe and every move was a little better than mine. Girlwing said he played Lee ChangHo style.

In the the third game we played "my moyo is bigger than your moyo" and I think I was a little ahead, but it was very close. Also some areas was unplayed and could change to points in any way. Then I made this move that was so gote and didn't make me any points at all. Actually I needed two moves to make sente. And it was a good plan early in the game but the moment was lost when I played it. So my opponent got sente and things went downhill from there. Soon after I played a really good endgame sequence, with the only problem that it took away my liberties and my opponent was able to set up a snap back on my corner group. It was miai for him to take one eye or the other to kill my whole group. The game was over... but I played to the end and we counted and I lost by 24 points on the board and I was black.


Girlwing won all of her three games today. And if I can bet money I would put them on her winning the two games tomorrow as well. I asked her about her games and she say that her opponents are very strong and they actually feel stronger than their rank suggest. That sounds good for Swedish go.

Girlwing loves chips. So if you want to be friend with her and give her a gift then chips is a good way to start. To celebrate the victories of today she bought herself a big bag of chips. She could not wait until she got home so Girlwing started to eat as soon as she sat down in the subway.

A good end of a good day.

Read about the second day.