Whompoa Cup

Finally the Whompoa Cup has started. The wait seemed very long, yet it arrived so fast. Too fast that I haven't fully prepared for it. Honestly speaking I haven't been playing recently even on the internet. My laziness has been acting up a lot, and I was busy reading ONE PIECE manga the past few days... If I didn't get into the top 4 because of this, I think I will be very sad...

Played the first 3 games today. They weren't so bad, except the 2nd game which I played against a PRC studying in SP. Made quite a few mistakes but was still leading. But into yose, my lead became more and more less, and only at the end did I realise that I only won by one and a half moku. It was so close! My time management was bad, and that's why I made a lot of losses in yose. I guess it's still the concentration problem. It's hard to keep my focus and keep calculating, and that's where I need to train more.

There was an interesting incident today. I've never seen such incident happening anywhere before. There was this guy playing Yurika, and Yurika seemed to be losing. And she didn't have much time left. But in the end it turned out that Yurika killed two of the opponent's pieces, and she was winning already. But she didn't have enough time to complete the game, and the opponent obviously had more time than her. Then her opponent just started playing randomly and even played into her territory, just to make her lose by time. Kanglaoshi saw this stopped the game, saying it's against the rules and he announced Yurika win. The guy wasn't happy. He kept arguing, saying he can still play and he thought he'd won by time so he played like that. But Kanglaoshi still didn't change his decision, and in the end the guy had to accept the defeat.

Well, I find it kind of ridiculous if you PLAN to win by time. Weiqi is a game played on a board, and not through a clock. The clock is only there to make sure that the game doesn't take too long. If you are winning your opponent by time and you are also leading in the game, why would you want to give up the lead and try to win by time? I think he was kind of anxious also lah, 'cos he didn't expect things to turn out like that. But since he has more time, he could've used that time to think properly and find a move that wouldn't lead to his loss.

Got another four more games tomorrow. The number of people going for this year's Whompoa Group A is so little... It's less than 40 people, you know? At this rate I would play against Xie Tang very soon... Let's hope I can make it.