Visiting Kwon Gap-yong's Academy

A bit more than a week ago, we visited the Kwon Academy again. It was the sport day of the Kwon's school so we also played soccer with the Korean students and Kwon sabomnim. Here are some pictures:

Matthew in the front and Joel in the back

Gareth in the front and Philippe in the back

Fredda in the front and Ali in the back

Issa

Ben is playing with a ghost :) (Ben lost :() - Sorry, misscusi... Ben won :)

Greetings before the soccer game

New Year Party (and opening party:)

Since we have started BIBA, we didn't have time to make an opening party.
Well, actually at first we moved into a Korean school and about 3 months ago we started to rent an office only for BIBA. But no worries, this office is on the same floor with the Korean school, so there is still chance to play with Korean kids. :) Moreover, twice a week we invite Korean kids from other school (Wednesday-Sanbon Academy, Thursday or Friday-Yoo Jae-seong Academy), so the strong foreigner players can play team games with stronger kids.

Anyway we decided to make an opening party before New Year, just before the Singaporean guys leaves. Therefore it became an opening, a New Year and a Bye-Bye party (for the Singaporean guys) at the same time. :)

Many people came to celebrate with us. Even top professional players:

Jo Han-sung 9p Title holder of Guksu Cup.

Song Tae-kwon 9p 2nd place on Fujitsu Cup /few years ago^^/

Great chance to take picture with them:)

Female professional players:

Kim Yoon-young 3p /many people know her well already :) but anyway gold and bronze medalist on 2010 Asian games/

Kim Hyo-jeong 3p (She is a very famous broadcaster at Baduk TV. This time she was my partner in atari Baduk, when we played against Jo Han-sung and Choi Dong-eun :)

Choi Dong-eun 1p (She became pro when she was very young /13years old/, and she went to Canada, finished her studies there. He has just recently returned back to Korea.)
Ali got the chance to play with her atari Baduk. I think Ali did pretty well. :)

Two lucky students got the chance to play with Jo Han-sung. Kerem from Turkey and Foosh from Singapore. :)

Team games with other guests. (on the right, Mok Jin-seok's father. He is about 4-5d and also very good at sports. :) Zhang Xiang seems to be more interested at Jo Han-seung's games. So definitely no chance for him against the Korean 7d. :( :)

Tasty buffet for the special event.

Talking and enjoying the food. On the left with glasses, Lee Sang-hoon 9p, from behind Jeong Su-hyun 9p (also professor of Myongji University), and the guy with hat, Blackie's first teacher; his father. :)

Trying to find something to cut the cake. :)

I think we didnt manage to cut it, but seems still everyone enjoyed eating it. :)

Name list. People who came to celebrate together with us.

Last picture with the Singaporean guys.

Christmas-eve (?)^^ Party

On the 24th of December, special guests visited BIBA.

Kim Yoon-young (3p)

An Seong-jun (3p)

Jin Seung-jae (ama 7d, formal 1st group younguseng)

Lee Min-ho (ama 7d, formal 3rd group younguseng-greenpig on kgs)

We played some Baduk games, first a team tournament, then relay tournament.
Relay tournament was tough, we played only one game but 7 people were Black and 7 were White. Every 10 moves new player played. :) The avarange rank of the teams were about same, but sometimes there were big difference between players, so the game was quite fun. :)

After the Baduk games, we played some English quiz games, so the special guests could show their English power, or I should rather say telepathy power. :)

Let me show some example:

Jin Seung-jae: Animal. Wondering at night.....
at first noone had any clue, but after few seconds
Kim Yoon-young came up with the solution: Cat

Still not sure how could she know :)

Another example for strong telepathy:
Seung-jae: Animal. It has big mouth.
Yoon-young (after one second): Hippo.

Well... :)

But sometimes telepathy didnt work:
Yoon-young: Not alive, not dead.
Seung-jae: Zombie.
(Seung-jae missed the small important fact that it was a baduk term :) -> ko :)

Cute video about Yoon-young :) --->

http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?v=2739284932903

After this game, we created a new game. It was about which team can replay a pro game faster.
There were 6 people in one team. Two people tried to replay the game according how the other people explained the next move for them.

