Problem 1: Mid to high kyu players

Problem 2: High kyu to low dan players

Problem 3: Mid to high dan players

Problem 4: Mid to high dan players

Problem 5: Mid to high dan players

This time, the comments are purely my own feelings and speculation.

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If you have some thoughts or opinions about the game, please leave a comment!

I'll aim to review one or two games more from the tournament before long. Next up in line is the important, decisive match I played on the fourth round with Taiwan!

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Did the game evoke any feelings or impressions? Please leave a comment!

The whole business about the tournament became a sum of good tradeoffs: by participating in the qualifier, I (again) got a free trip to Japan, and while I caught a flu last Thursday and still wasn't completely healthy by the time I was supposed to fly to Tokyo last Sunday, it paid off by me finally ending up on the third place! According to the organizers, that's the best result for a European representative so far.

With this, my trophy shelf again increases in size.

The results of the tournament can be found on Nikkei's web page, together with all of the game records. I imagine the readers will be interested in at least my games with the Korean and Taiwanese representatives. About these, I'm planning to include commented sgf files on this blog later.

Fujisawa Hideyuki got promoted to 8 dan just one month before this game.

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For advice on how to study professional games, read this essay.

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The pair go championship was held in Hotel Metropolitan Edmont Tokyo, a higher-class hotel. I'd in fact "gatecrashed" the championship tournament already one year ago (it was held at the same venue), back when I was insei, so how the tournament operated was already quite familiar to me. 32 pairs took part this year. The tournament organizers had asked for all the pairs to bring with them a national costume to be clad in during the friendship match on Saturday 3rd November, which made for quite a show:

In the end, I and Elina ended up on the 23rd place, with two wins and three losses. Not very surprisingly, the Korean pair won the championship — I'd even heard a rumor that Korea's female representative is a student of Lee Sedol! The tournament was an incredibly fun experience, and we're looking forward to be able to participate again in future years. The tournament's marketing department did their job well, as both of us now feel an incentive to promote the playing of pair go further in Finland.

Ishida Yoshio analyzing the final game being played by Japanese and Korean representatives

After the championship tournament ended, we had basically one week of free time to look around the autumny Tokyo. In the end, however, the whole week felt incredibly full of activity, with close to no free time at all — not that I minded. On Tuesday, I went to visit the Nihon Ki-in English class, which is currently mainly run by Nikola Mitic, the Serbian D-class insei who started last October. As I found out, nothing much had changed about the English class, which is of course a good thing.

Nikola playing Atsushi Katsura 4 dan

I was baffled to find this kind of a beverage being sold in a local convenience store; and even more so, once the "interesting" news bit about Star Wars got published.

One of the more fun things we got to do in Tokyo was also to pay a visit to Mt. Takao, which is one of the more famous mountains of the Tokyo region. Although the mountain is only about 600 meters high, it's a very popular tourist attraction. When the weather is good, you can easily see Mt. Fuji from the top of Mt. Takao, as well. This time around for me, the main attraction however were the spectacular autumn's colours, as depicted below.

I was feeling slightly envious, as Finland is already rapidly on its way to winter, the current general weather being very grey and close to zero Celsius degrees. In Japan, the temperature was generally between 15 and 20 degrees.

In the end, the whole trip to Japan worked out exactly as I hoped, greatly motivating me to try to work my way to move back there. What I'm doing now is trying to finish my studies as quickly as possible, while looking for possible opportunities to being able to live in Japan.

On a more interesting note to the readers, our Serbian insei has expressed interest in blogging about his experiences. If everything works out nicely, you can expect to see a "Nikola's insei blog" partition being created in Go of Ten in around ten days' time!

I arrived in Sweden at Friday noon. One of the main tournament organizers, Robin, courteously picked me up from the Landvetter airport and drove me to the tournament venue along with Benjamin. The Swedes had rented a flat (probably) owned by a local chess club, and so the venue was very well suited for a go tournament as well.

Since it was my first time in the city, and I couldn't be of much help with the tournament organization which was at the time under way, I ended up strolling around the city a bit. There were some nice sights around, but I ended up wondering why they have so many stairs in the city. It wasn't only once, or even just a few times, that I had to walk up a long flight of stairs, only to find myself walking down another one the next instant.

Gothenburg, the city of stairs

As I was to hold a lecture to the tournament participants the same evening, during my walk I thought if I should make an allegory of stairs with some respect to go (you improve one step at a time, or something along similar lines) — but I ended up deciding that it'd be way too cheesy.

