Day 1

Hello again.

Well, day 1 of the Congress was brilliant!

Of course being an "early-a-holic" I arrived about an hour and a half early :^P The place was easy to find, but the doors were locked. Went for coffee. The weather was perfect though, slight drizzle and a bit cool - great Go playing weather :)

After coffee I register and received a really cool rego kit consisting of a t-shirt, cap and key ring!

I spoke to the Tournament Director, Neville Symthe (Vice President of the AGA). He said that along with our resident professional, An Younggil 8p (tournament referee), two other Korean professionals were also attending the tournament - Kim Ilhwan 9p and Lee Dahye 4p - both of whom would be available for game reviews and would also be giving lectures during the week.

All up more than 40 players had registered for the tournament of which quite a few were from Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan ranging from 17kyu to 7dan. I also got a glimpse at the trophies:

There are three divisions A, B and C (I'm in C :) The winner of division A would receive not only the cool trophy (big one far left) but also $5,000 while the runner up gets a trophy and $2,500 (the first prize for my division is a trophy and $300 ;). There is also to be a Hahn scoring side tournament which begins tomorrow ... not sure if I have the brain space to play both tourneys but I'll give it a try.

Then it was time for the Opening Ceremony. The MC, the wonderful Ms Cindy Xu (University of Sydney Go Club) made everyone feel welcome and excited to be a part of the tournament. Raphael Shin (AGA President and sponsor of the congress) expressed his dream of promoting Go in Australia and to have Australia seen as an international and competitive Go community much as the US and Europe are. Sang-Dae Hahn (Organizing Committee Chairman) likewise spoke of his enthusiasm to raise the awareness of Go in Australia and treated everyone to a recital of the song Largo from Handel's opera Xerces (accompanied by the very talented Younggil on the piano).

After Neville ran through the tournament structure and rules it was time to meet our match!

I was impressed by the draw being projected on to the wall showing the pairings, players' colour, handicap (for division C only) and the table number as well! My first opponent was a 1kyu player from Japan. It was a great game with lots of fighting. Even though I lost a corner group early I mostly managed to hold my own, keeping the game reasonably close ... until we were approaching end game. He then approached and reduce my last remaining corner and from that point I would not have been able to catch up - so I resigned. After the game we had a game review. Learnt a valuable lesson today - if your group looks to be in serious trouble and you have the opportunity to run away - RUN!!!

And that was round 1. So after the first round half players in each division are coming 1st the rest coming 2nd :^P

In the afternoon there was a free tour of Sydney.

Overall everything ran very smoothly and professionally (even after the projector broke!) I think I can say that a great time was had by all. I'm certainly looking forward to tomorrow.