Code of the Samurai

Dear friends,

It's finally christmas time^^, Merry Xmas btw :).
So what's up with my life? -Well I haven't been doing much... After my trip to germany I haven't really studied Go nor done nearly anything at school....

I've been going through a mental process with thinking about my life and my doings. It all started about a week ago, a sempai from my karate club borrowed me two books, because I had asked her to borrow me some english language literature. The other book was "cry, the beloved country" (which I still haven't read) and another book called "Code of the Samurai". The latter book was written by a japanese confucian scholar and a military scientist, Taira Shigesuke, who lived (1639-1730).

"Code of the Samurai" was originally written for novice knights of the new era ("Pax Tokugawa", (1600-1950)). It provides practical and moral instructions for warriors. The introduction of the book also says that the things and principles in this book are essential in understanding the modern-day Japanese civilization realistically.

To be honest... I didn't have much expectacions about this book since it's 300 years old :), but suprisingly I found it intriguing. As I was reading through the book, somehow I could relate to the moral lessons given by this book. Especially I loved the "voice" of this book, it seemed kind but also strong in opinion. It had "strong mind", in it.


 

Before going any further, let me give you my opinion about the modern society. I think nowadays people's mind's are weaker than they were before. I mean, I see a lot of people being depressed and mentally unstable. Well, at least in finland the depression ratings are quite high. I know many people with mental problems and depression. I've heard about suicides, cutting wrists and that kinda stuff in my own life^^

Could the reason be that nowadays we are becoming more individuals, than a part of a group? We are raised more freely ,than let's say 50 years ago and taught to think by ourselves and do whatever we like. I feel however that without principles and guidance this sandbox game is chaotic. I kind of found myself looking for a direction from bushido ( ="Way of the Warrior"), which is applied all japanese martial arts. By the way I have a brown belt in karate.

So back to this book now. Let me share with you, a sample from the book Code of the Samurai:

"Laziness
As mentioned in the first chapter, for a knight who has an overlord, life is here today, uncertain tomorrow. Therefore he realizes every day that he has this one day to serve, so he does not become bored and does not neglet any of his duties. Because he does every task that very day, it stands to reason that he does not overlook anything or forget anything.
In contrast to this, when you think you will be on the job forever, then trouble starts. You get bored, so you become inattentive and lazy. You begin neglecting even urgent matters, to say nothing of less pressing affairs, putting them off to the next day or claiming that they've already been arranged, or fobbing them off on colleagues or flunkies. Since no one takes personal responsibility for taking care of them, tasks pile up and there is nothing but snafus. These are all mistakes that come from counting on having time in the future. You should be most wary of this.--"

After reading this chapter I realized that this is what I've been doing all along!!!
I have been neglecting my school work because it's "easy" and "boring" and I feel like I'm too old for high-school, so now I actually have 9 courses to do during my christmas holidays, because I've been thinking that I will have time later and then things just never get done. The sample text I gave u there continued with an example and after that he called me a moron >:), and I liked that.
Oh btw if you got disturbed by that word "overlord", just think he's ur boss, mom,dad or god :) (god here o/, though I don't really think too much about religion...). I liked this book because it used strong words such as "moron", "foolishness" and "stupidity". Somehow it made me realize that guy is pretty smart =), and that was 300 years ago!

This book gave me also some material for dealing in a real life situation I got into yesterday. I was at the go-club and there was some really bizarre person... Well this guy was 1 dan and he was talking like he was a 9 dan professional... and around the board some 4d, 2d, 1d and 3k players were listening when he was just talking about how the board position was. He somehow refused to consider other people's opinions and just laughed at them... How terrible is that! I guess he must be really stronger than 1d, since most of the stuff he said were correct too, but I don't think it's fair to laugh at other people's judgement just because they are weaker. I actually didn't follow "the code of the samurai", but I really should have -.-' As the long debate we had afterwards was meaningless... He was just talking himself in the bag all the time without believing that and I couldn't really express myself well. I tried to induce him with even a slight bit of modesty but it was useless, though he said that I'm good at rapping :). So lesson learned just leave people like that be and walk away^^.
One sempai who was listening as well actually handled that situation pretty well. He just said "Is this candid camera?" with a funny facial expression which made us all laugh :).

I definitely still have to think more about this bushido stuff...

Drop me some comments please. What do you think about this kind of stuff? do you have your own philosophies you've applied in your own lives? please share :). I'll be posting next post hopefully soon with a similar subject. Till' then C'ya!

Korean Ambassador's Cup 2010, Helsinki

Hey folks,

sorry for updating pictures so slowly on the last post...
Anyways the past week went with mostly playing Star Craft 2... I mean OOPS Go! Well to be honest after my trip to germany I started losing all hope of becoming a strong player. Insane Hwang and everyone else just kicked the crap out of me :(.

 (Insane Hwang 7 dan vs. the human punching bag from finland, source: eurogotv)



So this weekend 4.-5. of December there was the 2nd most important Go-tournament of the year, I'd say, the Korean Ambassadors Cup. This tournament has been held for just few years so far, so the tournament is quite new. Recently the Korean embassy has been sponsoring this tournament with soft drinks and nice trophies. The winner of this tournament gets a free-trip as the representative of Finland in Korean Prime-minister's Cup in South-Korea, all flights and hotels included. Other finalist get's 200€ and the 3rd place get's 100€

I've been actually having really bad luck in this tournament ever since it started. The 1st year (2007?) I wanted to take part, I was kicked out of the tournament for being late... My cellphone had died and I thought if I make it 15 minutes before the round it's no problem, The tournament organicer/referee was a monster and didn't want to let me play, on top of that I was told to "shut the fuck up". :'( (I was 16 years old then, and was late because I was talking to my mom about her alcohol problem...)

