Stanislaw Frejlak 2p is representing Europe at the 4th Quzhou Lanke Cup in Quzhou, China. He'll give updates in this article. The first game happens on April 13th, early European morning!

For precise information regarding the tournament itself (players, schedule, prizes...), you may check this article.

Now, we are all ears for Stanislaw's stories and upcoming kifu(s)!

- The beginning -

Tomorrow the Quzhou Lanke Cup starts. Quzhou is a special place for Go, as the famous rotten axe legend originates from here. A few years ago, a milestone for Go development in Quzhou was the relocation of the Ge Yuhong Go Academy — the school where dozens of strong European players thanks to the CEGO programmes.

I arrived in Quzhou yesterday and took the opportunity to visit the Go museum at the foot of Lanke Mountain together with teacher Guo Yuzheng 6p from the Ge Academy and a few Korean players. This new building documents a few thousand years of Go history in China and its spread around the world.

* One of the Igo Hatsuyo-ron hardest problems which Katago searched for many days

Today, the opening ceremony took place in the great hall of the museum building. A bus took all the players there from the hotel, and it was quite a bizarre experience — we all sat there like kids going on a school trip, but the players sitting next to me were Park Junghwan 9p, Lai Junfu 9p, and so on.

I think it is very generous of the organisers of the Quzhou Lanke Cup to invite representatives from Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia. I can see how prestigious this tournament is, as the international qualification took place just a few days ago. For example, teacher Guo didn’t make it to the main event — no wonder, as he faced Xie Erhao 9p in his qualification match. And there were many more, even stronger players who didn’t make it through the qualifiers...

We drew lots, and my opponent for tomorrow is Zhang Xinyu 6p. He actually qualified for this tournament by receiving a wild card.

You can watch the game live (on Fox or so) — but you’ll need to set your alarm clock for 6:30 AM.

To be followed...

---

The game

Lost! :(
The game was close all the time. After the first fight a bad aji was left in my territory, and it was quite difficult to decide when to touch it and how exactly to play. I expected a big ko would come but after all, we somehow found a compromise right before the endgame. Unfortunately, it seems that this result slightly favoured my opponent.

Tomorrow, the round of 32 will follow. The 16 players who win are going to play the decisive rounds of the tournament in October.