Playing fun stuff in a tournament

Tomorrow I think I’m going to participate in OTB tournament, just because there’re so few of them. However I haven’t played in a couple of months. So I’m going to lose most of my games anyway. What would be the fun way to lose them? Black hole fuseki? Always tenuki? Usual go is certainly boring, what would you suggest me to do to spice things up?

This fuseki is fun to try.

For a more conventional one I like playing Jabberwocks a lot recently, it just feels nice or something.

Mirror go? I find that quite intense though…

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Always play to learn and have kind of game you enjoy rather than to win. That way you can be hapy even if you lose and actually makes.you more likely to win…

If you want to play mirror Go, you better have excellent (ladder) reading and flawless endgame. A German 6d recently tried that against his (German) rival in a tournament and lost horribly. :slight_smile:

I was going to suggest the Great Wall fuseki, but Vsotvep beat me to it. If you don’t mind annoying your opponent, you could try attaching on every move. Someone on OGS used to do that regularly (or does, I’m not sure if they are still here). More conservatively, you might try opening tengen, or playing the cosmic style, or playing 5-4s

When I play in tournaments where I don’t know what to do, and especially if I feel that my chances are low, I like to focus my game on one aspiration that I can succeed at without the pressure to win the game.

Some of these were:

  • Play inspired moves, create exciting ideas
  • If you can not see a good move, look instead for a move that is unlikely to be bad
  • Create uncertainty and make your opponent shoulder the risk
  • Use sente for straightforward big moves, then observe what your opponent makes out of his move

One fun fuseki that I got once was 3-3 in every corner - it was actually both of us trying psychological warfare :slight_smile:

Practice skills that you don’t normally give enough attention, like time management and counting.

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I think mirror go is a bad idea for this purpose.

Mirror go is extremely irritating for your opponent. That is the opposite of fun - you don’t want to piss them off.

Same problem. The idea isn’t to annoy the opponent (unless that is your idea of fun?)

So pick something unusual and interesting, not boring and irritating.

GaJ

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This is totally subjective. Some people might find tengen opening annoying, or early 3-3 invasions.
If your opponent is finding the game irritating, they are free to resign.
Who are you to tell anyone they can’t play a certain way that they think might be enjoyable?

Now, if the intent is to deliberately annoy hoping they’ll resign, say, by only playing on the first line… That’s one thing… But if they’re just trying to find something new and interesting to see how it turns out… Don’t tell anyone that that’s not ok.

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You have a fair point.

However, in this context, we aren’t talking about someone who’s found mirror go to be fascinating, and is experimenting with it in good faith.

This context is “how can I do something fun?”.

I think that in this context, it is entirely appropriate to point out that mirror go has a substantial chance of being irritating rather than fun, and so it would be advisable to chose something else.

Clearly it is subjective, and not applicable to all possible opponents out there.

However, my assertion is that mirror go has a substantial chance of being irritating. This is based on my experience of having opponents play it on me and subsequent discussions.

Now, if you are arguing that my experience is entirely atypical, and just due to me being easy to irritate, then I couldn’t easily refute that. We’d have to put the question to a wider audience. But I don’t know what basis you would have to argue that other than your own personal experience of not finding it irritating. And it’s not clear why that would be any more valid than mine.

Bottom line - I’ve put it out there that at least one person (me) thinks that there is a reasonable chance your opponent would find it irritating, so on that basis, why not chose a fun opening with less chance than that.

GaJ

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So… What did you play? ^___^

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I always felt that playing mirror Go is more of a handicap for myself because it rids my opponent of difficult decisions.

I’d rather play against mirror go or someone that attaches to everything than sanreisei.