About me
My hobbies are Go (obviously), drawing, reading (detective- and horror-stories), inline skating (the halfpipe and ramp stuff... not just rolling around ;) ), music and writing. For more informaton check my profile page

Online Go
The first Go server I've every played on was KGS. Meanwhile my rank there is 3d (but I'm probably weaker :) ). I can't play serious or slow games online because it lacks the true Go atmosphere, so you'll find me blitzing most of the time. If I decide to play a slow game, I'll probably do that on IGS or CyberORO.

Studying Go
Usually I study more than I play. I started off by solving Tsumego from 1001 L&D problems before studying pro games. The first book I won a tournament was Nie Weipings The art of positional judgement. So he became the first pro I studied :)

Later on I studied other players like Shusaku and Kato Masao. Meanwhile Cho U and Go Seigen are the ones whose games I replay the most. Replaying their games will boost your strength even though you will go trough several losing-streaks until you finally improve. A list of my books can be found at my blog. I created the blog to keep track of my progress but also to study Go. By writing articles about joseki, tsumego or game anlyses you're forced to really think about what you're writing. In fact that's almost as good as reading a book. A recent project is Suji, a bimonthly Go magazine where all kinds of articles are collected and published as a PDF on the website. I hope that we'll have more editors in future, so we can make a better magazine.

During the almost 3 years of my "career" i had two teachers. The first one being Ion Florescu (KGS: Tsurukame) who taught me a lot about how to approach the game as well technical stuff. Without him, I'd probably still be 12k :) It was in his online-school where I played my first ever online-tournament. He is very good at keeping motivated and making you feel confident about your Go! The second teacher I had was (KGS) sendol. At the time I took lessons from him I was around KGS 1k and his lessons were far different from the ones with Mirel. He wouldn't completely tear your game apart even though you may have thought that it was pretty good. The most important thing that I learned from him is the following question I ask myself everytime when I'm unsure about the next move.

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Everyone who has witnessed a lesson of him will know what I'm talking about. During the lessons with sendol I thought that my Go had become worse, but once I started playing more and really listening to his advise, I became stronger very quickly. Thank you Sendol-Sensei :)

Why did I start playing?
i used to play chess when I was around 8 years old. But I quickly lost my interest in it as it seemed very boring to me at that time. I occasionally played with my grandfather who is a pretty strong player but I never really made an effort to become good at it. In november 2004 I found an article about Go which stated that it was far more complex than chess, so I gave it a try.

I know that most of the european Go-players (at least the younger ones) picked up Go through Hikaru no Go. I discovered the manga about a month after I started playing, so HnG also had a big impact on my wanting to play Go (The first Kifu i printed out from the SmartGo-Database were the ones from Shusaku :) ). I must have read the whole story about 6 times so far, but I can't seem to get tired of it.

Quickly I became totally addicted to the game (i played my first 19x19 game in december '04). I've been playing ever since ^^. I'm now a member of the Winterthur Go Club.

Why do I still play?
Playing Go is an invaluable experience. I remember when I first came to the go-club (which was rare, cause the closest go-club is 27 km from where I live) and met other players there. The atmosphere was completely different from anything I had ever experienced. Having rl-opponents also boosted my desire to become stronger and be able to compete with everyone. I've spent countless hours in front of goban before I could play all the players at the club in an even game :)

I played my very first game "abroad-game" in croatia. Mladen Smud had arranged a meeting at the local Go-club and invited some players. It was a great evening and I plan to go back there and get my revenge from Mladen by beating him in an even game :) .Also meeting strong players such as Cho Seok-Bin, Li Ang, Mr. Tanaka or Mladen Smud gave me new motivation to keep on playing. When I visited the Go Club Zürich (60 km away) for the first time (about 2 years ago), Mr. Tanaka was visiting Switzerland and playing simultaneous games at the Go club. I got completely curshed in a game where I took 6 HC. I was very happy and proud when I beat him with 3 HC a couple of weeks ago. However there is still Li Ang who destroyed me with 5 HC, so I there's still plenty of room for improvement :). My plans for the future are to play at international tournaments, visit a Go congress and become the croatian representative for the WAGC or the KBPMC.

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