Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Yeah it appears that BB owned at chess, Ichess, Weiqi, Cchess, Gomoku all get first! An astronomical upgrade to the top 5 that we used to get... I think all of us who went deserve a clap, especially kovan who was in the winning team for both Cchess and Ichess (yeah kovan im posting this so that you don't have to brag about it) , I know that i myself didnt really contribute to the final scores at all, but surely my divine aura there ensured that my allies would greatly benefit. Come to think of it, it's like the shadow hunter's ulti Big Bad Voodoo... self sacrifice for the greater good! Anyway i don't know what happened in other people's games so i shall just write about my own experiences.

Weiqi

Game 1: Played with my classmate yanjie, according to him he's quite enthu about weiqi and likes the game very much, but apparently his enthuness hadnt been enough to fuel him and motivate him into improving his skills, and i soon realized after first 4 moves that he was one of the "put random seeds around the board and hope opponent gets tricked" kinda player. Not knowing basic fusekis, i managed to steal quite a large portion of his corners and destroyed his few futile attempts at invading my land.

Game 2: This is like the ultimate embarrassment of my life lah, losing to Jeremy Yu of all people. Actually i have to blame this loss on my own impatience, jeremy is like so calm, able to think carefully before each move, taking minutes while i quickly placed the seed in less than 10 seconds after each move he made. Apparently his moves were well considered and soon i realized i had a small group cut off from the base. attempts to reconnect it failed horribly and i tried to escape, but was too carried away trying to stabilize another part of the board to realize that jeremy was cutting me off again. somehow i was quite stumped cuz by now this was a damn big dragon, and if i lost it i sure ggz, so i despo and keep thinking until i think of miao4 zhao1 and managed to force a seki. Then it was time up cuz we were playing so slowly, and the arbiter said the game was quite hard to tell since both of us had potential to turn the game over to our sides, and though jeremy had a larger advantage he began first so i had the advantage of komi. so we played a bit longer, and me being even more impatient and urgently needing to go to the toilet played even more carelessly, resulting in jeremy managing another sekion the top right hand corner which was supposed to belong to me.

Game 3: Against another random, i easily won as i kept eating his groups. He became damn scared then started trying to spam eyes, but never realize his eyes are all fake eyes. In quite a short time the arbiter came and told us to stop since i clearly would win.

Game 4: How unlucky i was! First i got jeremy yu, and then i kena some j2 weiqi club member called minghui. I had neither his calmness nor his experience, and though i thought i had a slight advantage over him at the beginning, having access to a larger portion of the board he somehow managed to seal off a large patch in the center. Then as i did not seal up the sides he managed to creep into my land. The final blow came when i realised he crept in so much that he killed off a whole group that was supposed to be alive already :S

Being a cchess member, i have more confidence for the game even though weiyang said i was a wu3 liu2(5th level, or low level) player. I then countered him by saying even though both my weiqi and cchess are wu3 liu2, its better than him having si4 liu2(4th level) cchess and weiqi that is bu4 ru4 liu2 (no grade), and 5+5=10>4. Of course he didnt realise that actually with all this liu2 stuff the number supposed to be smaller better.
Round 1: Anyway the first game was my team vs some random team. Apparently most of the players at IHC cchess are like those at IHC weiqi, noobs who barely know how to move the pieces. I was planing to set up a beautiful long chain of forced moves by threatening to checkmate that would gain me a large advantage, but apparently he didnt get threatened and died to my checkmate. Jordan and Yiding won soon after, thrashing equally noob players. (3-0, 1-0)

Round 3: Lol it was quite lame that the first board at the first table had such noobs playing, as i moved zhong pao and the opponent responded with xian ren zhi lu. I was wondering how hilarious it would be if something like that happened during raffles cup, but apparently the distraction was not great enough for me to not own that guy in the most humiliating way possible opponent: ha! move pao whack che! me: oh move che. opponent: ha! out che! me: jiang. opponent: look at board. me: oh btw that was a checkmate, in case you didn't notice. Yiding won, but jordan lost even though he had more pieces, i think cuz he did not considering the possibility of sacrificing piece to kill. (5-1, 2-0)

Round 3: Haiz, why must all good things come to an end? This was the last game we would play at the first table. We were playing against BW1, quite a pro team with sunlixing inside and another guy who i saw at char yang cup before. I was like telling myself to think properly and play serious, since this match would decide BB4 really is that good. Apparently the team quite sucks, with jordan and yiding losing like 3 minutes after the round started. Yiding died the most humiliating way possible: men1 sha1. I saw them both lose and then i was damn demoralized cuz i knew that the team sure lose liao, but i decided to play on to try and win so that BW1 won't get perfect points. Then the stupidest thing came, my opponent tried to launch an attack, which failed and ended up with me getting quite a fierce attack threatening to tie3 men2 shuan1 him instead. He realized in time and moved up his xiang to defend his shi from my twin ches, but i moved out the jiang1. At that point in time i thought that i would sure win, since its 3 pieces vs 1 defending piece, but then i soon realised after i made my move that he can just lower his pao to protect his shi. But then the opponent didnt realise, and thought for a few minutes that he lost already. I was stupid enough to keep quiet and smile, so he stared at the board and after another few minutes he realised why i was smiling. So he moved. Then after that i was quite screwed cuz his che was aiming my ma, which had no protection, and although i was up by a few minutes in time his attack was quite fierce and i wasted my time thinking of how to attack. After a while he managed to 3 zi gui bian, and was almost killing me, but then we realised both our clocks dropped, so we arranged a draw. So sad, losing 2 and a half points in a single round :S (5-3-1, 2-1)

Round 4: Great sacrifice, we gave BB2 3 points since they seem to have better players (5-6-1,2-2)

Round 5: Last round, i was quite angry at Yiding because he wasn't playing properly and lost in like 1 minute, while jordan lost soon after (must say sorry to jordan cuz i thought he like yiding liddat anyhow play). I was thinking even though we sure cannot make it, since we are playing already might as well play properly and gain as much points as we can. I mean not being able to win because we give away points to another team from the same house is different from anyhow play and losing just because we can't possibly win already. I mean besides the issue of small points (it means nothing in IHC lah, but then in bigger tourneys quite impt), anyhow play is like so no honour... As for my own game i won with one eyes closed some random guy they found last minute, it was like third move and i got a free pao already, the rest of the game is like just as lame. (6-8-1,2-3) Sigh, negative results :S