2008-07-31

Fourth game

I lost...
I was playing white and I made a mistake at move 34 which lead to black chasing me all over the board and ending in me dead in the middle. I was actually alive for a while but then I made another mistake that cut me off. Then it was too late and too little space for another eye. I resigned.

2008-07-29

Third game

I won!
I play black and get both right side and the top. My opponent gets a big moyo at the bottom and I do what I can to reduce it. But I got some problems and my opponent almost killed my center group, but I escaped. So now I am in the lead. He finds a tesuji that cut of my top side and he gets a living shape in my territory. But both my sides live as well and now the game is very close. I win by 1.5 points.

2008-07-28

Second day

Time for the second day of games. First I followed Girlwing to the house "Brandmannen" where she is playing. We said good luck to each others and then I went to the gymnasium which is the main playing area. I faught my way to the posters with the pairings and started searching for my name. Hmmm didn't find it but that is not so strange because there are so many names and you have to search both for black and white. So I searched more and more... and more... and nothing. Did they forgot to enter my name for the second round? I will not have anyone to play against? I search more following with my finger on each name and checking all players with 5 kyu. My name nowhere! I starting to get really nervous. Then I start searching lower among the 8 kyu players and higher up to the 3 kyu players and THERE! I am playing a 3 kyu player! Not a single 5 kyu anywhere close to my name. Strange... and it took me maybe 10 minutes to find my name. Later Girlwing and I talked about it and she came with a great suggestion. There should be a list with all players names (or registreation number) and next to the name there can be information about building and board number, maybe even opponent information. This would really be great for such large tournaments with hundreds of players.


I went up to my board and my opponent was (of course) already waiting for me. It was a tough game and my opponent always managed to get huge areas of territory. I worked to reduce it and he built new and I reduced and then he build another big area and then I play in the wrong direction and my invading stones died and I was way behind. I had no way to catch up again, so I lost...





After the game I walked around in the gymnasium and there I found an auditorium where they were showing the top board live through KGS. Then suddenly the screensaver started and the people watching didn't know what to do. Luckely Mohsart was there at the moment and could go down and wake the computer again and the show could continue.










I walked over to Brandmannen and Girlwings table where she was playing against a Polish 5 dan. I looked on the board and it looks quite good for her. I walk around and take some pictures and sit for a while and solve some problems from my go-book. Later in endgame I count the score and see that Girlwing is still ahead but when they are done and do the official count then is clear that Girlwing lost by 0.5 point. I am surprised and she is surprised because she had counted she was ahead for the endgame. But she counted wrong so she used the wrong tactic for the endgame. Too bad. But the abillity to count correctly and use the appropiate tactics is one aspect that defines a strong player so even she was better in every other aspect of the game and was walking a sure victory, it is not enough if you can not choose the winning path in the endgame.

It is getting quite late and we are soooo hungry because we didn't eat any lunch. So we buy Sushi! Yay! :D
At 18:00 is was time for pair-go and of course Girlwing and Boywing will play with each other. We both were a bit nervous while we waited for our opponents. They have the same last name so we were thinking that they might be brother and sister or maybe husband and wife. One of them were 4 dan and the other was 23 kyu and we were discussing if we read wrong or if it was an error on the card. Maybe is should be 2 kyu. Soon our opponents appeared and now we understood. The 23 kyu is the 4 dans daughter and she is maybe 4 years old and the father told us she learned the basics just three days ago. But when she started to play, it was amazing. She made no big errors you would expect from this sweet kid. She even made some moves that I had to think really hard on. During the whole game she was looking at me and Girlwing and smiled the most lovely smile with her whole face. I almost didn't dare to look into her sweet eyes when I made my moves because I felt a bit guilty to win over such a young girl. Not too long into the game the father suggested them to resign and we won the game. Girlwing fell in love with the girl so now I have to figure out how to win her back.

The second round of pair-go started at 20:00 and this time we play against a German couple of 3 dan and 2 kyu. A little stronger than us but we will try to make a good game. It is very confusing to play pair-go. Girlwing is a lot stronger than me and I have problems understanding the reasons behind her moves. We are not allowed to talk to each other during the game so most of the time I have to guess what my team mate have in mind before I make the move. I play some moves very good and some less good. About halfway into the game I got so tired that I could fall to sleep. At one moment I had to look what colour the stone in my hand was so I knew if I was black or white. So with no surprise I made a couple of big misstakes. I let the opponents capture our cutting stones and later I made the wrong follow up after our opponent ignored our ko-threat. Then the game was hopless to win and we resigned.

2008-07-27

Let the games begin!

So now the real tournament games start. The first day of ten with serious tournament games to find out who the strongest player in Europe is, who will become European Champion.

