Iron Man Results

The KGS November Iron Man Tournament has wrapped up and, I must say, it was a lot of fun. Every match was interesting, I improved as a player, Zero9090 came in 2nd place, and I met some new friends. On the downside, I could only play 9 out of the 20 games due to not-quite-unexpected-but-unexpected-anyway problems on the homefront and I merely finished in 29th place. Of those 9 games, I won 4 but would have won 2 of the remainining 5 if it were not for monumental boneheaded errors, including one on what should have been the last move of the game. :( Oh, well, I think it's those kind of errors that both discourage me and challenge me to improve.

The tournament format itself is interesting, but I leave it feeling that, somehow, it's flawed in that the ranking used as a base for the handicaps is determined at registration time --- not actual game time. So, the winner turned out to be some 16k player (no, I'm not going to say sandbagger even if you make me say sandbagger!) who signed up as a 20k. Although I'm sure there are holes in any system, perhaps there is room for improvement here. What I take out of all this is that, if I want a crown, I need to improve enough to play in the open tournament where every game is played on even terms.

Special thanks go out to both NannyOgg and yoyoma, who helped tremendously with multiple reviews and learning sessions. It is because of them that I was able to get so much out of these games and improve from them. Next month's tournament should be fun!