Justice

I lost the 4th round very fairly to Pikku-Jussi. He played cool moves in the fuseki and I never recovered from the disadvantage of my uncool moves.
The last (5th) round finished very fairly too. S. Fenech, the Petanque Xiangqi World Champion, played a joseki that he didn't know and couldn't recover from his disadvantage either.
Only 1 out of 5 of my games ended in unfair results. It seems that my Go has gotten kind of solid.
Either that or my sense of justice needs to be adjusted, a little bit.
As I envisioned, we played Mahjong. I have an awesome paper Mahjong set.

The Finnish system

Today there is no main tournament game, so I kind of did nothing but sleep.

Yesterday, before we went to the bars, we were hanging around with a lot of Go players in the park just next to the school. As usual, people drank a lot of beer and more beer, so there were a lot of empty cans and bottles to be disposed of.
Finnish cans and bottles have a 15 to 40 cent deposit value, probably one of the reasons they are so expensive. But the dudes who introduced this were very thoughtful.
Some guy who looked like a beggar approached us and picked up all the empty cans and bottles that he could find. He even asked us to give him our empty cans and bottles.
I conclude that he either did this for the deposit, or to keep the park clean from empty cans and bottles. Maybe both.
I have to admit that this bottle deposit system proves very effective. It makes picking up trash in the park have a double purpose. In Go too, we are looking for moves that serve as many and effective purposes as possible.

Why do I play Go?

The third round has passed very peacefully. I won very fairly again. As the balance of fair and unfair games has to be maintained, my next game will end with an unfair result again.
We (the young and promising Go players of Europe and the promising Go player of Europe) have just studied trick plays for 3 hours. Some of us are searching for their lost brain.

One of my fans has asked me to write about why I play Go. My answers to this question would be quite random, so I will refer to a conversation instead that I had with a Taiwanese guy today. We talked about a lot of stuff, amongst others he told me why Taiwanese kids don't play go:

1) It is in black and white. (Computer games have more colours.)
2) You have to stay seated for a long time.
3) You have to use the brain.

Somehow I can't help worrying that the masses of Non-Go-players in Europe is endangering the existence of this game in Europe. How can we help the game to get more players?
Let's unite our power and annihilate the Non-Go-players!

*a*ar owes me a hug.

Update: We went out tonight to hang around with the cool Go players in bars. It is Prodi's first time to go out drinking. Jussi massaged me when I was drunk=D

Second Day

Today I won very fairly against Pål from Sweden. I came up with a new move during the game which finally reverted to a known trickplay. Unfortunately Csaba, pronouncedちゃば, 6d, busted it when I showed it to him afterwards. So my move didn't even survive one day. But maybe I can still sell it to breakfast.
I haven't had time yet to check whether breakfast won by 0.5 or not.
Btw yesterday I forgot to write that someone actually mistook me for a pro. I was reviewing a game for my Finnish lover when some random guy joined. After I finnished the review, he asked me to review his game, in case I had a humble little time for him. He was obviously shocked when he heard that I was not pro. Apparently some of my move suggestions and ideas have pleased him very well. It took him by surprise when I showed him my 3d name badge and he was seriously impressed when I showed him the other side of the name badge which was 2k.
He told me he was 4d and suddenly his interest for a review has faded.
To the games that have been played I shall add volleyball, Settlers of Catan, Poker and soon Mahjong.



Yesterday I got drunk too fast, so Namii couldn't treat me a beer, but I am sort of drinking it now. It's getting hot in the room...

First Day of EGC

The first post of this blog is late by one day, and misses an introduction. The reasons shall be explained in unforeseeable future.

I arrived at Tampere yesterday. It was quite easy to find the tournament site as it seems that everything cool (including our accomodation) in this city is located on the road connecting the railway station and the school(s) where the tournament takes place. Besides Go, people also play football, frisbee, various weird card games, Mafia (btw the Mafia always wins)...
I've also met many of my friends, some nice people and some pretty people as well as some nice and pretty people.
By the time I am writing this on paper, the first round has already finished. Approximately half of the participants won their game the other half probably lost theirs. I belong to the latter, unfortunately. I lost to a female Korean 7d who is called Kang Samm Fing (I don't remember her name... I hope she won't read this :D), on board 3. The playing rooms are spread in three buildings, with the boards 1-100 located in a school, about 5 minutes walking distance from the registration venue (yes I walk very slowly). As for this venue, the lower the board number, the more stairs one has to climb so that the top boards literally are on the top.
In my game I have once again proved my psychological weakness in tournament games. Rather than a weakness, although not a strenght either, I could call it a special ability.
My opponent Kang was female, as mentioned. A lot of people think she is hot, so as she probably does too, I was able to use reverse psychology, making her think that I think she was hot and that I would get distracted. She also played very fast, I heard she always does.
After the fuseki, as was expected, I was behind. This time it was because I made a big unintended sacrifice. This is when my ability comes into play. When I am behind, I start finding good moves, and my opponent actually started using her time. I managed to punish her overplays and eventually she died unintentionally as well, quite bigly too. Eventually I was ahead (Jussi told me later by 15 points). Now that I am ahead, my ability causes a brainfreeze. Suddenly a semeai happened between my stones and my stones (ones that I supposedly captured). When I came to my senses, there was a huge seki on the board laughing straight at my face. This is the story of how Kang Samm Fing, 7d, won her first round in the main tournament of the Zhuyeqing Tea European Go Congress Tampere 2010.





























By the way, for some sophisticated reasons Japanese rules with 6.5 komi are applied in the tournnament.
The news of the day for me is that breakfast, 3p, lost his game by 0.5 points to Cornel, 6d. According to the oracle, breakfast will win his next game by 0.5.

random facts: Today Namii will treat me a beer^_^
I finally hugged Prodi, accomplishing a mission that was assigned to me 2 years ago.
A*** sucks [smiley, flower, flower] (By *a**a)