Hello again. I just played another tournament last weekend, and although not quite as successful for me compared to the last one, I still hit a milestone and learned a few valuable lessons from it. (Besides experience, I also did gain some more rating points, bringing me closer to next years goal of making 4d egf officially).

The most important one (see title) was probably to see how much difference it makes to have an actual game plan vs. just playing moves that.. "feel right?".... I guess??... probably not even that?... :D

Anyway, I didn't have the best condition, as I had only slept little the night before (for some reason I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't fall asleep anymore). So my expectations weren't exactly high going into the tournament. But I still managed to shake myself to a status of 'focused enough' for my first round.

It was the same opponent I faced in round 4 of Bochum. This time the game had a bit more fight in it and I got myself into trouble a few times by choosing the wrong direction, but ultimately, it came down to my opponent letting me off the hook and playing too passive overall once again.

[glift]https://openstudyroom.org/forum/attachment/176/[/glift]

Overall, I wasn't too pleased with my game. But it did not demotivate me. On the contrary, the next game being against the strongest opponent (a 5d) in the tournament made me want to play the best game I could. Stay tuned to see how a game plan changes everything!

On to board 1, where the 5dan awaited. I was still tired, but I was also really pumped up and managed to stay focused throughout most of the game.

Early on, I took the plan to build the top while attacking a weak group. My opponent decided to enter the bottom right corner, choosing to give me a lot of outside potential, letting my stones work well together for the plan. From this point on, I felt like I was in control of the game and always fought back hard.

I will let the game speak for itself:

[glift]https://openstudyroom.org/forum/attachment/177/[/glift]

Overall, this was a game I was very proud of and I believe it to be one of the best I have played so far. Next up was a 4dan - another game that shows the importance of a game plan!

EDIT: GoDave here from 2021 looking at this again - actually the decend in the bottom right corner was NOT sente - seems like both my opponent and I were not aware of what I now consider a rather classic shape :D

Game 3 was the battle of the unbeaten top-players (really feels weird to call myself that, but I guess I cannot hide that fact from myself anymore - at least in normal weekend tournaments I have to start going in with that confidence and not put myself down as harshly anymore as I have in the past). I actually was in first position before this round - a fact that luckily I didnt know until later ^^). But we all know that only the end results are the ones that count.

I have to say - after just having beaten the 5dan and feeling really good about that game, something in my brain made a 180. It felt like I had no energy left for this 3rd game. I am not just talking about focus, I am actually talking about the absolute willingness to give it my all and to go for the win. So it is not just the way the game went, it is also about how I felt weak mentally even before this game. So this is something to work on - even if I can find many factors/excuses for this being the case before and during the game.

The game started with a couple of weird choices by my opponent, but no real advantage for me came from those. An early mistake put me on the backfoot and not much later I followed - well - no plan really. That was the problem, I was placing down stones with some ideas, but not really a plan in mind. And it shows. A bad direction in the bottom left fight lead to a horrible position and after struggling for a little bit longer (not willing to give up quite yet before move 100...) I resigned with still some time on my clock. This is actually a first as well - I do not often have time left, but when I did so far it always meant I had won (easily). Maybe also a sign how little heart I had actually put in this game.

Nevertheless, there is a lot to be learned from this game. It might not have been a good game from me, but it was probably one of the most educational ones for me in recent history.

Here it is: [glift]https://openstudyroom.org/forum/attachment/178/[/glift]

So that still gave me a good 2:1 score to go on the next day; hopefully with a fresh mind after a good night of sleep. However.... (stay tuned :P)

Remember when I talked about getting a good night sleep? Well... forget about that. For some reason (which certainly was not the accomodation) I again had a sleepless night, waking up every now and then. Not quite ideal I would say.

Nevertheless, I tried to make the best of it and let the 20 minute walk to the tournament location wake me up a little bit.

My 4th round opponent was the other 3dan - someone who is rising throught the ranks recently even faster than I am (and besides being already very close to 4dan, has also reached the main round of the german championship - something I will try to tackle next year!). With us both being at 2:1 and as the two same-ranked ones, this promised to be a hard battle.

A bit scarred from what happened in game 3, I avoided a fight in the top left this time. Not a horrible choice, but possibly slightly inferior (not something I thought during the game though, so I can't say I deliberately picked a worse choice, which ofc would be UNFORGIVABLE!!!! :P) A fight on the bottom side developed well for me and I was able to get a bit of control over the game, after my opponent missed a chance to make it more complicated for me. Some bad choices on the left side (talk about a game plan) gave my opponent the first move on the border of two areas though and the game swung back slightly in his favor. After a rather big endgame mistake by me, I tried (too hard) to kill his next invasion on the right side. When that failed, I launched a last effort attack against his bottom group, but fell short.

Here is the game: [glift]https://openstudyroom.org/forum/attachment/180/[/glift]

A bit unfortunate, but overall I felt good about the game - much better than the 3rd round game at least. After this loss, I fell back in 4th place, but with another win, my chances to make top 3 were still very realistic. What will be the conclusion? Well... you know what to do ;)

For the last round, unfortunately I was paired with a 2kyu. I don't like those matches were you pretty much only can lose, since you are expected to win. On the other hand, it is good training to deal with that kind of pressure and I better get used to that sooner rather than later :P

It did influence me for sure though - My game ended up being all over the place. I didn't really have a good game plan, I just tried to pressure my opponent, but it wasn't really any pressure that was difficult to deal with. So after an initial good start I actually fell behind. My opponent did well to keep the initiative for some time, but as soon as he played a slow move and overdefended, I managed to get back my footing into the game. From there on I took more and more control and after an overplay by my opponent on the top side I managed to win the game - the game continued but my opponent just kept falling more and more apart until he finally resigned.

Still - there is some valuable lessons from the game.

Here it is:

[glift]https://openstudyroom.org/forum/attachment/182/[/glift]

In the end, with a lot of bad luck due to the drawing of the pairs and the overall results in round 5, I ended up only placing 4th narrowly behind the other 3d. It really came down to the sosos! See results here.

It did bother me for a bit, but what can you do about it... Next time, I just gotta win more ;-)

My next tournament will probably in the mid of january 2020 Thanks for reading and maybe until then ;)

Thanks for sharing all your games, very interesting and helpful