Ninth game at EGC

It's friday and only two games left to play in the EGC. Today I played a Korean lady of 7 kyu. She didn't speak any English so we nodded and I placed my first black stone on the board.

She played her first four stones on the same side of the board, while I spread them out to occupy a larger territory. Her fifth stone she approched my lower right corner and there she must have played wrong because I closed her in directly.

I left my corner with some aji and secured some territory in the upper right. Directly she attached to my 4-4 stone and I played a hane. In the sequence that follows I build a wall that is building a large moyo.

She then turns to invade my lower side and I jump in to her lower left corner at san-san. She block from the wrong side and I get a good result and her D6 stone is too close to her D4 group, making an inefficient shape.

(;GM[1]FF[4]CA[UTF-8]AP[CGoban:3]ST[2]
RU[Chinese]SZ[19]KM[7.50]TM[5400]OT[3x30 byo-yomi]
GN[EGC Main Tournament Round 9]PW[Korean lady]PB[Boywing]WR[7k]BR[4k]DT[2011-08-05]EV[EGC 2011]RO[Round 9]PC[Bordeaux, France]WT[Korea]BT[Sweden]RE[B+5.50]
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My H7 move is not so good. It should be better at K10. My F9 is even worse and makes a counter attack at H9 possible. The E10 move I regretted the second after I put it on the board. So I just pretended it didn't exist and I tried something else. The problem is that I removed some aji in the upper right.

Whites M3 made me some worries but I decided to defend my moyo and played N4. I was later told that this was a very good move. My opponent didn't answer so I got the possibility to capture the M3 stone.

A couple of moves later white attacked my upper group with G15. The best response to live is E18, but I wanted to be able to jump out in whites middle area so I played H15. That gave me some problems when I played wrong a couple of times and I barely survived thanks to my opponent to make as many mistakes as me.

By now I felt I was ahead and didn't want any bad surprises so I played inside my own territory at R11. Then came L9 and I felt like crying. I read out as far as I could and there are so many cutting points and it was hard to find any way to play a sequence where I can keep all my stones. So I played a sequence to give away three stones and am able to close off my territory. Then again I didn't expect the next move at O13. Well now it should really be closed.

We played all the way through endgame and to fill all the dames to count the points. I won by 5.5 points. Yay! So now I have three wins totally and all of them in the second week. Tomorrow I will meet a French 6 kyu. I think he both lost and won against 4k and 5k so he should be at my strength. It will be a challenge!

Girlwing won today against her Japanese 6 dan opponent. Tomorrow she will play another 6 dan who has played well this tournament. Let's hope for the best and that Girlwing wins her seventh victory.

Go players solving weiqi problems together under a tree.

Morino Setsuo 9P is reviewing the game between Alexandr Dinershteyn 7D and Catalin Taranu 7D.

Players looking at the results of today and the new pairing of tomorrow.

To farewell drink is served tonight.

Players enjoying the farewell drink.

First game at EGC

 Ahhh today is the first day of the main tournament games. Big expectation and anticipation for the worlds largest go event. Almost a thousand amateur go players from all around the world is gathered and a lot of go professionals as well.

The first round was supposed to start at 09:30 in the morning but of course there were delays. For some time it was a bit chaotic and one of the organizers announced that there will be no games today. We didn't take that too seriously because that is unthinkable, so we continued to wait. One hour late the pairing was up and we could find our table and our opponent.

There were a lot of small tables in each room and there was not a lot of space. The go boards hardly fit on the table but there were no real problem to play. As we say in Sweden "If there is room for our hearts, there is room for our butts".

I played against a 5k French player. It was an even battle but in the end I was ahead but short of time. My opponent then threaten to kill some stones in a complicatedly shaped group of mine. I was too stressed to be able to read it out so I took the safe way and sacrificed a stone and a couple of points. That was my last mistake that changed the outcome of the game and I lost by two points. At least Girlwing won her game against a 4D player. I hope for better luck tomorrow.

(;GM[1]FF[4]CA[UTF-8]AP[CGoban:3]ST[2]
RU[Chinese]SZ[19]KM[7.50]
GN[Round 1]PW[French guy]PB[Boywing]WR[5k]BR[4k]DT[2011-07-24]EV[EGC 2011]RO[1]PC[Bordeaux, France]WT[France]BT[Sweden]RE[W+2.50]
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After the games we went out to find a supermarket. In Sweden I am used to that the supermarkets are open all days in the week, but not in France. Here they close at lunch time if they are open at all. So now we are running low on food, but I think we have enough for breakfast tomorrow morning. Otherwise we can buy some potato chips in the playing venue.

