Last day of the Go Camp

Everything has to end but the end of the Go camp came rather fast. The last day started quite normal with the 9th league game. I was able to win against a 2 Dan (with handicap) reaching a final score of 5 wins and 4 losses.
After the final endgame lesson there was a special event. The winner of the camp league was supposed to play against a top professional. The only person with just one loss was Lionel Zhang, 6 Dan from US.

Final endgame lecture.

Lionel got one stone handicap which means he took black and there was no komi. As an additional advantage he got 1 hour of basic thinking time. His opponent was Yukawa-sensei, 9 Dan. Since he is a professional he just got 5 minutes and therefore had to play most of his moves in the 30 second byoyomi.

First move of Lionel.

The game was live reviewed by another professional right next to the actual game. I think Lionel was a bit disturbed by that but for professionals it seemed nothing special.

Live commentary of the Kobayashi Opening played by Lionel.

As another special feature we were asked to guess the next move a few times. If that was the case the player whose turn it was had to write down the next move. Then we were told four different options for the next move and the ones who answered correctly got a small prize.

Yukawa-sensei is writing down his next move.

Lionel failed to handle a slight overplay of the professional correctly and therefore got a bit behind. He tried to come back but could not catch up again and resigned when the endgame began. Nevertheless it was a very interesting game to watch for all the spectators.

Subsequent analysis of the game.

After the show game there was the official prize giving. The best players of different strength sections got some cool presents. The winners in the Dan section even got a nice magnetic go set.

I got a tea cup that was created to celebrate Yuki-senseis Tengen title for writing this blog. I really appreciated that but was therefore unable to make a picture of all the prize winners since I had to be there, too. 

Maeda-sensei was a bit confused about the prizes.

We had a "Good bye"-dinner in the evening and afterwards went back to the playing site. Many of the professionals who had done some teaching dropped by that night and played games or told funny stories while enjoying Japanese drinks.

We even got an additional Shamisen presentation by Nakano-sensei. Most of us used the last chance to perform typical Japanese music themselves and went to a Karaoke bar later that night.

After a long night of celebrating on Saturday everybody had to leave. Some people had to go home immediately others spent a few days more in Japan but everybody agreed that it would be great to come back next year.

With this post I close the coverage of the Osaka Go Camp. I hope you enjoyed reading the blog. 

I would like to learn more about how you liked it so feel free to leave a comment with praise or blame.

Finally I would like to thank the organizers Maeda Ryo and Li Ting again for inviting all of us to Osaka.

The only picture of both I could found.