So a KGS 4d is an average (group 5 of 10) strength youth tourney player in Korea? Sheesh, that is annoying.

Looking forward to more!

_________________
- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

I had to leave quickly, so to finish the write up of the Hanybyon:

I also won my second game. I got a good result in the early opening but then I gave a picnic ko which was a shame, and his threat was a peep of the one point jump i was attacking the ko group with. But winning that ko also solidified my top side and he lost some yose there and in the end I won by 40 points or something (he resigned in the counting).



The way the tournament worked was each group was 12 boards, with group 1 2 lots of 12 I think. The organisers (twentysomething guys in the red mesh vests in the pictures, met one called Jinsoo who spoke English and was friends with Mike Cockburn, a UK player) read out the draw for each round, you play people on the same wins. Time limits were 10 minutes main with 3 lots of 30 seconds.

After lunch I played the same kid from the Lee Sedol academy who tricked me in the taisha. Looking for revenge, I had a good game, but then got flustered and screwed up (he played very fast) and made a dead in gote ko threat and several masochistic suicide moves and lost. He ended up on the top board, maybe he won the group. He was certainly stronger than my first two opponents.



As usual, after a stupid loss I was upset and played awfully and lost again. This kid did a trick joseki but I had forgotten the punishment so used up most of my 10 minutes reading it out (I got it right), but then I suicided afterwards. He also played fast and for some silly reason I answered his overplays quickly too and died.

This is a great journal. Please keep it up!

One thing I don't understand is all these Tygem games you are playing. Did you quickly run out of people to play in person? It just seems ironic to go all the way to Korea, stay with pro and other go students, and then play online.

It was getting quite hot in the hall, plus I was angry with myself for playing so awfully, so I went outside and had a drink to collect myself. I won my fifth game (I decided to play Korean territorial style) to end on 3/5 which was disappointing seeing as if I play my best I can win on reverse komi against the kids in the top group, but at least I didn't get 0.



Dia said it's quite common for Westerners to struggle in the hanbyon: Ali Jabarin (6d from Israel) started in top group and kept losing. As I won my first 2 games it could be good for SOS so there's a chance I could go up to 4th group (but I will have left Korea by then anyway), but on that performance it seems legitimate to stay in 5th.

Group 10 is around 1 dan I think, the top group will all be 8 or 9d on Tygem (but KGS 4d is about Tygem 7d ?). I played worse than when I play as a KGS 4d, I'd estimate they'd be 2 or 3d. There are kids who are kyu players in the school opposite, but they weren't at the hanbyon.

Indeed But I tend to get into BIBA before the others (around 11) so do some problems and play on Tygem (and OGS). Also I was using Tygem to measure my progress so was trying to get up to my proper rank as quickly as possible (with around 50/50 win rate) and then see if I improve whilst here. But the last few days I didn't sleep much and went on tilt and got impatient and lost many games so 7d won't happen for a while now.

Yesterday I played a league game with Thomas. It was a nice game, higher quality than the last one, but I made a big woopsy at the end and lost by 1.5. Also I lost a quick game against Sai (she's around 1d), our last game was over 2 hours which caused some amusement. Also Blackie got back from China on Sunday, we reviewed the Chunlan cup games with him yesterday.

A few days ago Richard went to Japan for a few hours to renew his Korean not-a-visa (you can stay here for up to 90 days without a visa, just stamp from airport). It's rather silly that it's easier to do that than actually go through the bureaucracy of applying for a proper visa, what with the environmental damage of flying.

Sojin reviewed my game with Thomas, summary of the comments:

-f7 is an interesting move that they studied before, but the plan should be to play this before j3, because if white blocks at f6 then black can j3 and the exchange is good as after white d10 f9 e10 black can block at f10. Best answer for white is tenuki, or g4 press.
-f10 slack, attack the shape at f9.
-f6 solid, but now j3 not really 100% necessary.
-r6 good direction
-r3 can also be l3, both ok
-q6 bad, i should tenuki to g17 or j16 or d12. If black s3 then I come out here.
-r5 soft, should hane, white helps black with the natural sequence
-h10 soft, top side better, b can't attack that effectively
-l17 should k16 or j16
-k16 very good move
-p18 not so big, h16 is big and solid for top left area, and pretty much sente as next jump is sente and top left swells a lot
-n18 gote here is slow, maybe could tenuki after p18 as a probe, as it does give l17 eyes should white cut around f17. q9/h16 big.
-r11 good point, but first e15 is good, if b d14 then the f17 crosscut sequence can build some white points in g15 area.
-r12 fake tesuji, as I missed s11 s12 w t10 tesuji
-b16, still e16 better
-m13, I can push at k17 and if black blocks then cut, if pull back then great exchange and hane.
-r18, given the variation that happened with b losing q13, he should get in the q11 atari
-e10 can b12 and kill?
-b9 fail, can monkey jump as I did bad f13 exchange so b11 no longer sente
-h19 obviously just g16 first and then this for comfy win.

