Swiss winter Go Camp 2011
writer: Lorenz Trippel
Since many years there is a go camp in Switzerland. Usually it's around winter so the players can do winter sports as compesation to the intense mind sport. Unluckily the hotel we usually went to was in reconstruction so we had to find a new place. To find an affordable place on an exact weekend which is also flexible and offering different options for people with family or wishing to stay in a single room is almost impossible, it took me almost a day to finally find something and yes they were available that weekend, so let's go!
Me together with Dominik from Luzern picked up the boards, stones, clocks, demo board and beamer at the Zurich Go club and drove it to the place somewhere in the Alps not far from Gstaad, a famous tourist attraction. It was raining hard and a storm like wind was blowing but no snow yet when we arrived on Dec Friday the 16th.
No shortly after arriving we already were playing games in the recreation room which we've got for private use - this was great, a big high room where we could play 4 days withut being disturbed. I didn.t do much except from calling the hotel then after making some announcements collecting the registrations.. I was so happy, it worke out perfectly :)
(Lorenz and Benoit playing League games.)
Hwang In-seong is the offical baduk teacher of Switzerland assumed the insructor job for the camp. His concept is play serious games in a league and reviews these games to learn from the mistakes and as strong as he is it for sure that he finds many mistakes. He said once that the players can find one third or even two thirds of their mistakes themselves so there is always space for seld improvement but getting shoed the other unnoticed mistakes in not too bad after all and most often really enligtening so there were heard many "Ahhs!" and "Ohhs!" and after he showed some better moves "Nice!" and "Awesome!" over the weekend.
(Hwang In-seong showing a sequence during a review)
Already on Friday evening the heavy rain turned into snow. It wouldn't stop until Monday the day we left, completely snownig in our cars. Nobody brought skis but still snow is one of the greatest material on earth (besides go stones of course) and the snowball fight we had was one of the best I remember, it doesn't happen often that there is such a huge anount of snow and the consistency of it was just perfect to make snowballs within seconds and attack the opponents with heavy bombing.
(Snowball fight in front of the hotel. Find our cars in this pictures!?)
In-seong not only reviewed games and played simultaneous games with all participamts. He also prepared some lectures to give us some new inspiring strategies in our future games. In the opening lecture he showed different possible moves A, B, C from which we had to choose the best and finally we had no A, B, C and still had to find the best move, that was difficult! In the Attacking Lesson he showed how to invade 3 space extensions (all kind of it), very useful stuff, it's such a commom position that you can use the swquences from his lesson immeadiately in your next games. Not to forget the Find the Weakness lesson, this is like doing riddles, you get presented a full board with 6 to 10 situations to exploit.
(Hwang In-seong teaching)
Actually the camp was not only the Swiss camp but also the Yunguseng camp. Yungusengs are all the players that participate in the online Yunguseng Dojang(http://www.yunguseng.com) of Hwang In-seong. In the first season it was exclusively for Swiss player, 12 of the 20 participants were joining in the online league so it was a good moment to make the price giving ceremony for that event in this real life gathering.
(Slate and shell stones for Armel David, 1st price Yunguseng League)
All in all it was a very entertaining weekend. The hotel was a perfect location. The food was simple and good, we even got a fondue which is kind of traditional food in a Swiss go camp. The 4 days non stop snowing was also a good thing, when it snows people are much more relaxed. It also produces lind of a cozy feeling staying inside and an excellent atmosphere to play board games in general.
More photos: http://www.swissgo.org/galleries/thumbnails.php?album=155
Hwang In-seongs Online Academy: http://www.yunguseng.com/
TYGEM
