On Saturday I’ll be jumping on a train bound to Boston to attend the US Go Congress. It’ll be my very first time so I’m excited about every single aspect of the conference: the US Open, pro lectures, reviews, simuls, and making lots of new friends who share a common love for this ancient game.

Besides the AlphaGo keynote on Saturday I’m probably most excited about being in the presence of all the folks who make the English speaking Go community great. I’ve read Yilun Yang’s books, listened to Guo Juan’s KGS lectures, used Anders Kierulf’s software, watched Kim Myungwan’s live commentary of AlphaGo, enjoyed Kevin Hwang’s GoTalk interviews, commiserated with Brady’s Blunders, learned from Nick Sibicky’s lectures, and been in awe of Lee Hajin’s Korean pro skills. They will all be in attendence!

To capture just a tiny fraction of this awesomeness I’ll be keeping a daily diary of my time at the US Go Congress. While I’ll probably be too busy during the conference to update my blog, upon my return, I plan to write a post for each day. I’ll share my US Open game records (gulp) via GoKibitz’s nice embedding feature, include interesting photos, provide conference event experience reports, and include whatever interesting anecdotes may arise. Why do this? Simply because I’ve really appreciated Baduk bloggers who took the time to document their own experiences at past congresses like BenGoZen as well as various members of LifeIn19x19. Their detailed descriptions have certainly fueled my enthusiasm for attending this year. Hopefully I can return the favor by inspiring someone else to attend their first US Go Congress the next time around.

While I try to contain my excitement, I’ll be spending a lot of time this week trying to hit the books in preparation for the US Open. I’m currently working through the following list and using my brand new Go set as much as possible before I depart.

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