Yesterday I played another league game with Hyeonbin which I won by resign which Blackie reviewed, might record sgf later.

Here's a pic of us reviewing the Chunlan cup game between Lee Sedol and Chen Yaoye (what with Korea losing in the LG cup and Japan doing well, and Lee losing this game, we joke that I am going to Japan after BIBA because Korea is too slack at baduk now ).



And typical evening of the baduk pros (and Youngun who is kinda pro strength) playing Catan and the amateurs playing baduk.

Dinner tonight, fat on a stick!



(hot dog sausage coated in some kind of bready batter, with potatoes and ketchup, deep fried when you buy it for extra fatty freshness)

Is that a Korean corndog?

It seems likely, but as I've never had a corndog before (we don't have them in the UK) I can't be sure.

We've got/had some new students recently. About a week and a half ago a family from Singapore came to BIBA for the 2nd or 3rd time, staying for a week. There was the mum (Constance) and her two boys Wufeng (12?) and Yuen(8?) who played baduk, plus niece Xing Huang just along for a holiday. Yesterday a Korean-American guy in his 50s called Augustine Kim arrived. He got beaten up on 3 stones by Pyongyu at the kids school opposite, and then lost to me on 2 stones when I managed to kill a fairly alive group.

I realised I hadn't played the teachers in non 10 second games, so am trying to do that before I leave BIBA in around a week. I played Dia a few days ago (10 mins and 30 secs 3 times) and won after a sacrifice strategy!



The league for the last fortnight finished with me in the middle with 2 wins against Hyeonbin, 1 win 1 loss against Thomas, a win against Wangyu and a loss against Mingjong. Wangyu is around 8d Tygem and has only been playing for around a year and a half (he started late around 12, but made fast progess even for Korean kids).

Over the last few days Blackie, Dia, and Sojin have been playing in the olleh cup. Dia and Sojin lost in the 1st round, but Blackie won his first two games. In the 3rd round yesterday he played Lee Hyun-wook 8p, the teacher from the kids' school, but lost.

On Saturday morning Blackie gave a lesson to some kids from a local school, and then we had pizza (which is quite pricey here so a treat) for lunch.



In the afternoon we played Choku, badminton and football, here's an action shot:



The forecast for Sunday was rain, so the planned walk in the mountains with Sai was in doubt, but fortunately when Sunday came it was just cloudy, which was actually nice as not too hot (maybe 25 degrees Celsius), and the cloud lifted throughout the afternoon. I didn't have a proper map, just a photo of a picture map:



BIBA is in the centre of Sanbon in the bottom left, and the entrance to the mountain park was the red 'you are here' splodge on the left side. We went up the left peak (474m) on the purple path, but then got a bit lost (or rather I knew we were in the wrong place, but couldn't find the yellow path to come down, and we ended up going round the back of the mountain and then back via Surisan, the mark in the top left corner.

Walking in the mountains seems to be popular with Koreans, and I can understand why. It's nice that there are mountain walks so close to the high-rise hustle and bustle of the city. I took lots of pictures, so here goes.

Some kids playing with a bubble machine at the picnic site at the foot of the mountain:



Sai by a stream. The flora didn't seem strange to me, just temperate woodland:



Half way up the mountain we stumbled across a temple, Buddhist I think. Note the left-facing swastikas (an ancient religous symbol in Asia without the Nazi connotations of the West).

Trying out my camera's macro mode on a beetle:



The view back to Sanbon through the woods from about two thirds of the way up. My camera couldn't really cope with the contrasting brightness:



So here's a zoom of the bright gap in the trees, maybe some Photoshop wizardry could merge them.

Me on the walkway on the summit:



A panorama



View towards Gunpo/Anyang, Sanbon is behind the mountain to the right. The peak on the left is the one on the right of the map.

Going down:



An observatory or military radar dome or something:



After finally finding our way back, we emerge from the woods to find Surisan temple, complete with monks.

Interior of temple:



And finally back at the flat, watching baduk TV:



And view from the flat the next morning of the mountain and observatory (on left) where we went:

I played a 3 stone slow game with Blackie yesterday. I didn't manage to get a 2nd eye for my giant dragon so lost:

"w+res as i thought it was rude to keep thrashing, but...."

The variations show there is some bad aji, but none of it ultimately worked right?

Thanks for all the updates. It's really interesting stuff!