Prelude - I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - Conclusion

Simul Games

Here is a summary of all the professional simuls I played in at Go Congress:

1. Day 1 - Dahye Lee, 4p
2. Day 2 - Ho Yuu, 6p
3. Day 2 - Jungsang Park, 9p
4. Day 3 - Bo Ding, 5p
5. Day 3 - Mariko Deguchi, 1p
6. Day 3 - Yuhong Zhao, 5p
7. Day 5 - Jennie Shen, 2p
8. Day 5 - Shirley Lin, 1p
9. Day 6 - Francis Meyers, 1p

My goal was to play the strongest professionals that I could while experiencing as many brutal defeats from as many styles as I possibly could. In addition, while I am happy with my collection of 9 simul games, I must admit that I was aiming to hit double digits. Haha.

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Prelude - I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - Conclusion

The next morning we woke up and headed off to get breakfast at a popular bagel place called Brooklyn Bagels.

Best bagels I've had to date.

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Prelude - I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - Conclusion

When I woke up, I sat in silence for a while as I thought about what I was going to do. Although some would simply shrug off the forfeit and continue playing in the tournament, I couldn’t stand the idea of continuing in the tournament. And with my brother in town and my girlfriend coming up to visit the second half of the trip, my mind was made up.

When I arrived at Hotel Pennsylvania, I went and officially withdrew myself from the tournament. I know that this decision might not sit well with some of you, but it was really the best decision for me as a whole. While it would have been great to have played in the tournament, withdrawing from the tournament freed up my schedule to spend time with my brother (and girlfriend eventually) while also allowing me the freedom to do whatever I wanted (i.e., spending time with professionals).

Anyhow, I then entered the tournament room to see if anyone was up and around. As I walked around, I found Diego and Gurujeet in the middle of an intense game.

I vaguely remember catching Nate and Michael before the round started and wishing them the best of luck. And before I left, I went ahead and signed up for three simuls that day. After all, I could play in tournaments anytime I wanted back at home, it’s the professionals that made Congress as epic as it is.

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Prelude - I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - Conclusion

The next day I woke up late. Since I knew that my games took a long time, I figured that it would be best for me to grab breakfast before heading off to the match. After all, the worst thing that would happen is that I would have less time. Right?

When I arrived, I found everyone sitting and playing their matches. As I looked down the pairings list, I noticed that my name was already marked with results. F? My opponent’s name circled? What the heck? Does that mean what I think it means?

As I scanned the list, I saw there were quite a few others as well. So I rushed off to find the tournament director, and sure enough, it was what I feared: forfeit.

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Japan Embassy

On April 2nd, 2013, I had the honor of being able to attend a professional go event that featured Narumi Osawa (4p) and was hosted by the Japanese Embassy in Washington D.C. It was a free event that consisted of a short talk designed for beginners, a simultaneous game against Narumi, and a lecture/review on one of the games.

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For those of you who read my series of posts on the North American Go Convention, you might recall that on Day 2, there was a crew doing a special interview with Joanne Missingham. Guess who made the cut? I guess my play was so incredible they decided to feature me! Hahaha. Just kidding! Anyhow, I can’t seem to download the video from Facebook. So here is the link to the video and some screenshots below:

Joanne Missingham Interview

1:30

7:00

8:10

Fun times. xD

*Thanks to DeepSnow for seeing the scene at 8:10. I have no idea how I missed it.

Introduction — Day 1 — Day 2 — Day 3 — Day 4 — Day 5 — Conclusion

Shortly before leaving the convention on Day 2, I had mentioned to Myung and James that if they were free and didn’t have plans, I would be happy to take them out to dinner since they didn’t know the area very well. They told me that they would let me know how their schedule was the next day, so you can imagine how excited I was when I received a phone call letting me know that they would like to get dinner with me! Since they were in the Annandale area, I suggested that we meet at the Bonchon to get dinner.

As per usual, the traffic to Virginia was not cooperating with me as I attempted to make my way to them. When I finally reached my destination, I arrived to find Myung and James outside with a local Korean go player. I was a bit bewildered at first as to why they were outside, but then I realized that the Bonchon was closed!!! Bleh. Definitely not what I anticipated. So we adapted and headed off to the Fairfax location.

Credit to HauteLiving.com

If you’ve never had it before, it’s just heavenly…. Just thinking about it is making me hungry….

Before I knew it, we were munching and chatting the night away. Time passed us by rather quickly because before we knew it it was 7:00pm and we needed to rush back to the convention. Fortunately we weren’t too far away, but I did feel bad that I didn’t do a better job keeping track of the time. Since we were running a behind though, we went ahead and dropped Myung off before heading off to do a coffee run.

Once we got back and arrived at the building, we ran into a local go player who had stopped by for the convention but was leaving since there were only dans upstairs. When James hit the button to go to the 9th floor and nothing happened, you can imagine my face as I could only laugh as I realized that we would have to take the stairs once again. On the upside, having James helped to make the climb pass by much quicker.

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