An Interview with Schayan Hamrah, Austrian Champion 2011

from http://eurogotv.com/

The Austrian championship finals, a class A tournament, took place in mid December and I proudly present to you an interview with the winner, Schayan Hamrah, conducted and translated by the sandmann!

sandmann: So, how does it feel to be the Austrian champion?

Schayan: It’s somewhat cool to be the Austrian champion (the youngest of all times:D). It’s a pity though that the previous champion didn’t make it to the finals, I’d rather have seized the title from him than winning it in this manner.

Schayan is the youngest champion in Austrian Go history at 16 years and 3 months, beating the previous record by 8 months. Coincidentally, Schayan is also the current Austrian youth champion.

s: How did the finals go?

SH: It was exhausting and enthralling! After I lost the first game from a favourable position by 1.5 I didn't imagine that I could pull myself together and win the remaining games since I had yet to face the toughest (imho) opponents, but with a good bit of luck and endurance I somehow did it after all.

s: Which was the hardest game?

SH: The one against Lothar Spiegel 4 dan. I ended up viktorious after 4 and a half hours, by 3.5 points.

s: I watched the live relay on KGS. I saw there were many close games.

SH: Indeed! This shows that the best players in Austria are very close in strength.

s: Did you prepare for the finals?

SH: I replayed a few Korean games every day to boost my fighting spirit. Sometimes I had too much of it in my games though.

s: Do you play on the internet?

SH: I do, but I rather play in real life (preferably with shell and slate stones in the Go club which are actually not free to use).

s: How is the Go situation in Austria?

SH: The game is not as widespread as in e. g. France or Germany or the Czech Republic. As a result there are fewer strong players. The Austrian champion is only 3 dan compared to the 6 dans of the above mentioned countries. We need to work on this still.

s: Are your friends more interested in Go than before you won this prestigious title?

SH: Nay, they're more into partying than mind sports.

s: Do you want to say anything else?

SH: Nah.

s: Thank you!


Happy New Year everyone!

Völkerkundemuseum

Bei der Benefizveranstaltung für Japan im Völkerkundemuseum musste Go natürlich auch präsentiert werden.


Da war auch dieses aufgeweckte japanische Kind. Wir dachten schon fast, es wollte unserem Zoltan im Fuseki Vorgabe geben, leider hat er eine Leiter verlesen und konnte danach nicht mehr aufholen. (Es hat im Museum übrigens Geld verloren, wir wissen nicht genau, wie viel, entweder 6 Euro 30, 36 Euro oder 630 Euro. Ehrlicher Finder bitte melden.)

Tournoi de Paris and whatever else happened

Let's start with the conclusion from my tournament games:
I am improving at getting lucky and making my opponent mess up. And I started talking English with French accent.

Otherwise there is not much to say. Three Chinese pros participated at the tournament (including MilanMilan and smartrobot, I don't know the third one but I think he resembles Lee Changho a bit). The tournament was held in Antony, in the outskirts of Paris. Rumors have that next year it will actually take place IN PARIS!

sad news: La Maison du Go ("Hugo c'est qui?!"*) had to close a few days after the tournament due to bankruptcy.

random facts: if you get caught fare-dodging (not buying tickets in the Metro) in Paris, you should tell them you are a foreigner (or pretend that you only speak Chinese) because they pay only the half of the penalty (25€ instead of 50€). ;)

There is a Book-Off in Paris! When you go to the Metro station of the Aligré club Troll Café, which is called Ledru Rollin, get out at the wrong exit and you will find it. They stock e.g. Manga for 2€ each.



*the joke is that La Maison du Go sounds the same as La Maison d'Hugo. In French when a word starts with a vowel or an h (which is not read, so pronounciation-wise it still starts with a vowel), the last sounding consonant of the preciding word is linked to the word's pronounciation. Take a guess how the first RER train station after Paris CDG airport "Parc des expositions" is pronounced.


Nichtgospielervernichtung am Ottakring

Da waren Schulklassen. Da waren Stände mit Go, Schach, Boxen, Essen, ein Kasperltheater und ein kaputter Wuzler. Dann waren die Schulklassen weg. Ich spielte Schach. Was war das überhaupt für eine Veranstaltung?:) Ist ja auch egal, Hauptsache, die Schulklassen wissen jetzt, was Go ist.

Blubblablaaahablubb

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)

ZzzzZZZZzzzzzzz...

I sincerly apologize for slacking off and not writing much in near past. I am really demotivated to do anything besides sleeping. I am not even motivated to go to university (I planned this term really awesomely and I am supposed to like the courses I have).
My KGS-mom told me that this is a symptom of sleeping too much. :O Now I am supposed to cut my sleeping time and do weird things as jogging and doing the laundry in the morning.
I've always seen sleeping as a kind of honte. Honte is a move that you just can't do without or without which you are extremely limited in your possibilities. A honte improves the further developement and although seemingly slow, it is worth spending the ressources of one move for it.
So too much honte is no good either. Or so it seems. I'll try getting up earlier tomorrow. But not jogging in the morning or anything alike:) Let's see if it helps.

Neuer Post

A lot has happened since I last posted...

-I realized that Tygem kibitz is worse then KGS. Imagine the content of your junk mail folder posted during a game and everybody (even 9d) trolling without admins. (All in Chinese.)

-Won Seong-Jin spectacularly defeats Lee Changho in the Fujitsu Cup:

Lee Changho resigned while he was winning. The game would be decided by a pretty huge semeai, when Won played the winning move: tenuki! (my favourite move btw) It mislead Lee into misreading the semeai and believing he would lose it when in fact he could have won if he had continued playing. Nice trick, huh?

See the game commented by An Younggil 8p: http://gogameguru.com/commentary-lee-changho-won-seongjin-fujitsu-cup/


-places you should visit:

Erding, 5-6 Feb 2011, was a great tournament as it has always been. Located in the South of Germany, it attracted 112 players for the main tournament (including 12 Austrians if my count is correct) and an unknown number of kids for the 13x13 tournament.

Do join those excited participants of Erding next year!


The Ishi Go Club organized a tournament in Lausanne 19-20 Feb. Even though there were not as many participants as Erding because the organizers were stupid and chose the same date as another huge tournament (last year too -__-), I played exciting games nevertheless.



Lausanne is a beautiful city in the left of Switzerland and definitely worth visiting even if there is no Go tournament!

KGS kibitz

Just when I should be studying for upcoming exams in foreseeable future, I have been mooching around on KGS and kibitzing.

I noticed that a shift in the habit of kibitzers has been taking place over the last few units of time. The random shoutings of "KO!" and "seki" have decreased. Now it is words like "semedori" and "aji" which make you sound smart.

Secondly the use of words coined by KGS such as "stong", "farl" and "qnert" seem to have declined.

And due to the influenza of MilanMilan, there are a handful KGS 9d who actually speak, contrary to the former situation.

*Kibitzing is the art of commenting an ongoing game. Common techniques involve talking about the players, ranks, Chuck Norris and your mom.

Get Strong at Kibitz!