In 2008 I was in korea and could not take part. And last year (2009) my result was a complete disaster, I lost against 1d's and 3d's etc and decided not to come the next day :(.

This year I was trying not to stress too much about it. As mentioned previously, I had decided to not take Go so seriously anymore since I don't have enough skill as a go-player. For the whole tournament I was trying just not to lose so much. Well, I woke up about 2 hours before the tournament started, but accidentally fell right back to sleep after turning off my alarm clock!!! I woke up 1 hour later from my nap and realized I was late. I had a "holy-crap"-reaction, I quickly put some clothes on and ran 1 km, to a bus stop with more connections. I didn't have time to shower :/, but my last shower was in the previous afternoon, so it wasn't really that bad. I made some calls from the metro and got registered through a friend.

The first round I played against Arto Meijin, who is known as the drunken Go-master of Koivukylä. He plays with 1dan rank and often drinks a lot. If you happen to meet him, offer him a game and bet a free drink on the game. He always accepts! He is the master of smooth talk and he is cool. When asked if he would choose a hot girls tits or Christian Pop's Go-rating points (which are ~2700), he chose Pop's Gors! What a man!!!
 

(here is a picture of Arto. He's usually not available for a game at this stage anymore)



Oops, I got side tracked. Anyways, I beat him, but it wasn't too easy, but by the endgame It was over

My second game was against Lauri Paatero a nice 4d chap from my Go-club. I've beaten him many times, but he was in pretty good shape this time. He managed to get a favourable opening and I was fighting for the whole middle game agressively to get something. Lauri had done some insane trick and lived inside my huuuge corner territory with 1st line connections and eyes. luckily I managed to change the surrounding positions and killed that group as the consequence of multiattacking 2 groups simultaniously.

My 3rd game was against Matti siivola 5d. He is an old fox and has played Go for more than 30 years, I think. The opening was favourable for me, but then I started overplaying a bit. After I was behind I did some insane tricks and just killed 2 bunches of his stones. I thought I had completely won that game and didn't even bother to concentrate that well anymore. I thought if I just answer all his endgame moves, I will win... After we counted the score He had 0,5 points more than me...damnit!!! I got tricked :/

4th Game was against Janne Määttä, a young 4 dan player from Oulu. He is a bit older than me I think, so he must be around ~20+yo. The game was pretty peaceful, but it was an intense psychological war all the way to the points counting. When we counted the score, I was relieved that I won by 1,5 points as white!!!

 (Janne Määttä, left)


This was the end of saturday, I qualified to the 8 players cup with 3-1 wins... damn that 1 loss...
After the day I was just wondering how I am going to lose at the cup stage and then I won't get any prizes :/, though  I tried to make myself remember that I didn't have any goals for this tournament in the first place. Tien 6 dan is just so much stronger than me and he has a completely different thinking for Go, while I'm still struggleling with 4d and 5d players... I was guessing that I probably won't be having any success at this tournament either, so I was hoping for an easy pairing on sunday.

On sunday I was up early and arrived at the scene just on time. On my way there I was wondering about being so weak and hoping for an easy pairing, "damn, why do I think like this..."" I've lost already before I even play..." "It's up to me if I get a good result and not the pairing!!!"

Recently I've been wondering about my style, which seems to have been a big mystery even for me. In this tournament I wanted to play my own style and have as great games as I had in EGC 2009 in Groeningen, the legendary games of awesomeness (even Catalin Taranu 5p remembered that 1 year-old game of mine against Dinerstein.). My natural style is somewhat Moyo-magistic with lots of creativeness in attacking.

 ( Me playing Go)



Sunday 5th round I was playing against my friend Tuomas Hella, he is a really nice guy, about 21 years old, 4dan. Suprisingly, I managed to unleash my style ! :) The game turned out to be a really exciting one. By middle game my positions just looked so good that I just looked at the whole Go-board amazed and satisfied, "Wau, this is Go". However after getting into byo-yomi we both started making mistakes, I did kind of more mistakes because I was leading comfortably. I managed to lose my lead with the help of bad management. In the end Tuomas had a spot to just make an endgame reduction and win the game, but he didn't take it and I won by 1,5 points again, phew.

 (Tuomas Hella 4dan and his cat)



Next game (round 6) was against probably the strongest player in the tournament, Antti Törmänen 6 dan. His insight and dedication for Go is somewhat amazing. He analyses the positions and moves on the go-board extremely well and in detail!, while I for example play more by feeling. His strong insight in Go provides him with a stable playing level, while I often play crappy and good mixed (Antti told me after my 7th round game that Jeffchang egf 6dan, thinks that I play like a Chinese street-fighter) :))).

