Greetings from the end of the year 2011

Dear readers,

Too bad I haven't been able to update my blog for months. I hope you have found some other interesting stuff to do :). Long story short the trip to EGC2011 in Bordeaux went really nicely and I think I even gained a couple of pounds (the food was delicious).

Enjoying every moment with finnish friends.

Korean food party, with some friends in France

 I realized at the congress once again that Go is a difficult board game. However, I tried not to take this too seriously. What I really enjoyed about that congress was the feeling of adventure when you're exploring new things, like food,wine and meeting new friends. I had the chance to keep in contact with my korean contacts, and that reminded me of the year 2008-2009 when I was in Korea. Some memories just get sweeter with time. I've even actually started liking kimchi a bit more! Moreover I was able to strenghten my bond with the finnish Go-players. I think we have a great go-community here in finland. I also managed to get some contacts from Taiwan as some of my finnish friends hanged out with them. A friend of mine even went to visit one of them in Taiwan last september!

Picture taking during orientation week at a student activity

A lot of things have happened since the last post. Actually I did manage to get a study place against my expectations at that point. During the EGC I got a call from my mom that I was accepted in Aalto University of Economics BscBa -program in Mikkeli, which is another city about 200 km away from Helsinki. So practically I'm studying business and economics in one of the best universities in the country and that's pretty sweet! Infact I had a lot of things to do in august-december, moving to another town and starting my studies, so I didn't really have time for Go and this blog unfortunately, but I think it was still good, because I've learned so many things this second half of the year and that has made my view of life broader and more exciting.

If you find yourself eating your favorite korean food, you're blessed.

In October I had my prize-trip to Korean Prime Ministers Cup in South-Korea. I must say it was an amazing trip, altough I did not play that well as I was rusty. I had the wonderful chance to get to meet old friends and some new people as well. I wish I could explain you the feeling when I had my first bite of Tuna-Gimbap at the gimbap place after so many years! It felt heavenly. Pc-bang experience was also nice :).

Anyways thanks to this trip to Korea I was able to start reviving my Go again. I started playing Go again a couple of nights a week and solving problems every now and then when I have time. From November I was more or less already in somewhat of a good shape. And I actually managed to win the Finnish Championships 2011 without any losses (7-0)(History of Finnish Championships).

Winning that championships was my childhood dream
ever since I started Go and I probably wouldn't have gotten to dan level without this goal. It felt great thinking back into 2005 when that young boy entered Helsinki Go-club for the first time on a rainy summer day, staring at a room full of Go-players so concentrated in their games. It was so peaceful inside compared to the outside where it was pouring heavily. Soon this young 30 kyu  boy was put to play against a 16-time Finnish Champion, Vesa Laatikainen 5 dan. At this moment I knew what I wanted to do. Now that young boy has more or less grown up and is not feeling as excited about Go anymore, which is a pity. However, his appreciation to the game runs very deep and will always stay in his heart.

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...