After the game we also went to listen to a 9p Chinese commenting the top boards games.

For dinner I ate a American French pizza. The most fat pizza I ever ate!

A church outside the pizza place.

This girl sat on the wall of an old building we passed on our way to the closed supermarket.

Weiqi pro in Sweden

We managed to get a Korean go pro to Stockholm. She came a couple of weeks ago and the plan is that she will stay for a year.

The pro will come to the Stockholm go club twice a week to hold lectures and review our games. She is also arranging an insei style league for us. It is also planned that the Korean pro will be present in all Swedish go tournaments during the year.

I hope many swedes will get inspired and work hard to get stronger. I will at least visit the go club more frequently. See you there!

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European Professional Go League

Now the first step has been taken to start an European Professional Go Organization. These are exciting times and I wish them all the luck in the hard work it will take to make this a success.

Every year they will take the 12 strongest European players that want to compete in a European professional league. If you are not strong enough you will loose your pro status and be replaced with some stronger player. This is quite different from how it works in Asia where you keep your pro status for life, no matter if your strength decline.

Personally I think this is a bit strange and I think they instead should allow one, two or zero new players each year depending on their strength. Maybe the aspiring players need to play five pros and win at least two of the games. If several players manage this then they play against each others to decide who will get the pro status this year. If none of them are strong enough then none of them will become pro.

In the beginning the new European pro organization will have a hard time to find any sponsors and it is very uncertain how they will manage to get any games played unless they play online. Maybe they will play the games when they are participating other regular amateur tournaments in Europe?

No matter how hard it will be for the organization, they must keep working hard and build relationships with media and potential sponsoring companies. They must get popularity and interest from the go playing community and most crucial of all, they must work hard in spreading the knowledge and interest of go in the general population in Europe to get the broad customer base that they are lacking today.

So far the information available is quite vague so maybe they are not talking about real pro status, but just a new league with strong players. That is not as exciting but can be very interesting as well. Such a league might push strong players to become even stronger so that they can participate one year and compete for the honour and money of the first price.

I have hoped for an European professional Organization for a while. I am aware that such an organization will not be as strong as the Asian ones, but it doesn't have to be. But it will need to have a core of really strong players who are really dedicated to the game and have a strong passion to spread the interest of the game to as many as possible. I believe that such a core team of strong European professionals is the only thing that can make this happen and I really hope that they exist.

Computer vs Pro at EGC

At EGC 2010 in Finland a match between a Cray XT4/XT5 supercomputer against a European 5 dan professional, Catalin Taranu, was played on a small 9x9 board with no handicap and after that a game with a full size 19x19 board with 7 stones handicap for the computer. The computer program MogoTW used 512 of the 10864 computer cores available in the supercomputer.

Most people interested in go-playing computers were expecting MogoTW, an improved version of Mogo, to give a tough resistance on the small board while having problems on the full sized board. In the game on the small 9x9 board the computer never really had a chance and lost. On the full sized 19x19 board the computer played quite well and had a nice lead in the endgame. Because of the way the program works (Monte Carlo/UCT) it didn't really try to take any points in the endgame and was instead connecting stones in its own territory, while the human professional player were taking point after point. But that was OK because of the computers big lead and in the end it had won by 1.5 points.

Next time it can play with six or even five stones handicap. By then the computers playing strength have probably increased so it will be a challenge for the next human professional to beat it.

Free go pro lessons

Right now you can get professional go lessons for free on the wbaduk go server. 14 teachers including 8 professionals are available every day. It is on a first come first served basis so you have to be there in good time.

This offer is valid from 14th June to 1st July. Notice that the times are in Korean time zone and also notice that the teachers are sitting in the middle of the night to make it comfortable for the players on the other side of the globe with different time zone.

Take the chance to get a lecture from a strong player!

How to become a go pro

If you are living in in another country than China, Japan or Korea, how do you become a professional weiqi player? One way is to move to one of those countries and join their insei schools. There are a couple of western players who have done this. This is really hard work with a lot of competition against the other students and you have to be one of the best to make it to become a pro.