 (Antti Törmänen, 6dan at egc 2010, his blog: http://gooften.net/ )



Anyways In this game I got black and already on the 6th move, Ten played a strange move. "Can you play like that?", I blurbed out of my mouth. In my oppinion, it wasn't that good. I created a fusion-chinese with a 5-4,3-5-shimari, it was set to be Assu magistico special opening :). I was pretty afraid for the whole game. I'm not too secure as a person, especially after taking that much beating in germany the weeks before :P. So I was just trying to play careful, but somehow I still managed to unleash my natural style for the 2nd and last time in this tournament!
The opening seemed really balanced after a while, I was a bit worried because white played so fast-paced opening, rushing for territory and strong positions. I invaded his bottom side and then. The sequence he played just basically dropped my jaw. I got a nice ponnuki and with that I had created a HUUUGEEEEEE moyo!!! At this point I felt the Assu-drenalins kick in and Bang! it was time to Gear UP!!!!
Somekind of fighting occured in the surroundings of my moyo, but I managed to deal it really well.

In the endgame with the help of my 4 completely dead stones, I managed  to spot a flash of an insane sequence. In a blink of an eye Antti was faced with a strange atari inside his territory. "This is the kind of move that wins airplane tickets to Korea", said someone on the game-broadcast at kgs. The result was a big dent in whites territory.

In the end we counted the score. Black won by 7,5 points. Against everyone's expectasions I won! YUHUUU :). Indeed a suprise for me as well^^.
The Final game was against Matti Siivola 5 dan, who had gotten a slightly easier pairing and thus reached the finals. I had a horrible opening against him, For the first time in my life I felt like, I just wanna jump out of the window. My play in the opening was so bad at the completely wrong place, pls, just not in the finals!!! However after a while I started concentrating normally and our level difference kicked in. By the end many expectators gathered to watch how I won by 52,5 points.

Soon there was a prize giving ceremony and the Korean ambassador gave out the trophies for the 3 best players. I was the star of that tournament... it was so nice... I've never really won anything in my entire Go-career... *Happy!~* =)

 (from left to right: Matti 5 dan, me 5 dan, Antti 6 dan, Vesa Laatikainen 5 dan)




Just when I thought that my hundreds of hours of study in the last months had gone to waste something like this happens. o.0. I felt so dumb after Germany, not improving at all. Now that I look at it my gors have gone from 2400->2460 in 6 months. So there has been some improvement. I played 2 games I can be proud of. I hope I can play this well in the future as well.

Can someone explain to me? I don't understand anything about anything? I'm such an idiot :)

Good night~

Report from Trip to germany 2010

Hey everyone~

Sorry for not writing earlier, I'm such a bad blogger -.-*.
My 13days holiday from school was really relaxing and now I feel like I can return to school. I have only 2 months of school left anyways.

So Our epic trip to germany shortly:

We left with pessi (my 1 dan friend) 19th of november in the morning without having slept at all. The first tournament was very stressful, probably because we hadn't slept much and we weren't used to the really strange hahn-system. Pessi crushed many of his opponents and we made some new friends. This tournament for me was sooo embarassing >.< I almost lost to the koreans with 4 handicap... geez... At least I didn't loose to rankwise weaker players. Though my 20 kyu-move against Mr.Obenaus 5d shouldn't have happened... Go to innovation tournament was pretty much far from everything and there was nothing special to do there during the weekend. Afterwards we heard a rumour that most germans are also not used to that tournament. The tournament place had a small cafeteria with food,snacks and beverages available. On friday we had Gulash-soup there with some bread and german sausages :P,tasty! We got 50 and 75€ with pessi as prize money. Pessi got 15th place, I 7th.

During the week we didn't really have anything to do, since we didn't really know what is there to do in berlin. We tried shopping and some other stuff, but I think we should've had a personal tour-guide or something. I bought a shirt and socks, pessi too, but he barely changed his socks during the trip !!

The german language is pretty cool. I think it would be easy to learn it if I just lived in germany for sometime :). Maybe that could be somekinda plan-X for the future :]. No matter if it was food or ice-cream we ordered, we didn't have any problems^^ Thanks to my german skills yey.

On Wednesday Viktor Lin made a suprise visit to berlin. We were expecting it infact with Pessi, but had forgotten about it completely. It was nice to see Viktor again, he is such a nice guy. The next day I went to eat sushi+chinese buffet with Viktor, while pessi had to stay home and do some work for his university. The food in that buffet was pretty good, but I couldn't eat as much as I wanted because I got full. Afterwards we went to "a go-meeting" somewhere near Alexanders platz. We waited outside for like 20 minutes before I got bored of waiting for viktors friends... Well 5 minutes later we got to the underground space-station, called C-base! o.0 WTF! When I first saw the door I thought they might sell some weed there, which later proved to be partly correct :DDD. C-base must be the strangest Go-meeting place in europe... it was shocking... next to the Go-meeting somekinda moon-rover fanatics watched some crappy video about their moon-rover in moon (LOL). And it seems there people taught that the place was some underground space station on earth o.0 Geez.... I don't know how to explain it, it was so stunning, go see it yourself! I slept most of the Go-meeting on my chair. *yawns*. I left after getting enough of sleep, I had no choice, but leave my friend Vic behind :P.

Berliner Kranich -tournament on the second weekend suprised us. It was much more popular than Go to innovation. There were 175 participants!!! Holy crap, I didn't even know until now. Anyways this tournament was really well organiced, altough at first they wrote my name as Savolaiwew instead of Savolainen. Geez,do I look like somekinda polish person to you?
On saturday morning I was really tired... Because Pessi had talked to some girl until late with our laptop, the previous night. Most of you probably don't know what I'm like in the mornings... I can get really grumpy if I'm still sleepy!
Our hosts, which were really nice btw, seemed to be amused by my acting, while Pessi was really embarassed :D. I tend to make up silly reasons to continue sleeping and after 30 minutes of battle with the sleepy zergling Assu, I had to get up :(, we were late. Same happened on sunday morning...

