A 16-Kyu’s Experience at the 2025 Chicago Open Hello everyone! Hope you’re all having a good Memorial Day as I’m writing this. This will most likely come out later this week after then, so I hope you all had a good Memorial Day’s Weekend! The 2025 Chicago Open proved to be another spectacular weekend for the go community! There were many familiar faces, as well as a few new ones all vying to get as many good matches as possible. Some of them even got to compete for the first time ever, and did a miraculous show while doing so! Taken by Kartik Saraf 16K First, let’s get my stuff out of the way. I decided to self-promote to 16 kyu mainly to prove to myself that I was ready to move up as a player. I kept telling myself and others that I wanted to live up to it, and that’s what I set out to do. For Day 1, I ended the day with a record of 2-2. My first two games were colossal defeats, and my last two were the complete opposites of that. I won’t bore you with the details but suffice it to say those sobering losses awoke something in me and returned from the ashes better than ever, crushing anyone who stood in my way. It also might have had something to do with my choosing to use my own yunzi stones for the last two matches instead of the single convex ones provided at the tournament. I was joking with my club members who saw my stones earlier while I was practicing some problems that if I used my own stones, I might get some victories. It had me wonder if that was actually the case. Taken by Gavin Wallace 8K Day 2 proved to be something different altogether (while also disproving my theory)! My first match of the day (5th overall) had me paired up against my friend Robert Pociask, a 16K player who has won in these tournaments in the past and who goes to my Go club. He and I usually play together all the time, though I’ve never played him in an even match. That first moment when I saw the pairing, I was very concerned over what was going to happen, how my style would have to change because of having to go evenly against him. I was sorely mistaken of how it was going to turn out. Though I did end up losing, my club members noted how things didn’t end up happening the way they thought it would. One of them even noted a fight I was having in the lower right corner, which is very unlike how I usually play against him. Having no handicap and my determination to win forced me to adapt a more aggressive style, and it ended up impressing Bob a lot. So I would very much call that a win in my book. Match 2 (6th overall) wasn’t anything to think of. It was a very quick loss due to both of us playing very quickly. Once I was done and i went to check on a friend of mine, I got so glued on that match that my loss didn’t even matter to me at that point. More on that later. Taken by Bowen Yan 4K The final match was against Timothy Biel III 18K, who tried to psych me out by using one of those novelty fans from last year’s tournament to psych me out. I would say it worked to an extent since it ended in his victory. However, his dad (who recorded the match) noted that I managed to pull some tricks on him towards the end which Tim didn’t see coming, so that was nice to hear. My tournament record thus ended at 2-5 in all. Taken by Kartik Saraf 16K Now on to the more exciting stuff. Gavin had an impressive collection of wares to choose from this time around! There was even a 100-year old Go board on sale for $200 which was actually sold, so that was impressive! In addition, there was a newer member of our club who managed to attend the second day. His name is Michael Wu 2K. I say he’s a 2K because that was what was on his name tag, but that’s only because that was the rank pulled from his OGS account. His actual rank is actually around 2D, because a 2D is who he was facing in the match I saw. The person he was playing was Ellie Spohr 2D, a player who I have interviewed in the past. I haven’t seen her much in action, so I wanted to see at least one of her games from the beginning. When I came over, I wasn’t expecting to see her playing a member of one of my clubs. I hadn’t seen much of Michael’s play due to him not coming as frequently to our get togethers, so it was a rare chance to see his Go playing out in front of me. It was a real nail-biter of a game, but it ended in Ellie’s victory. It could have gone either way in my honest opinion, and for me it was easily the standout game in this entire tournament. The game where she played against Jamie Tang was also impressive, even though I only managed to catch the end. I hadn’t seen much of Jamie’s Go either, so that was a nice treat. Taken by Kartik Saraf 16K There will probably be another article about the awards ceremony talking about the winners, so the thing I will talk about is how amazing it was to see several members of the West Suburban Go Club winning awards in their divisions. Bob, Bowen, and Alicia are all wonderful players who deserve the accolades and recognition for their hard work and determination in this great game! I only hope one day I can become strong enough to join them on that podium and give more recognition to our amazing local Go club! Taken by MayJune Chen It was a very pleasurable experience for me, and I hope it was for all of you! I plan to return in November for the Chicago Rapid, so I hope to see many of you return for that. I also hope that we see many new players come to join in on the fun at that time. Hope everyone enjoyed a happy Memorial Day weekend!
