Go Congress – North Carolina

The two of us in uniform at the Pair Go competition

We spent a week in Black Mountain, NC (just East of Asheville) for the US Go Congress.  (Go is an Asian board game somewhat similar to Chess).

The Burralls are somewhat famous on the domestic Go scene, and the US Go Congress is the major event of the year, featuring multiple tournaments and activities.  Steve (Kristen’s dad) has been playing since he was a kid and introduced the family to the game.  Karoline (Kristen’s sister) was a tournament director at this year’s Congress.  Matt (Kristen’s brother) is one of the 50 best amateur players in the country.  Kristen is a strongly rated amateur as well.

We flew into Charlotte and rented road bikes for the week.  Black Mountain is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so great road riding was plentiful.  We went for a ride nearly every day, including one monster 40 miler with upwards of 3,000ft of steep climbing.

The Congress itself was held at a large YMCA campus just outside of town.  Tournament play happened every morning, and most afternoons as well.  Kristen did not enter the tournaments, though, so we had mornings free to hang out around town and walk around the campus.  Rides happened in the afternoon, after Kristen’s dad was done with his daily tournament game.

The highlight of the week was definitely the Pair Go competition.  Though we were not playing in the major tournaments, Kristen and I were allowed to sign up for the Pair Go tournament on Thursday evening.  Pair Go is what it sounds like – instead of the typical 1-on-1 game, two co-ed pairs of people play each other.  Each player takes alternate moves, and the pairs are not allowed to communicate with each other.  So what ends up happening is that the strong player (Kristen) tries to execute a solid strategy, but every other move the weak player (me) screws it up.

Couples sometimes dress up for Pair Go.  So of course, we wore our matching Waffel bike kits.

Despite Kristen’s strong rating, our average rank was one of the lowest in the tournament.  Luckily, Karoline and Wentao also had one of the lowest combined ranks in the tournament as well.  We played them in our first game and somehow pulled out a win!  Confident from our victory, we promptly got destroyed by a 7 year old boy and a woman who hadn’t played much before, following a series of horrible mistakes by me.  Go is a humbling game.