On saturday morning I was really hungry, I took my lunch ticket before round 1 and went to get a plate of sushi from the japanese housewifes who were incharge of providing food for the Go-tournament participants. After eating, I was ready for my game!

My first game was against a german 5d, he had some weird cosmic opening, and soon we both had a weird cosmic game. My opening was infact quite bad, but I managed to turn the tables around completely by the end of middle game. Two huge group of his died and he resigned. Afterwards some really strange looking german guy started reviewing our game. After a while I figured out that he must be Christoph Gerlach 6d from germany! His ideas seemed to be interesting, he had a good grasp of the strategies of this game. However, I left for lunch after my opponent started showing dumb -sequences -.-*

Next game against Hwang inseong 7d... I felt this game went much better than 1 week before with 4 stones.

3rd round was against a german 4dan, who was probably a bit older than me. I made him resign in move 60!!! =D Happpyyyyyyyy~ His girlfriend brought some juice for me too :].


Same morning routines happened on sunday morning...
My 1st game was against my friend and rival Viktor "Chiakuan"(hint, you don't wanna call him by that) Lin 5 dan , The austrian small master. Well what is there to say... He kicked my ass, because I screwed up. I'm the master of screwing up. What is there to say, I played from my bowl in byo-yomi and that's why I just wanted to answer his move, while knowing I'm not taking the biggest point ;__;, after playing bad yose and 1 early-dame I lost by 2 points. I was expelled from Berlin, with the charge of sucking so much I drowned my self 2 days later....

But here I am! wuhuhuhuhuuuu~

This trip taught me a lot about Go. How to think of Go. Is there chances for succeeding in this game, etc.
I guess I've been having too high goals as what comes into Go. It could be affecting my flow for this game, which was quite bad in germany. Altough I didn't loose to any weaker players and I managed to boost my gors up a bit to 2453!!! yey~

I feel like I don't have what it takes to be a pro player. So in that sense a part of me really drowned back there *sniff*. But don't let this fool you. I'll still kick ur ass as the strongest 5d in europe!!!

It's nice to be back in Finland, not having to worry about insane Hwangs or Seok-bins. Infact, here everyone is only under 6 dan yeeeey~. That's why I'm looking forward to playing again.

Germanyyyyyy!!!!

Hello,

We arrived to berlin yesterday at 7AM. We hadn´t slept at all during the night and we were just taking small naps when could during the day. The weather here is like early autumn in finland, it´s quite warm. Germany is so weird, this place looks strange, the people are strange and the smell is different. After some few hours we reached the tournament place. Before that we wondered around what we expected to be an area of east-berlin. The houses looked old and abandoned and there were no restaurants anywhere!!! at noon we arrived to wulheide, a quiet place on the edge of berlin with lots of nature. The forest seemed really magical and they smelled like authentic fairytale forests :).

We soon reached the tournament place and we just slept some hours on the uncomfortable chairs. Not too many ppl here speak english. But we managed to survive with my german skills. at around 4pm people started appearing at the tournament place. I introduced myself to Oh Luis, who is a korean 6dan living in spain. Then I got to know some new guys like scurge. All the czech guys have a cute accent :P.
My first day started really horribly, I lost to Oh Luis and Obenaus dude. I made some 20 kyu move in the latter game -.-* and because of that my winning position was gone in an instance. I have only played go on the internet the past 2 months and I haven´t done too many life and death problems for a while and it shows.
We found a reallz good pizza place on our way home. The pizza was really good and costed just 2,50 euros.Our accomodators are really nice too and their appartment is nice. I forgot to mention that I´m here with my friend Pessi, he is 1d and won 2 games on friday. Today on saturday it was really hard for me to wake up. I had some weird dream where my eyes got crusified somehow o.0. We had 4 games today with egf A-class playing times. After the last round I wasn´t really sure if that had been the 3rd or 4th round...results from today 3d+,4d+,5d-,4d+. I´m rusty >:3... Pessi has had an opposite result than me every round.
We just arrived home and ate pizza again.
I hope to play better tommorrow.

Good night!!!!

October update!!! (22nd of October)

Hey guys ( yes, now it seems there are 2 followers, grrrreat!) :)

I got through my matriculation exams and it went pretty fairly.
The goverment of finland was very nice to decide to give me some monthly student grant of 95€/month, so I will won't be so broke anymore :].
I love nemo-fishies!!! *-*




I've been quite bored since there has not been almost any go-tournaments and it's difficult to keep up with the crazy practice for almost 1 month in a row. Next tournaments in 1 month still eh...




19th of November to 29th of November I will be on a competition trip in germany, I hope to do my best in the Go-tournaments there. After I come back to finland I'll have KAC and SM tournaments (korean prime-ministers cup, finnish championship), so alltogether 4 weekends of go-tournaments in a row!

I've been in the insei-league this month as well, though it seems like I won't be getting any prize money, because other students are so passive in playing games, but the teaching games I play against Dinerstein and "insane"Hwang are very useful. Actually It's still a mystery to me how I am all of a sudden getting weekly teaching games from 2 strong players o.0, since I'm not paying anything! (though I'm working for Dinerstein a bit).