I'd prepared the content for the lecture beforehand, covering rarer topics such as endgame counting, and middle and opening game planning with endgame in mind. The more rarely-heard-of concept "privilege" was explained to the 30-or-so-headed audience as well. Although the lecture started up slowly, it seemed to be very well received, which is always nice.

On Saturday evening, we held another lecture with Benjamin, reviewing a game played by a 1 kyu and 1 dan player during the tournament. This time, too, we had a big audience, and the lecture was well-liked — although we probably got carried away with presenting all kinds of different sequences that have been played out in professional games.

After the lectures on both days, I quickly retreated to my accommodation to study for my Bachelor's thesis, the theme of which also revolves around go to some extent. Once the thesis is ready, I may translate it to English and publish on this blog!

Tournament venue view on the first round

The tournament didn't go exactly as planned. I'd expected to either win all my games or to lose one to Benjamin, and for us two to end up in the first two places anyway. We'd even calculated ahead that it would be inevitable that we play on the infamous "Saturday's third round", which is the timing when games of notably low level get played.

What happened, however, was that Benjamin abruptly lost to Martin Li 5 dan of Sweden on the second round due to an oversight. For a moment it seemed like we'd get to play our "deciding match" on Sunday on a better round. That is, until I too lost my second game, to Jannik Rasmussen 4 dan of Denmark, by 6 and a half points. Fate then had us play on the notorious third round anyway. As was to be expected, the game's quality wasn't very high; I ended up winning due to a more or less lucky kill. The kifu of that game is included lower in this post!

Jannik, then, unexpectedly lost his two games on Sunday, and so I ended up winning the tournament with only four wins, still without any kind of an SOS lottery.

Robin commencing the prize-giving ceremony. Note the go book display on the background!

My topmost impressions of the tournament, now, are the incredibly friendly organizers and players, and the otherwise really cosy atmosphere at the venue. This was in fact my first tournament experience in Sweden, if not counting the European Go Congress in 2008 — and the congresses are always something of a special case. At any rate, it appears I will have to return to Sweden for another tournament in the future!

Included below is the kifu of my game with Benjamin Teuber, with some comments along the way. The kifu of my game with Jannik, again, can be downloaded here.

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As you may by now guess, my current biggest time constraints come from my university studies that have been going on since the start of September. I'm attempting to get my bachelor's degree done during the current year, which means that in addition to my otherwise big number of courses to complete, I also have a bachelor's thesis to write. Luckily for me, however, the thesis is related to go: its subject is vaguely "expertise: what is it, and how does it develop — approached from skill-based board games' point of view". In roughly one and a half months, I should have about 25 pages of literature research written!

While I am indeed busy with studying, I cannot let myself have a break from go. So, while I've cut down on my online go activities, I still quite regularly attend Finnish go club meetings, review pro games and do tsumego. Also, eg. during the following weekend, I'll play at the second Finnish championship preliminary. You should in fact be able to follow some game relays on KGS!

The next Gooften essay is still on its way, though I'm starting to have an idea for it in my head. Also, lately I've been fiddling around with the idea of writing a go book — I've done quite a bit of go teaching during the last few years, and together with the theory of expertise that I'm studying lately, I get the feeling I should be able to write something more or less instructive. If I were to start writing the book, it would approach the game from very general points of view, explaining fundamental strategy and tactics on several levels. Imagine Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, but with somewhat different topics, and maybe going more into detail. In fact, I might co-write the book together with the other Nordic Go Academy teachers.

That's all I've to share for now. Hopefully I can soon get back to writing more here!

Along with reviewing professional games, I still try to do 30-60 minutes of tsumego daily, and play in tournaments whenever possible. I have somehow come to abhor playing on the internet, possibly because I experienced in Japan that it's possible to get around even without doing it (and a real board and opponent sure make for a better playing experience!).

Since, for me, professional games are now the word of the day (or week, or month, or year), I patched up a small professional game reviewing guide for the reader's perusal. I'd be interested in receiving comments for it, too!

In addition, here is a sample from the Fujisawa collection I'm going through. The game is from year 1957, between two of my favorite players, Fujisawa Hideyuki and Sakata Eio. I have translated and included most of the commentary included in the book, and added several notes of my own to clarify some things up. For an optimal experience, you may first want to read the above-mentioned professional game study guide. Enjoy!

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