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The European Youth Championship took place in Brno last weekend. Just in case you are wondering, I did very badly, losing games I could have as well won, if I wasn't as weak as I am, and not winning games that I could not have won.

Btw, the EYGC 2012 has no host yet. This is a good opportunity if you feel like
supporting European youth!


Just two days after the tournament, Czech Republic faced Germany in the Pandanet European Team Go Championship. Since I missed the last train hanging around in a tea house (which was totally worth it, see below), I considered staying one more night to help the local commentator comment the games (who got sick in the end and couldn't come). Thus it was decided that I stay one more night to help him comment the games.

This brings me to the topic I have been pondering about ever since.

Instead of commenting just the first board (which seemed like a pretty one-sided game), I switched between the four boards to check the situation and explain a bit what had happened. The second board was a fighting game which involved a lot of reading, exchanges and finally also dead groups.
Third board was pretty one-sided as well, but in the end the unfavoured party managed to cheat spectacularly, spotting a mental weakness of his opponent who was probably like come on, resign already (which I would have been thinking too).
On the fouth board the local Brno hero played in the Czech team, he was particularly stressed about the game. After some kind of investive fuseki where he gave his opponent many points, Germany started to get too hooked on a ko and finally had to spend 4 moves there. In the meanwhile, Czech dude had mapped out his own piece of territory and cut off a group. Unfortunately he didn't manage to attack the group in a cool manner and was behind after the fight. This resulted in the first loss of Czech Republic.
Luckily for that guy, it remained the only loss. One by one, result windows popped up saying that one of the players had resigned or so, and finally we could confirm the result of Czech Republic beating Germany 3:1!

just imagine me standing there, holding the wine glass and blathering

This was exactly the way I commented the games. I didn't get much into detail, but explained the games in a way that the audience could follow who was ahead and stuff like that. It was not quite educative, but probably easy to follow and we could kind of watch all games. My question of this week, what makes you a good game commentator? And subsequently, what makes you a good Go teacher?
For starters, I think that a good teacher doesn't need to be a good Go player. (Of course it would be preferable if he wasn't a bad one.) I've heard that someone who couldn't swim had produced medal winners (in swimming). Nevertheless, this doesn't work with e.g. English language teachers.
I think that Go is something inbetween which required skills of both directions.
Consequently, if a Go player is strong, he is not necessarily a good teacher.
I don't know yet what we can conclude from this.

And thus ended my weekend on Wednesday.


Places worth visiting (cont.)

Brno

Brno is a city where very cool people live and thus a cool place to hang around. I was particularly impressed by the tea houses. It seems that the Go players meet there regularly to play Go and drink tea. And to eat wasabi nuts, which I totally recommend, and smoke waterpipe. (And I won at Settlers of Catan while the last train home left without me:D)


Another reason to go to Brno is that the beer costs less than 1 € in clubs. (compare with 8€ in a Swiss club)



(I particularly liked the kids' disappointed gaze when it was pointed out to them by the opening ceremony dude that Brno and the South Moravian region were known for the wine, but unfortunately they were too underage for that.)

Cha no ma (Vienna)

The one thing the tea houses in Brno didn't have was Matcha. I cannot explain its taste, it's just delicious and Cha no ma (it roughly means house of tea) is a totally Japanese place to hang around.





Targu Mures/Romania

It seems a lot of cool people are going to Shusaku Cup next week.

http://www.shusaku.ro/ecupa2011.html

Linz

The tournament in Linz, which is one of the top 5 Austrian tournaments, will be held on 2-3 April. Linz is where I go to university and I have to admit that the people are nicer than in Vienna.
This time there will be a seperate 13x13 tournament for there are many beginners who don't trust 19x19 yet.
Don't hesitate to join even if you are one of them!

http://linz.goverband.at/


Japan

The recent catastrophy has made me think that humanity is doomed to extinguish itself one day. The industry just wants to get money so badly, it neglects dangerous stuff like this. Let's take genetically manipulated food as an example (or air pollution, it's not as if there hasn't been any technologic stuff invented to make emissions of factories less harmful, it's just that it costs). Food is adjusted on a genetic basis to make them more lucrative for the people who do that. Nobody knows what might happen to people in the future who eat that food. Or to their children. The best and hopefully most likely scenario is that nothing will happen. Though thinking of worse cases doesn't require a great amount of imagination.
However, the situation is already quite *beep*ed up if the best thing that can happen is that nothing happens.

(Don't get brainwashed by me)