And it seems like Dinerstein found out what is my natural style o.0!!! for couple of weeks I had been wondering why is my fuseki so crappy. Dinerstein commented after our game that my fuseki was infact crappy, but he even managed to find out why! He's indeed a genious!
It seems like I was trying to play territorial style in fuseki which doesn't suit me at all, because I'm not so good in endgame. The solution is to play my own natural style of framework games, which suit me better, because I'm good in fighting!

So it seems like I'll be testing mini-chinese and chinese openings from now on!

I've been practicing L&D so I guess fighting style is better for me then... I've noticed that I can sometimes read up to 20 moves! how cool is that :) (though I suck at everything else,hehe)
Here is an example from my reading in a game with 2d vs. 4dan players.
See if you can read this out. (In the game white should've sacrificed his group with the kosumi-tsuke (my suggestion) in the center, see if you can help white to win the game after black kills those white stones (black to play and lose (less than 10 moves)))



Recently I've been having these problems to fall asleep...
So actually I solved most of the L&D problems 2AM-5AM, when I can't fall asleep...

Helsinki Casual & september update

Hey!

My tournament last weekend went brilliantly and I won the 1st place!!! + 100€!!!
From which 40€ is left after paying some of my debts and buying food -.-*.
Well anyways I'm really happy that I won Hki Casual for the 2nd year in a row + I got a bit tired of eating just rice/potatoes and canned beans last week =), So I'm rich now yey!.

Now to the main plan... I managed to level up to ~2437 Gors, which is far from my 9 month-goal, but it's a start. I realized that the Gor-system is actually pretty tough & It's not so easy to launch up your Gors just like that.
Losing even 1 game in a tournament can change your overall result into a negative one. Therefore the winning percentage in a tournament should be 80-100%, where 80% is usually not enough. This gave me a new aspect for my tournament games
- Every game is equally important!

I will have a small break from training Go until my history matriculation exams (1st October)are over, But after that I will start another really intense training period, which should last until my next tournament ~7 weeks later.
After mid-November I will have 4-5 important tournaments almost in a row. The results of those tournaments will show what kind of possibilities I have for reaching the top.

Ready for the challenge

taken from my 2 weeks old diary post...

I got up this morning at 10:13 o'clock and switched off my alarm-clock. I went back to sleep. I woke up again at 10:49, noticing that I'm late from my guitar-class. Luckily I was able to provide some extra time for a shower. After showering and finding some clean clothes was the time for breakfast. I had a hot coco and a banana. As the banana started disappearing into my stomach, I could feel the sweat and a little bit chilly pieces of banana getting chopped moving to my cheeks. I felt a bit like a squirrel. I looked outside thinking about squirrels and saw the bus I was supposed to get on passing our house.

On the way to guitar class I met one of my random pick-up girls. We had a short chat before our roads departed. She said she was just starting high-school so she was just 15!!! o.0 I can't belive myself (and she so didn't look like it I swear, andandand)... talking to random 15yo girls in the bus. FUUU ><



Ready for the challenge

During the EGC 2010 the top-european players had a meeting. The Eurogotv-head Harry made an announcement that he would be creating EuroGoPro-League, where 12 top europeans get a professional status for 1 year. There were also many young players attending the meeting. All the participants were at least 5d egf, I think (appart from harry, the future CEO of EuroGoPro). Tenbabo, my rival (name modified) was sitting next to me and all the people seemed really interested in the topic. The mood was some what tense but filled with some jokes such as, Catalin 5p: Burzo, looks like you have to start studying again (*laughter*) xD.

It seemed like the top-players had been waiting for something like this for long, since making a living with Go is pretty much impossible in europe. Howerver, the understanding and level of these Go-masters cannot be reached easily even with hundreds of hours of stydy. Every session with a stronger player is an enlighting experience. Very few people think these top-players should earn some money with Go and the truth pretty much is that you get better salary flipping burgers (unless you are Michael Jackson) than with teaching Go. Nevertheless teaching Go for me is only 50% job and 50% fun and that's why I accept lower price for my lessons than most 5d+ players.

With the EuroGoPro stuff every player would have their own sponsor and these Pro's would get ~800€/month. That's actually enough to make a living out of it! In addition your trips would be paid for EuroGoPro-tournaments.
I'm so glad I didn't go last spring... I would've missed all the nice things life still has to offer me.



The dream to be a EuroPro seems very distant, I evaluated that egf-players with 2610 go-rating points would enter in EuroPro system. However, I expect the level to increase a little with the competition to fill those 12 spots. During the next 10 months the Gor limit might increase to +2630-2650.

One of the most difficult parts in life is after high-school, since you are finally free from school, but you should perhaps for the first time in your life choose the path which you want to follow.

I won't be relying my only card on Go as a profession. It has been my dream for many years to become a businessman, like my dad (though, not as crappy one),whom I respect very much. This school year there is going to be so many things to do. I need good grades from school and from march I have to start studying for business school exams which will be in June. It's said to be very difficult to get into that university...

My wildest dream is to make it to that business university & EuroGoPro at the same time! I'm not sure if it's even possible, but what would our lives be without Goals and Dreams?

To be honest I'm not sure if I can get even into one of my 2 options. I might even fail both. but I'm willing to work towards my dream.