It will not be me... I am still too weak. But I will do my best and try to win as many games as possible and hopefully I can go home after ten games and be a little stronger than when I first came here.

Usually the pairing is very late on big tournaments like this. It is not uncommon that the players must wait for several hours while the organizers are sweating blood while they work out a fair pairing with supergroup and all. This time they posted the wall list just a couple of minutes after 10 o'clock, when the games actually were supposed to start.

I was nervous when my opponent arrived and we started to play. I have played very bad during my latest tournaments and I have not practiced anything for the last year. No games played. I started making errors in my notes of the game and then I played a bad fuseki. But soon I fell into the meditation of the game and played some good moves. My opponent was quite good but was a bit timid and I was the one controlling the game. We made 176 moves until my opponent gave up. I won the first game!

I was sure I would not win anything the first week and then I was expecting to win more the second week. But now I started with a win and tomorrow I will get a harder opponent so it can go any way now.

After my game I went to Girlwings playing site and looked at the dan players games. Most of them had just finished the opening and was starting with middle game. At first I didn't see Girlwing and then I believed I did and walked there but when I came closer I saw it was a Korean girl. So embarrasing. But she had a top with the same color of one that Girlwing have and she have black hair and eye glasses. She even moves and have the same gestures as Girlwing. I had to search again and soon I saw my love waving to me. She was playing a japanese 5 dan and it was too early in the game for me to be able to see if she was ahead or behind in the game. While I waited for her to be done with the game I walked around and watched other players play. After a couple of hours the japanese finaly resigned. At that time I had counted and saw that he was behind with 8 points and it would be impossible for him to retake that so late in the game. Resign was the most noble thing to do. So Girlwing won! Yay!

By now we was very hungry so we went to the café to buy something to eat. Just when we arrived the chef sold his last sushi and had only sandwiches left, so we bought one cheese sandwich each. Not much but gave us energy for a while. Then we found out that there was a Korean BBQ Party on the other side of the river so we started walking there to get a bite. When we got there there were not so many there and there was no party. But we bought us some dinner and sat by the beautiful view and ate korean food. It was good food but I hope there will be more of a party at the other national theme days.

At the party area there are some beautiful old local houses. I really like old houses. They put a lot more love into the houses in the old days and decorated them in a nice way.

2008-07-26

First day in Leksand

Yesterday we did the packing, but we started way to late and finally I got to bed in the middle of the night at two o'clock. Then we have to get up at seven to eat breakfast, pack lunch, move all the flowers to a shady spot (so they'll survive 2 weeks), pack the last stuff and leave for the train station to get tickets. It was quite a stressful morning but we managed to get to the train in time.

Then we had a quite nice train trip where I listened to music while Girlwing slept. :)
In the train we saw quite many weiqi players and when we arrived we saw even more. Some organizers from EGC were there at the train station to give some people a ride to the playing venue and they were so kind to take most of the bags for all the players as well.


They day was very hot and we was walking for long periods of time under the sun and carrying our heavy bags. So exhausting! The worst part was when we walked from the playing venue to our hotel Moskogen. Only 34 min walk but a lot of bags and direct sun and no wind. So when we got to our hotel I bought us an ice-cream each to cool down and we relaxed for a while in our room. That helped a bit but we were still very tired and Girlwing slept for a while again. I should have slept too, but I didn't. Instead I defrosted the fridge and cleaned some kitchen stuff.


It was getting quite late and we needed dinner, so we went in to town and found a supermarket where we got our ingredients for dinner. Girlwing made us chinese food with just a little of my help. She did it very good. She made egg noodles with garlic broccoli and fried eggs and tomatoes.

2008-07-25

EGC tomorrow

Tomorrow, Girlwing and I will go to Leksand for the EGC 2008. For you who don't know what EGC is, I can tell you that it is the European Go Congress and for the first time it will take place in Sweden, which most of us are very excited about..

After dinner we will start packing for the two week stay in beautiful Leksand. I guess we will take a lot of stuff with us. I will at least bring two WeiQi sets and one XiangQi set. Then we need clothes for two weeks, cameras, books and a lot of other stuff. It will probably be too much to carry. :P

During our stay at the EGC in Leksand we will compete in a couple of WeiQi tournaments and the social life between games. I will try to write something now and then. Maybe I write about my games and maybe I will mention other players games. There will probably be something to tell about the social activities that happen during these two weeks and the special national theme days. We will see... :)

2008-07-24

New blogger on the block

I have been sitting here all day with Girlwing modifying the template and making this blog look good to my eyes and to create a personal feel of it. Now I am happy... :)

I have never been a very active writer. I write in periods and I guess I will continue like that. Sometimes I have a lot to say and sometimes I forget that I have a blog. I will try to be more regular in the future.

See ya'll !