Swedish Go Championship

The Swedish Go Championship starts on Saturday and I’m looking forward to playing in my second go tournament ever. Due to go-federation regulations (which I’m all for) I will start at a 2kyu rank, which makes it virtually impossible for me to win the tournament even if I win all my games. My ambition is to play some nice games and perhaps be able to comment on one or two here.

The best part of it is that Catalin Tartanu 5p, is visiting and will help us with our games. Here are a couple of lessons that Catalin held at the 52:nd European Go Congress, in Leksand:

I will be back with more in a few days.

Posted in go

A number of bad excuses and one

I guess most chess players have experienced this at one time or another; to go in search of a far fetched explanation to why things went the way they did. There are times when I need that bad excuse, just for a moment, so I can catch my breath, before I am prepared to be self critical. Though in the end, there is no way around it. The music has to be faced.

Last weekend I arrived in Gothenburg, full of energy, in order to hang out with some friends and then play in Kvibergspelen, a chess open which is part of the Swedish Grand Prix.

For the first time in a while I bought some chess books (I’m trying to keep my chess books from occupying more than two shelves) and when I arrived at the hotel I couldn’t help myself but start pouring over the pages until rather late. By that time I had already had a bad start, point-wise, but when I look back at it I’m not too upset with my play. Take for instance this game:

After 6 rounds I was on 4,5 points and I needed to win the two last games in order to get a prize. In round 7 I was paired with the young talented Kaan Küzüksari. His opening preparation was not very good, but apart from that he did very well:

A terrible finish for me and I promised myself never to stay up late and read books again. At least I will not do it the next tournament. Also, I had tried to drink less coffee since then. I don’t want my performance in a game to hang on whether I can get hold of a cup of coffee or not. Those things said, what really matters is my bad evaluation of the position after move 40, which made me relax, get upset, and then blunder. I will have to make room for some endgame studies.

Next, hopefully, I will write something about the TEPE Sigeman & co tournament, that starts on Friday in my home town.