US Go Congress Day 3 / 2026 Jul 27
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A quick summary as I'm beat. I played Tomoji Saito 5 kyu, a very nice
gentleman visiting from Japan in his 60s. I used more main time than
yesterday, which is risky because my opponent started playing some
really sharp moves towards the end of the game that needed confident
reading. He made an unwise invasion, then backed down from a ko, and I
was able to capture everything. At the same time his positions on the
outside became damaged which simplified the game and thus I was able
to take a significant lead and cleanly wrap up the game even under
time pressure.

For lunch we took a longish stroll to an Irish pub in Newton that
turned out to have some pretty good food. It was fun to nerd out about
the details of Swiss MacMahon and rank bands, approaches to improving
at Go, the psychology of a game, and other random topics like
crossword tournaments and interaction fiction tools like Inform7.

Afterwards, we took a car back and I met up with Logan to review our
Open games. Due to the increased attendance and some pro absences,
it's a bit more challenging to get pro reviews this year. So we just
reviewed the games together.

The Lightning tournament like by 9x9 tournament was super popular. My
table had 4 Chinese kids that were all insanely strong for 5K. I only
won one game and was consistently trounced. 10 minutes sudden death
for each player is really tough! It's a good reminder that even with
2-0 record so far, I should temper my expectations in the Open. I
might have to face one of these kids soon!

The night ended with live commentary of a pro game and a quick
lighting game with Jules Kwan - friend and tour de force behind the Go
meetups in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. I was doing all right but
then blundered - but my brain was getting really foggy by this point.

Time for bed!