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Time-stamp: <2021-03-17 15h28 UTC>
I just competed in my first ever tournament! It went not well! Mistakes were made, but things were learnt. The game in question is Tak.
Tak is a (new-ish) abstract strategy board game, with a growing community
We're a friendly and welcoming bunch, and we'd love to have you participate! There'll be a beginner tournament later this year, perhaps something to set your sights on.
At the time of writing, currently on-going is the U.S. Tak Association Intermediate Invitational Tournament⁰. I managed to inveigle my way into an ``invitational'' tournament¹, prior to which i had played against humans perhaps once.
It was nerve-wracking, anxiety inducing, thrilling, addictive, and exhausting all at once. I learnt a great many things about the arena of the mind: concentration budgets, the virtues of playing defence-only to exhaust the opponent, the effect of distractions, reputations, and many more things besides.
These factors could (and did in several games) conspire in me to lose the games before they had even begun. After the first game of a particular match i was so exhausted that i don't even recall having a thought in the second game!
I was fortunate enough to have one of the best players in the community live-stream two of my matches and provide running commentary and analysis. It's almost painful to watch. Their advice is so lucid, so sensible, their analysis so obvious, yet for the life of me i could not have managed the things they were suggesting in situ.
How can things be so obvious in hindsight yet so impossible to see at the moment? Perhaps those are the best sort of mistakes, the blatant ones. I can't wait to make more :)
⁰ You can view the tournament progress here
¹ a testament to the friendliness of the community, one of the other players dropped out, i had asked about this, and then was approached to sub in