But now you have an easier way if you are foreigner of Japan. You can apply for a special foreigners test at the Kensai Ki-in. I believe this new test has been passed already. It is a quite simple procedure... You will play two games against two 1 dan pro players as black without komi.

• If you manage to win both games, then you become a pro. 
• If you lose both games then you will of course not become a pro, but you can try again next year.
• If you win one of the games and lose the other, then you will get another chance by playing a third game against a 9 dan pro. If you win that game then you will become a pro.

You might have a good chance of playing against non active professionals, because the active ones are usually quite busy with their career with studies, travel and tournaments. This way makes it possible for even strong 6 dan players to pass the exam.

I think this is good news for all the strong western players. Also, with more strong players with pro status it will encourage regular players to study more when they have western pros to look up to. These western pros will be more like celebrities than the 6 dan and 7 dan we have now. So I encourage all 6 and 7 dan players that feel that they might have a chance to pass the test to go to Japan and try.

Now go and become a pro, every country needs one!

Europe got a new pro

Li Ting [6D] living in Austria just became pro through a test by the Kansai Ki-in at the age of 29. You can also read the new at the Austrian Go Association's homepage. Her pro status will be valid from 1st Mars 2010.

This is very good for European go! I hope she will play a lot of pro tournaments in Japan and become even stronger.

(Now I think we can make all European 7D to pros, found the European Go Pro Association and start our own pro circus in Europe)

1st World Mind Sports Games

Right now the 1st World Mind Sports Games are being held in Beijing China. Too bad I didn't have time to go there and compete for Sweden, which I would do if I had time and if I was allowed. Some day I might be able to go. This is actually kind of the Olympic games of mind sports. This is probably the only tournament where weak amateurs are able to play against the strongest professionals in a really serious way. Such an opportunity. I found some pictures that a chinese weiqi-fan took at the site. He posted them at a chinese forum were you need an account to see them. So I post them here...

Baek Hong Suk

Olof Fridh - Chen Yao Ye

Kimio


Wong


Gu Li

Park Jung Sang

Migrationsverket vs Sun Yuan

Girlwing and I had no problems with Migrationsverket, but sometimes they cause a lot of problems for people. One of Girlwings friends in Shanghai is a professional go player and we were happy when we heard that he was coming to EGC in Sweden to compete in the tournament for China. But then he told us that he didn't get a VISA. They were afraid that he will leave China and stay in Sweden. Are they stupid? He have no reason to leave China. He is a go professional! There is no career for him outside Asia and especially not in Sweden.

I just read in mohsarts blog were he show the answer from Maria Bodsunder from Swedish General Consulate in Shanghai. She is stating the reason from Migrationsverket.

It say something like this:
According to set rules from the Migration office, about young chinese, unmarried, without work (eg students) that will not visit close relatives, there must be a grade of concern for the visit. With grade of concern it is not meant to participate in a tournament of "social games".


Like Mohsart so well stated: Calling the European Open Championship in Go for a tournament of "social games" is like calling the world cup in football for children's fun play.

Sun Yuan was coming to EGC to beat all the Koreans and win first price.
If he would have managed to do that (he probably could) then that would be an opening for Chinese players and professionals in EGC for the future. Some strong European players will think that is a bad thing but as for Europe as a whole that will be a very good thing. Well... maybe next year...

Professional game

Today there was an arrangement for us to see real live professional games. They picked us upp with buss and we went to a go club. There we first had the chance to play against chinese amateurs. Most of them were strong players. I played aganst a strong 2 dan amateur. I recieved 4 stones of handicap and I had to resign after half the game. The beginning of the game looked good for me. I had a really large group that he invaded. It looked like that I managed to capture his stones but he got out and my two halves had problem and one side died. Other played weak 2 dans and had a more even game. Bad luck for me to get the strong 2 dan.

Then small groups of us took turn to go in to the professionals. One of them was Lee Sedol. He looked like a disco pimp in his white clothes. Someone took pictures there and Sedol complained so everybody did not get a chance to see the professionals play. Too bad...

After the games we went to an expensive restaurant nearby where we had dinner with a couple of professionals. The clubs strongest pro sat a while at every table and answered our questions like "When did you start playing weiqi?", "When did you become pro?", "Does it ever get boring?" and so on. The same questions at every table but he was very kind and answered patiently.