And I'm taking up this Challenge

Results EGC 2010

Dear readers

The EGC is over for this year. The EGC 2010 in tampere was probably one of the most memorable congresses for many people. Incase you don't already know Ilya Shiksin 7d and Artem Kachanovskyj 6d got the 1st and 2nd places, which is pretty amazing for european Go since they are leading the new generation of european top-players.
17-year-old Ali Jabarin was the strongest 5 dan and ended up in 10th place beating a Korean 7dan and Ondrej Silt 6dan.

Artem's chance for winning the whole tournament slipped by his hands as he lost from a winning position to Kim Jung-hyeop 7d by 0,5 points. I estimated that Artem lost a couple of thousand euros there :), nevertheless he smiled a little bit at the prize giving ceremony.
Ilya Shiksin's last game against Dinerstein was very long and there was a rumour going on that Dinerstein had said the night before that he would lose on purpose to Ilya, incase Artem lost. There is actually a high chance that this rumour is true.. russians...

My tournament didn't go well, but I had a great time at EGC 2010 tampere. I made some new friends and got to know better some people. I had some achievements at EGC though,

• EGC Team-tournament 1st place (Gimbap Power!)
• EGC Bonus tournament 1st place (I heard I got more applause than the EGC winner)
• Winning Cornel Burzo in rapid :)



To End this post I'd like to tell a funny story about my good friend "Pikku-Jussi" 7dan (4th place), who told me that he quite often sleeps during his games.
He was living at our playboy mansion and slept usually ~2-6 hours per day and even gave his own bed to our random guests (some of these guests showed no appreciation whatsoever and left the place messy) and slept on the sofa o.0. Once he slept outside because he didn't have the keys to our appartment ><.



On our way back to Helsinki on sunday evening (We cleaned up EGC -place whole sunday) our train was badly late. We were killing time in the bar of the train station and we noticed there was a karaoke!!! Oh boy we had such a great time in korean karaokes, so ofcourse I wanted to challenge Little-Yoshi (pikku-jussi) to sing together with me. The variety of songs in the karaoke was very low and crappy, but finally we decided to sing Celine Dion - My Hear Will Go On :D
Our performance was already somewhat legendary with the two of us. Then all of a sudden Ilya Shiksin 7dan appeared out of nowhere and sang the rest of the song with all his heart. I ofcourse laughed my ass off. After our song some girls showed thumbs up for us :)
We managed to get our whole performance on video. Unfortunately Little-Yoshi threatened to kill me if I leaked the video to the internet and he even gave me some painful demonstrations of what he would do to me x).
I guess I will publish the video here later =)

Thx everyone for the great congress!!!

EGC Thursday 5th August. Bonus&Team tournament

Dear friends

This week many stuff has happened. My main tournament hasn't gone too good, but at least I didn't lose to anyone under 6 dan.

My main tournament after round 8:
5p-,4d+,5d+,6d-,7d-,6d-,3d+ 3/7 :(

On tuesday there was a bonus tournament, for which Chief and me made a bet. If I would win, Chief would buy me 10 beers if he won I'd buy him one beer. For those who don't know what is a bonus tournament, it's a combination of Go and drinking. You get points for drinking and playing Go. Ofcourse the best combination for getting the most points is drinking and winning games.

The tournament started on tuesday at 18:00 in a local bar called S-something. I started the tournament very faaaaast. The games were basically lightning games and in normal circumstances it would have been difficult to play and drink, since it takes quite much concentration to play Go. Anyways I discovered later that my strategy seemed to be playing really fast and drinking on my opponents time. Some of my opponents lost on time and some just died everywhere :). I didn't even realize how time went so fast I played 20 games and won 19 of them and drank a lot. After about 6 hours had passed there and I had played my maximum amount of games there was 10 minutes left. I managed to drink 1 liter more before the time finished :). I don't really like beer so I was drinking perry light -cider, which tasted like water with apple juice.

I ended up pretty drunk and we went to party to.. love hotel!!! .. and I drank some more. While moving from bar S to love hotel it was raining heavily so our running looked like chickens run. One of us called "vatipää" slipped and dived on the street x), luckily he was alright appart from his bleeding elbow. At love hotel the doorman didn't want to let "vatipää" in because he didn't have any shoes. One of us who was already inside the club gave "vatipää" his own shoes and went to the club bare foot. That doorman was pretty easy to trick :).

I managed to have some conversation with the opposite sex of the human species, but I realized, maybe I shouldn't have for the sake of my mental health x). The girls were horrible...
We managed to get home after the night club finnished at around 4am. I went straight to sleep and slept like a baby for the next 6 hours.

In the morning I felt pretty good, since last night had been awesome. I took some hot chocolate and a glass of milk, but suddenly my head started feeling like a watermelon and I got reaaally dizzy, so I had to stop my breakfast. I lied in my bed feeling really sick, like I could puke. After one hour of lying silent on my bed and ocationally discussing what should I do, someone told me: "be a man", so I went to the toilet and puked 2 times. It was funny to look the bathroom mirror afterwards. I looked like a zombie with red eyes :P. After coming back from the toilet I was so happy to be alive again, I felt considerably better, though a bit exhausted from all the drinking from previous night.

Too bad I had to play in the team-tournament in my hangover condition and we had to leave very soon. It was nice to breathe fresh air outside, but I wouldn't have minded staying at home to rest either.

