The 2nd place in WC - achievement or failure 五子棋比赛技巧 知识.docVIP

The 2nd place in WC - achievement or failure? By Ando Meritee, 1997 This is a question I asked from myself right after ending of 5th World Championship in Renju. In some moment I felt that because of my bad play I didnt deserve a place among top three, so my 2nd place was the biggest luck. But in the other moment I thought that I am too good player to be only no.2, I should have been the winner. I still havent found the answer to that question. In order to make some clearance I decided to look back all the way I came through during the WC-series. I became the World Champion in 1993. Nobody believed at that time that I was the best and deserved the first place. Neither did I. Only good fighting spirit and big luck helped such green renjuplayer like me. I didnt have enough playing experience, self-confidence, patience. I had played only 5 years and I was only 19 years old. I had some advantages, too. I had different playing style than Russian players although I grew up together with them - almost everybody knew that. I was probably the second best in the world in theoretical knowledge after Nakamura - almost nobody knew that. I had the black book full of my own variants. There was a logo of WC-2 at the cover of the book which showed the time I started to make it. During two years it became full of valuable variants. The biggest advantage in WC-3 - because of my green status many people didnt take me seriously and therefore many of them failed against me. The champion title gave me one of the most valuable qualities - self-confidence. Since then the self-confidence helped me to realize the my little predominance against other players in different tournaments. In the end of 1993 started a series of victories - 24 games in a row! It included tournaments Malm? Open (8 from 8) and Team European Championship (10 from 10). True fighter Konstantin Nikonov stopped that series at Karepa in 1994. By 1995 I got one more disadvantage - I had lost my green status and since then