Yurika, a Japanese lady just arrived on this day around 4pm.
She joined the games immediately. Yurika was Black and tried to replay a game with Seung-jae (White) together.
In the other team, An Seung-jun and Foosh were replaying. Only thing we worried about that An Seung-jun might know the game by heart. So we chose an old game. ;)

Genial is telling the pro where to play ;-)

After these games, we went to eat all together (Blackie, Dia, Yoon-young, Seung-jae, Min-ho, Zhang Xiang /to be honest at this time he was rather Tomato:)/, Alvin, Foosh, Daniel, Book, Genial and Kerem.) Unfortunately An Seung-jun couldn't join for dinner and later Daniel and Minho couldn't join for karaoke either.
Anyway Blackie invited all of us for a nice dinner, then we ended up in a marathon karaoke. Book amazed us by showing how many Korean songs he knows. :)

The lady from the restaurant couldn't manage to take a picture, so Blackie sacraficed himself, that's why he is not on the picture :( :)

As for a European, it was quite an extraordinary Christmas-eve, but really fun. Hopefully everyone enjoyed. :)

Team Tournament for Chips

We asked Yoo Jae-seong's school, if 3 kids could come to play with the actual top 3 players in BIBA. (Ondra, Fredrik and Ali).
Usually the kids from Yoo Jae-seong's school are coming every Thursday, but we thought it would be a useful training for the weekend.
On Saturday, there will be a lighting tournament in Daejon. Ondra, Fred and Ali are going. Time setting will be only byoyomi (30 seconds 2 times).
So today they play similar time setting, 5 minutes main time and byoyomi 30 seconds 2 times.
The first round BIBA won with perfect score, 3-0, however in the second round they lost all their games. Therefore the final round is going to decide whether the kids get chips or not. The BIBA students promised to the kids, they will buy them chips if they win the team tournament. (motivation for the young kids to play more seriously :)

The current result is...

Let's see how it will end........

Final Result

Hanbayon Tournament

Last Sunday there was another Hanbayon Tournament.
Everyone did pretty well.

Here is the result:

Mano managed to go back to the strongest group again. :)
Although Gabriel did very well in the first group, he failed to go up to the strongest group. That means he is not gonna stay. :(
Jiehui lost on time once, otherwise he did very well. :)
Anyway everyone made pretty nice result. Congrats.

3rd Team Tournament against Yoo Jae-sung's Academy

It seems BIBA is getting used to these kids' style. The children visited us again and this time BIBA had better result. :) We won 10 games and lost 9. (two children played an extra game)

One of the students is yonguseng, the rest are from Hanbayon.

1st Team Tournament against Kwon Gap-yong's Academy

Last Friday we visited the school where Lee Sedol, Choi Cheol-han and other top players were studying. It is one of the biggest school in Korea. We are planning to visit them at least once a month.

BIBA students played 3 games. In the first round they played even games, in the second round 1 stone and in third round they played with the strongest students from the academy, so they got 2 stones handicap.

Dusan saved BIBA, he managed to win 3 games :), Ali won 2 games but the other 10 students won only 4 games out of 26 games.

So total score was 9 wins 27 loss :(

Score tables from each round:

Result of first round. Opponents are not yongusengs yet. Every game was played even.

Result of second round. Every game was played by 1 stone handicap. Some of the opponents are already younguseng. For example Ondra's opponent is from 6th group. Others from 9th or 10th.... and two from the 1st group are female youngusengs.

Result of third round. Every game was played by 2 stones handicap. All youngusengs are boys. The children from 1st and 2nd group are already played in professional tournaments and beat pro players as well. They are very close to become pro players (there was a small mistake in pairing so Jiehui got lucky and played with a younguseng from 2nd group).

BIBA vs Kwon Gap-yong Academy

Ondra vs Kang Ji-hoon (1st group younguseng-2 stones handicap, Ondra said the game was over after 50 moves)

Group picture

We will go back in next month. Hopefully with a better result that time. :)