The team-tournament started on wednesday at 13:15 o'clock. Our teams name was "Gimbap Power!" and it consisted of 3 koreans on boards 1,2,3 and me and a belgian guy on the 4th and 5th boards.
Our first 2 games were relatively easy, but then we played against team Excecution... they were pretty strong with 4x 5 dans and 1x 6 dan. I lost my game against Nikola. His Go-style is very impressive and I think he is the worst kind of opponent for me. Luckily our Koreans did their job and won their games, we went into the finals.
In the finals we played against team Romania, which consisted of 5p,7d,6d,5d and 4d. I was playing against Lucian Corlan from Romania.
Our opening was strangely peaceful, though I lost my thickness pretty efficiently, while he got small groups. During the late part of middle game I managed to cut a group of his and he got into trouble. The result was a easy Ko for me, but he had many ko-threats.
All of the other games ended, our boards 1 and 5 lost and 2 and 3 won, So the result was 2-2 and my game would be the deciding game of the tournament.
Lucian tenukied my ko-threat and I started another ko somewhere else. The ko seemed a bit difficult for me to win. I played and interesting jump to his territory, incase he tried to cut off my stone, my ko-threats would increase. He made a decision to cut my stone, so I managed to get loads of ko-threats. He was in a time trouble and had only a couple of minutes left in his clock. The match was not even close to be over, and the most intense action of the match started as he ignored my threat. I surrounded his stones and he did the same to me.. an intense capturing race occurred. I lived in my corner and he connected out. I played the winning sequence which connected my stones out with a bonus, he got some compensation, but all of his territory was destroyed. A few seconds later he lost on time.
Gimbap Power!!! So we got the 1st place at the team-tournament :)

Today I had the easiest game of EGC against a french 3dan. Altough he played pretty poorly (He didn't really die anywhere big, but he just lacked common sense in strategy), I must say he is quite impressive to be a dan player and 14 years old! When I was 14 years old I was 30 kyu!

I finnished that game early so I went to buy an awesome pullover finally after almost 1 week.

EGC 2010, after 1st week.

Hey there

4th round went pretty good against a japanese 6 dan , altough I lost. Anyways I was not that dissapointed because it was just because of a really simple misread of 5 moves (we tenukied a group of mine for a while. Defending would have been a big endgame anyways). I would have won that game otherwice.

The next day I played against R.Jasiek 5 dan and won him fair and square. I managed to trick him in his own joseki :). My opening was not too good in that game, but because of Jasiek's playing style, he covered all my weaknesses pretty nicely. He seemed to have some kind of strange preferences on the table we were playing at. He hid the result sheet under the board and told me to put any objects not related to the game away from the table o.0

Main tournament after 1 week: 5p-,4d+,5d+,6d-,5d+ (3/5)

Rapid tournament after 1 week: 5d+,5d-,4d+

We also had a football tournament on wednesday and our finnish team got the 5th-6th place. The playing conditions were very bad, but it seems others enjoyed it. Afterwards we went to a 106 years old sauna and it was AWESOME!!!


The 1st week of the congress has passed as follows:

30% Go
30% sleeping
10% eating
30% partying and other activities

Since during the days it's really hot I didn't wear enough warm clothes and it got a bit colder the last few days, so I managed to get sick and had to skip weekend tournament :(. (All that whisky and partying the previous night, might have been a reason why I got so sick).

This morning I woke up in a different place than I usually do. I was feeling so terrible, my head and neck hurted, I could barely breath and my head felt really jammed.

After getting kicked out I headed to the grocery store to buy camomile tea and the ingredients for hot chocolate. After I arrived at our crib, I chatted a bit with my Hyong, Pempu. He gave me some pretty good advices and even paid my shoppings from our common funds.

I recall watching a pro-game with my room-mates for a while and then went to sleep. I woke up in the evening and started studying last year's EGC -book. I almost had a disaster because I was heating up milk and I was listening to music out loud so ofcourse I didnt hear anything before all hell broke loose. I managed to destroy all the evidence luckily :).

It sucks being sick, but I guess it's a good idea to rest, because it would suck to be sick the last week of the congress. I have to ease down on partying too much and concentrate more on improving my Go.

EGC 2010, day 6

Hey

The EGC 2010 has started and the competition seems to be very fierce this year, since there are not overly strong koreans this year. The congress city, Tampere is a very nice place and I think all the participants are enjoying the congress this year.

Appart from playing I'm doing some organicer work as well, it was quite tough in the beginning because there were loads of stuff to do in the first days of the congress.

I started the main tournament not too good. I wasn't satisfied at my own play in the first two games in which I played against Catalin and a german 4 dan ( 5p-, 4d+). My bad play continued in the rapid tournament where I got 5d+,5d-. I was pretty dissapointed at my game, Go is so difficult..., that's what I thought. My go before the congress was really good, so it was a bit upsetting to play so slack, but I really felt like playing Go. On monday after my game I hanged out with my Korean teacher/friend Hajin. She seemed to be in a good mood. Later we went to eat with Mok Jin-seok and some korean personel. We went to a fancy restaurant called Hesburger. I forgot all my worries in good company and I decided to win the next match. Before going to bed I replayed my lost bad games.

The next day I had a great game against Stefan Kaitsheck 5d (5d+). I was in really good mood the rest of the day and I even managed to get a game review by Mok Jin-seok 9p and I learned a lot from it.





Later I went to a bar with some friends and after that to LOVE HOTEL <3!!!, that night club was really nice =D. As a beginner alcohol consumer, I managed to check out some coctail drinks (I don't really like beer).



