2nd Sabadell Tournament
Last weekend I took part of the 2nd Sabadell tournament. Sabadell, for those who aren't from Spain, is a city close to Barcelona, which has it's own Go club.
It was the first tournament I played on real life and I was quite nervous indeed. It was a handicapped tournament with 25 minutes and 30 seconds of japanese byo-yomi, based on McMahon with 4 rounds and rated for the European Go Federation. As there were few of us (only 14) and the levels ranged from 20k to 3d, there were lots of high handicapped games. It was won by a 4k, who played incredible game against a 2d when both of them had gone undefeated, involving a huge seki on one side of the board.
Winning the first game against calmed me down a little bit. And assuming I would lose the second one, even before playing, allowed me to relax myself even more: playing against a 3d is not an easy game even with 9 stones.
The problems appeared after lunchtime. I had two games against 8k players with 2 stones on my favour. For some reason, I relaxed myself too much and started playing too aggressively, which seems to be a nice idea against weaker players, but it turns out to be a really suicidal technique against stronger ones.
In the end, if we only talk about the results, I got 1 victory and 3 defeats. If we talk about the experience, I'd say I learned a lot, though I think I still have some to digest.
