2011 US Go Congress: Wrap-up - Part 2

In the afternoon, Bill, Kalinda, and I played our last club team match against the Orange County Go Club, whose team comprised of Curtis 7-dan, Gansheng 7-dan, and Calvin 7-dan. :P As though that weren't bad enough, Curtis was the North American Masters finalist, losing out to 13 year old Ziyang Hu 1P of China in the last game, and Gansheng and Calvin were the finalists in this year's Redmond Cup for the strongest youth players. So yeah, not your average 7-dan players. Kalinda got 20 points reverse komi in addition to 9 stones in her game against Calvin and lost by 31, Bill was absolutely wrecked by Gansheng, and I was forced to resign at 6 stones against Curtis. Oh well.

After the last round of soccer in the afternoon, came the award ceremony and banquet. I won my section in the Die Hard tournament, which I expected, having gone undefeated. I was surprised to find that I had also won first place in the 1-dan section of the US Open, getting a certificate from the Korean Baduk Association.

Deborah, a friend of mine from the AGA summer camp I attended at Mills College in high school, did the inscription of my name inside. :)

So these are all the awards I wound up with. Later on, I found out I had won the US Open tiebreaker with Kevin, because he had taken a forfeit win in the first round. The universe works in strange ways, sometimes. Initially, I was actually paired with the guy who forfeited, before the TDs had to redo the pairings because of other errors. The guy who I did get paired with, Jack, won all of his remaining games to go 5-1 and take third place.

9-Dan Showdown is the book I got with my vendor certificates; it covers the ten-game matches between Go Seigen and Fujisawa Kuranosuke. I hope to post my thoughts on the material in the near future.

This is the fan I purchased on the second to last day, as a symbol of my becoming a dan player. Pretty meaningless, since it won't help me play better, but I still like the motto on it.
The characters read SEKISHIN in Japanese or SHIXIN in Chinese, which translates as "Stone mind". Supposedly, the idea is "to reach a state like a heart inside a stone". It was written by Otake Hideo, a professional I admire for his aesthetic style. I believe Takemiya said of him, "He will not play ugly moves for love nor money.", which is something I hope to emulate one day.