CHAPTER 3 – Or how a new and last chapter of this unforgettable double week is now written under your eyes

Because all the 3 chapters stories were long until here and you may give up on reading the lines I took entire nights and days to write to convey the most important feelings from these event, and you may think you have no interest in go and ski, let me spoil you a tiny bit (and I’ll do that properly, in the rules of the art: SPOILER ALERT)

“How to spend an excellent moment and meet-up with friends? Go to Go and ski!” – Christèle Derrien, 12K from the other side of France who will surely come back next year.

So, Sunday evening, we arrived by bus, had a chance to put ourselves immediately in mountains conditions with cheese-dishes such as fondue or raclette (or pizza), cold air and sky full of stars in the light of the white mountains reflecting the moon (don’t be jealous), and go to bed not too late for an early lesson on the Monday morning.

The Go and ski camp, already happening for the 3rd year, is a nice combination of…ah, you guessed? YES, Go and ski (or snowboard)!! Or go and more go for those who don’t feel like shhh-shhh in the snow.

Usually, we play games in the morning and review them with the teachers, then go to cook something in our flats, then come back for the “full go”, a class in small groups with one teacher. Others can go skiing or anything they feel like doing.

In “full go”, we reviewed games, studied tsumego, josekis, or pro games situations to understand better the direction of play. We also played games with the teachers and discussed styles and mistakes with In-seong.

For example, our group could discuss together and play its best move against Denis Karadaban 6d, a game that was not so bad although Denis convinced us it was « hard for white” thus we killed ourselves. Tsss

One little disturbing moment occurred in the morning, when the yoga class from the station asked for space in our building, and we had no choice but not let them yogi-yoga in the cold. After they had vehemently complained about the low yet too powerful voices of the players whispering to review the games, they started playing drums and vocalizing to relax. Many of us were still trying to think and play despite this strange evolution of the situation. Fortunately, at some point, just like the mosquito that bits you all the summer evening and comes to nag to your hear, they vanished suddenly and never came back.
Let’s say it’s a good training to remain focused no matter what.

After the full go, everyone would meet in the big room for the masterclass by the teachers. All level could follow the topics (new Go trends, semeai rules, Go principles…), and that was good because among us were all range of levels from 6d players to beginners. I must confess I thought it would be boring for dan players, but eventually it was very interesting and helpful!

Then, we had time to cook dinner and come back at 8:30 for the evening activities, more entertaining. This is how one day, waiting for the class, In-seong discovered the Chinese electronic AI Go board in the room upstairs and got tricked in a simple joseki (I’ve the decency not to show you, but you can try to extricate that info from a few witnesses), which led to a difficult path of revenge attempts (pretty hard against AI though, pretty hard).

The evening with the tsumego conquest was the most silent and serious, so I’ll skip it. Then, another evening we had Casigo, a mix of casino games mixed with Go. It had a big success. We had to make bets to guess moves from the recent games of Lucas Neirynck 6d, or bet go stones over Go-related question-game or challenge strong players on 13x13 with special effect cards to force shapes on the board. We all started with the same amount of stones to bet. Very interesting to see who you’ll definitely never go to the casino with because they bankrupted within 5 minutes. Others were smarter. This is how Ovidiu Bercenau 6k from Romania made an incredible score beating again and again Florent Labouret 6d with the special magic on 13x13.
Another nice evening was the “simulwaffles”, with simultaneous games AND waffles, a rare combo we can’t dislike.
For an obvious reason, everyone had hands taken, so nobody took a picture of that evening. So sad. But so delicious.

Some more pictures from the camp:

The week sadly ended up way too fast, despite the astonishing slow pace of the bus taking us back to Grenoble.

Last Wednesday, the organizing team gathered to review the last events and check right away what went wrong or not over all these events.

I wanted to underline this, because they will make the events even better, and they gave a terrible amount of energy to make it all happen this year. So, thank you, and hopefully: see you next year!!

Credits for the pictures go to many people, including Colin Carrere, Loïc Lefebvre, Dominique Cornuejols, Camille Lévêque and other participants from the Go and ski camp. Thanks!