Warsaw Ranking

The results of yesterday tournament in Warsaw is really
interesting:

1 Frejlak Stanislaw      2K PL  War     6+    9+    3+    2+
2 Dziolak Krzysztof      6K PL  ???    11+    8+    4+    1-
3 Mucha Marcin           5K PL  War    10+   12+    1-    7+
4 Parkola Michal         3D PL  War     7+   13+    2-    8+
5 Frejlak Jan            1D PL  War     --   10+   12+    6+
6 Blaszczyk Diana        3K PL  ???     1-   11+   14+    5-
7 Kindziuk Arkadiusz     1K PL  Haj     4-   19+    9+    3-
8 Leszczynski Grzegorz   4K PL  War    15+    2-   13+    4-
9 Przybylek Michal       9K PL  ???    17+    1-    7-   12+
10 Zakrzewski Jan        5K PL  War     3-    5-   18+   14+
11 Bazynski Jan          6K PL  War     2-    6-   20+   13+
12 Warchol Tomasz       10K PL  Pio    18+    3-    5-    9-
13 Madejski Blazej       6K PL  Kar    20+    4-    8-   11-
14 Toporowski Patryk     8K PL  War     --   20+    6-   10-
15 Bebenek Jaroslaw      5K PL  War     8-   17+    --    --
16 Soldan Leszek_jr      6K PL  War     --    --    --   17+
17 Marczewski Pawel     10K PL  War     9-   15-   bye   16-
18 Parys Pawel          12K PL  War    12-   bye   10-    --
19 Kazana Wojciech      12K PL  War    bye    7-    --    --
20 Nowinski Aleksander   7K PL  War    13-   14-   11-    --

It was local tournament so many people drop from some rounds, but the most interesting thing is that ranking of player from Warsaw isn't correct. 6kyu beating 3dan, 5kyu beating 1kyu in even games? There is something wrong with polish ranking in Warsaw.

I speak with some people from warsaw about this and conclusion is: people likes their old ranks; they don't play often in tournaments offline but play many games online; If they play in tournaments offline they want to win so they don't want to be promoted if it isn't necessary.

The conclusion is tremendous. I can't go to Warsaw and check they level but i will start discussion about Warsaw rank in Polish Ranking Committee. If we can't repair everything we will begin the changes to obtain the correct ranking.

Polish Training Camp

From 3th to 6th January in Wisła were Training Camp for Dan Player from Poland. I participate in this training and think this is future for polish Go because many young player are getting stronger but don't have enough possibility to play many games with strong players. This sort of training give them chance to play many games with strong player in very short time.

For 4 days we were playing long games, blitz, solving problems, and replaying professional games. From my perspective this experience made me stronger by half a stone, so now i fell like a EGF Shodan. I was shodan from more than a year but to this year i didn't have a chance to play with strong player so my go wasn't exactly 1Dan.

What a learned from this camp? I can said that my understand of joseki is much greater and in some way my chuban is better - my reading is deeper thanks to many tsumego which i solve in this period. I think the biggest problem for young player in Poland is tsumego. I know that I'm very weak at reading but when high Dan is dying in the early chuban that something is wrong with polish players :(

The solution is to solve more tsumego but everyone knows that this is not easy when you don't have enough time. Even if you have free time to train at home you don't fell you should train because there many other things to do in your home. And this is where this camp is great chance to Polish Go - go somewhere to train Go 24h/day and don't think about something else than go.

Polish Go Styles

Few weeks ago Alexander Dinerchtein 1-Dan professional published a very interesting Go test at http://style.baduk.org/

I collected some results of the Polish players and prepared a pie chart:



Number of players: 58; Of course from this we cannot say anything special and that is why I prepared another pie chart only for Dan Players:



Number of players: 15; From these 2 charts we can say that when Polish player become stronger they play more aggressively. A good sign is that the passive and greedy styles are marginal in Dan-level Chart.