Stockholm Open 2010 - Second day

The second day started quite good for me. I played my first game against a KGS player on his first tournament in real life. He played the tournament as a 5 kyu but I felt he was actually much stronger than that. He played some moves a bit strange and I felt I got an advantage. If he learns some fundamentals and josekis he will be 2 kyu in no time.

He used a lot of thinking time and soon he was in byo-yomi and he used one period and then another. Then suddenly the last period expired and I won on time. Girlwing looked at the board and said it was very close and anyone could win. The strongest endgame would decide the winner.

My opponent believed he had another byo-yomi period when the Ing clock said 1:30, but that is actually the last period. I actually made the same mistake in a tournament a couple of years ago. It's a hard lesson to learn, but you will never forget it.

During lunch a whole bunch of us go players went to the local fast food place Daisy's. Girlwing ordered a disgusting looking fish and chips and I took a greasy plate of kebab. The food was not the best but we had interesting discussions about the Swedish go world and old players that we seldom see any longer. We imagined how interesting it would be if all the strong players started go to the tournaments again.

After dinner Girlwing I and jpyllman went to the bicycle dealer next doors. I need a new tyre for my bike so I fell for this deal with two brand tires. When I got home I fitted one of them on my bicycle but then I got the problem of filling it with air. So now I have to go buy myself a pump. Or I have to carry the wheel to some place where I can fill it with air. Hmmm... I need a car...

After lunch it was time for a second game. Another 5 kyu for me to play against. It is always a little scary to play the lower ranked players because I feel pressure to beat them. Still they have a good chance to win over me but it feels better to get beaten of a higher ranked player. Probably because that if a stronger player wins over me it is because he is better, but if a weaker players wins over me it is because I played bad. This is of course not true but this is a common way of thinking.

Anyway... The game started off good and I had a nice moyo. Then I made a bad judgement and I got myself a running group and a not yet alive group on the side to worry about. It ended with my running group with 21 stones died and a big dent in my moyo. I played to the end anyway and I lost by 35 points.

So to sum it all up I won two games and lost three. I am not very happy with this result and I really need to study. So Girlwing bought me a book and I will study it this summer. Hopfully I will come back to the next tournament as a 3 kyu player.

Girlwing won all five games and the first price. She also gave a free lecture as a price to one of the 9 kyu players. This lecture will be held online in English on KGS. Hopefully it will be a public lecture so we all can watch a learn something valuable.

On the way home we stopped in Kista for some sushi. At the same time there was some performance by Magnus Carlsson the singer. He is actually good live. I only wish he sang some other songs....

Now it is time for bed and another week of hard work. I will dream of becoming stronger and beat all my opponents in the next tournament... Sweet dreams... :)

Read about the first day.

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.

Guitar hero

Hugs in the kitchen

BBQ on the balcony

Beer in the sun.

Moyo Go Free Forever

Frank de Groot, the developer of Moyo Go Studio, seem to have given up with the development of one of the most powerful go programs on the market. He is no longer selling the product but are instead giving it away for free.

He claim to have a lot of enemies in the go community and it seem to be caused by aggressive competition among the commercial go program developers on one side and on the other side the fact that he say that he is not sure that people ever was gassed or incinerated by the Nazis.

He seem to be a smart but odd person. Too bad the software and its customers have to suffer. When he have such controversial ideas of what happened during the second world war, he should keep it to himself. Especially if he have a commercial interest in selling his software. Also it might not have been smart to proclaim a war against those who opposed him, no matter who started the conflict.

If he intend to never develop or sell the product again, I hope that he will let it be open source so other developers can continue the work and maybe even port it to Linux. I have been very interested in the program since I first read about it on the Internet, but I was never able to try it out because I use Linux and it is a Windows only program.

Swedish championship 2010

I am now on the train home from Norrkoping and the 2010 Swedish championship in go. It was a good tournament and now we are exhausted and will sleep all the way to Stockholm. I only won two games but Girlwing won all her eleven games. So strong!