Sex on the beach - Really nice!!!
Bloody Mary - Tomato juice, yack :(
Kelkka - drinkable
Cosmopolitan - Too lemony, it was bitter

My favourite professional players 1

Hello!

Woaah it works :)!!!

I was having a break from Go for few months, but since few weeks I'm studying Go again everyday AND I'M BACK FOR GOOD!!!. I'm replaying lots of professional games and solving Life and Death problems. I hope I will do well at the European Go congress.

Mok Jin-seok [9p] and Lee Chong-u [7p] (2nd and 4th from the left) used to teach at the place where I was studying Go in South-Korea. Both of them were teaching the group of Yongusengs (inseis).






Here I'll show you a game from two Korean professionals, Lee Chong-u [7p] vs. Lee Hyon-ho [3p].This game was played in April, 2008. Lee Chong-u is 29 years old and Lee Hyon-ho is 22 years old (became a pro in 2007).
I believe this game was played in the Korean league 2008.

Personally, I think Lee Chong-u's style is magnificent. He has moves and ideas which are incredible. He seems to play thick, big scale and he can make territory out of nowhere.

Life and Death problems 1

Hello!

Solving life and death problems is one of the best way to improve your Go. Last night I woke up at 5 a.m and I couldn't fall back asleep again, so I had a sandwitch and solved 4 go-problems.



After I woke up at 12pm I solved some more problems, here you go!, let's see if you can solve them.

Sunny sunday

Hello!

The weather today was exceptionally nice! +24 and it was really sunny! Well For finland this is really nice.
Last winter was so terrible, there were long periods when the temperature would be stuck around -20'C. What a shock after staying 1 year in South-korea, where the average temperature is above 15 or even 30 most of the year.

My day started at 11:37, when my Friend "O" called me. I was still sleeping and I was really tired since I had difficulties falling asleep (that's when I started this blog and was up until 6 a.m. Well anyways we had agreed that we would go to a public outside swimming pool called Swimming stadium.

I'm proud that I managed to get up. I took a quick shower, had a banana and a glass of milk for breakfast and headed for downtown. On my way I went to the grocery store to buy sunlotion, since I had read from somewhere that some people I know already burnt themselves. To my suprise the sunlotions were around 12€... Geez, I managed to find a "cheap" one which was 6€.
After getting there O was a bit late since he had to go buy swimming trunks. While waiting I set up my towel on the lawn and started reading some manga on my Iphone.

The place was quite packed with people, so we had to queue for a while. There were lots of people from little kids to middle-aged people, and A LOT of hot girls in their bikinis, u-lala =), the day was meant to be perfect. After getting inside me and O went for a dip in the water and after that We found 2 spots on the green grass-field for our towels. There were lots of people having picnic or simply sunbathing. Next to us there was a really brown older woman, who had really spooky figures, just to mention something her back bone could be seen up from her back about 2cm all along her back, yewww!.

We took sun, just relaxed and looked ocationally the bikini babe's walking past us :). The main attraction for all the people seemed to be the jumping towers. The water was light blue like in the tropic. The diving boards were set at 1,3,5,7 1/2 and 10 meters. The jumping towers looked really crowdy and it was packed with young people from little kids to ~30-year olds. Many of the divers did all kinds of amazing flips before splashing in to the pool. The less skilled ones jumped legs first or belly splash. All the people were quite near the swimming pool and the crowd was clapping every now and then for cool or funny moves made by the jumpers before splashing into the water.

After a while it was our turn and we went to jump from 1 and 3 meters, the others were closed. I must say jumping from the dive board is really cool, only thing was that after getting up from the pool it was cold. We jumped around 6 times. Making the jumps were far more difficult than I had expected. I made a backflip from 1 and did a Tarzan fall head first from 3 meters, pretty exciting huh.
Later I asked my friend if he wanted to go to jump from 10 meters, to me it didn't look that high but he refused. I heard some other people next to us saying that the fall from the jumping tower looks higher, because u can see the bottom of the pool! ha! did you know that!

Couple of hours later we decided to leave, but before this we went to sauna! We steamed everybody out.

Welcome to my blog, I'm J

Hello!

This is it huh, the first post of my first blog.
The idea for this blog came to me after watching some random blogs at 5 a.m. Well anyways I was thinking that If more or less normal people have their own blog about really strange stuff, why don't Go-players blog about their life and Go?

Could it be that Go-players think they are too weak in Go to have an opinion on sequences or the situations they see? Or are many of them timid and don't want to tell about their lives? It's not acceptable publicwise, Is it embarassing o.0?, Is it really such a bad thing if some people might spy on your life through a blog? I think it's fantastic!

My relationship to Go is that I've been playing it for 5 years now and I've played in many tournaments in many countries. I've also spent 1 year studying Go in Asia. Anyways I'm not too good at Go, I'm 6 dan on KGS, but I'm far from my ideal level.
I've always had a thing on spying other people and looking around people's homes :). This year, like some other years as well I've been kind of bored, so I ended up exploiting all kind of amazing stuff like reading (other than Go-books), Drawing, making new friends, partying and blogging, etc. So I welcome you all to my blog and I'll hope you'll get to read about some amazing stories and things

Please be aware that this blog is kind of casual and you might encounter with some opinions, insults or silly philosophy you might not like.


Well, I will be posting stuff about Go and some stuff about my life not related to Go.
Please enjoy!