THE JIST

Name: Solomon.
Age: 19
Gender: Male
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Strength: 3d-4d KGS. 5d AGA.
Experience: Nearly 3.5 years

GO TO THE PAST

It all started when I was beginning to get into the whole "anime" scene. I was watching shows like "Naruto" and "One Piece" all the time!  Next thing you know, I'm on animenfo.com, looking at the "Top 100 Anime" list and see this strange little show called "Hikaru no Go". I think you can guess what happened from there. I went through all 75 episodes in less than a week, it was VERY good! However, the one thing that bugged me was that I didn't understand the game that the series revolved around. Go? That old game old people play? I really didn't have any good idea about the game other than that it was a board game. Wanting to get the full grasp of the show, I found this online tutorial site that helped me out from "50" kyu, teaching me basics and such. I download the KGS software to hopefully get the hang of this game.

*Interesting fact: Because I never realized was the "k"s and the "d"s meant, I actually played my very first Go game with "danoontje", a well-known 6d player. Yes, my game, as I later found out, had quite a few amused kibitzers :).

Of course, after a few games, I realized...wow, this game is actually pretty fun! I really wasn't into chess all that much, but this game actually had me interested. Approaching KGS the same way I approached any other online games that I played then, I began playing as many as 10 games a day to hopefully gain the experience needed to raise my rank. Interesting how it actually worked...I found myself starting as a 25k and, though I never did take notice until later on, began climbing my way up through the kyu levels. Ataris were easier to find, ladders made sense, and I realized that two eyes in a group saved it. I just wanted to PLAY :P.

GO TO THE PRESENT

Now I'm 3d-4d KGS. However, though I have played over 3000 games online, I never played on real board until KGS2 8k (my first game that I played in real life was in the US Open in the US Go Congress 2005. It took a while to learn how to rearrange the stones to counting stones after the game ended :P.). Now, though I play as much as I can with the Tacoma Go Club and the Seattle Go Club, the amount of games I've played in real life tallies up to less than 5% of the games I've played online, so the small things like pattern recognition and looking at the board from a 3d perspective rather than a 2d perspective hurt my "real" (AGA) ranking. 

GO TO THE FUTURE

College...=_=.

OTHER HOBBIES/INTERESTS

As much fun Go is, there are many other things I enjoy/have interest in:

+Anime/manga.
+Art history.
+Asian and Disney movies.
+Bemani (music rhythm) games.
+Changii.
+Photoshop/Flash/web design.
+Piano.
+Online poker.
+Sudoku.
+Touhou.
+Violin.

'07 Congress, sandbaggers, KGS, stuff... - posted on Fri Jul 06 14:52:25 EDT 2007

I'll be leaving in less than 2 weeks to attend an event with some friends (non Go-related), then head to Pennsylvania to attend the 2007 US Go Congress.  It's going to be so fun >:), time to hit the books and start studying.  I'll be posting all of my US Open games here for review, hopefully some of my good friends on KGS will also help me out :D.  I wonder if I should use hamete...?  Or how many books should I buy?  I only hope to at least get a (1, or maybe more? ;P) simul in against 4 pros:

1) Nakano Hasuhiro 9p, a strong pro who has recently won the Paris Open (beating Fan Hui and Cho Seok-bin, two of the strongest players in Europe) and brought to light due to an unfortunate blunder in a game he played against Ishida Yoshio 9p.  I, for one, hope that no one will bring up that incident during his attendance at the Congress (and, for the skeptical GD users here, I won't.  Promise.)
2) Ping Yu 6p, a strong pro who has beaten top-level pros such as Gu Li 9p (twice) and Chang Hao 9p in smaller-scale tournaments, I think it's safe to say that he has great raw talent =).
3) Guo Juan 5p, a great teacher I had met at the Seattle Go Center 3-day workshop of hers.  I am not sure if she will simul or not, but for sure, I will try to catch her fantastic lectures!
4) Ryo Maeda 6p, a very well-known regular pro at the Congress.  The last time I had played him was in 2005 US Go Congress, taking 9 stones in a 6-man (I think, it was a lot :p) simul.  I managed to win the game after killing his dragon, now I want to see how I will fare against him this year =).

For those wondering, other pros that will also be there (and probably be available for simuls) are Mingjiu Jiang 7p, Yilun Yang 7p (you know, I hear so much about this man, but I don't really know him nor his principles, so I'll have to see what he's like...), Isoko Ashida 6p, Huiren Yang 1p (Hehe, I wonder if he greets or says thanks to his opponents in real life ;p.  For those who don't know, he is somerville/sususu/hyang on KGS...), Xuefen Lin 1p (she asked that I only take 3 stones against her in a 6-man simul as a 5-kyu back in 2005 ;_;), James Kerwin 1p.

Regarding amateurs, great players I'll be looking for are...

1) Jing Yang 9d, the strongest player from Canada, he will be playing in the Ing tournament at the Congress.  I predict that he will win it all.  Trivia: He is the first IGS 9d* player, and was the 2006 WAGC representative (for Canada).
2) Shunichi Hyodo 7d, an unknown player from Japan.  He is probably the dark horse to win the US Open, so I'll be looking out for him.
3) Eric Lui 8d, one of the promising AGA youth players and pretty much a celebrity on KGS as TheOne/Pianist, could potentially win in the Ing or the US Open, though other players like Zhaonian Chen, Yongfei Ge, Yuan Zhou, and all of these other great 7d-8d players might give him a hard time.

Where was I during the...

2005 US Open: AGA 5-kyu / KGS 6k - 5k
2006 US Open: Didn't attend, but I was AGA 1-kyu / KGS 3k - 1k during Congress.
2007 US Open: AGA 3-dan / KGS 2d - 3d

Hopefully I'll be at least 5-dan by 2008 :3, assuming Starcraft 2 or university studies doesn't suck my life away. 

I've been a bit flustered recently over my encounter of a KGS 2k who also happened to be AGA 3d...*hears moaning and groaning of KGS and AGA comparisons*, but still, considering I could give this guy at least 2 stones (oh wait, I did recently beat an AGA 3-dan with 2h...), no wonder our rating system isn't taken seriously among my peers ;).  Who knows, maybe I'll just let KGS determine my strength, and keep my AGA rank anchored at 3-dan for 5 years or so to knock down people who are self-promoting themselves...but sandbagging is wrong, and we all know two wrongs do not make a right =).

Bleh, I really need to tone down on KGS accounts, God knows how many I have now, but whenever I have a bad losing streak on one account, I just lose the want to continue playing on it, so it goes downhill from there...but really, it's such an immature behavior =).  I think I'll promise to myself to not make another new account for at least a year, but that will not be so easy, as creating accounts has almost become sort of a bad habit :x.  My accounts have been ranging from [1d] to [5d], with a [6d?] account, hehe.  Analyzing the accounts with the most number of games played, I'd say I'm probably in the [2d] - [3d] range, which I'm happy with I suppose...hopefully I'll get better once I attend the University of Washington this Fall, with the Seattle Go Center only a 5 minute walk away and lots of free time I am presupposing :D. 

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