Sorry for the delay, I know it has been 3 months since the last update.  We will be more regular with our updates, we will start posting the weekly league results again.

We updated the Students and Teachers page.  There is also a new photo gallery.

Last weekend we took a trip to Dajeon to visit the Chungwon Baduk Dojang, if you remember they visited us once before, and this is our second time to see them.  It seems we have formed a nice friendship.  Last time we visited, in addition to playing baduk all day Saturday, we went on a trip to a traditional Korean music museum.

We learned how to play, and made our own Jang-go (traditional Korean drum)

This time on Saturday we helped out with teaching the younger classes, and then we had a mini-tournament.  Pascal (3d) got to the final, but lost to their strongest student (Tygem 7d)

On Sunday we went sight seeing.

It was a lot of fun, check out the gallery for more pictures, and notquitepro.blogspot.com for details

As of today we are proud to announce our new discount offers, which you can now check on the updated Informations-page.  The new discounts for example include price reductions up to 20% for groups, long-term students or coming in winter (so what are you waiting for ? :)).

These options will not only make it easier to join us for almost everyone, but also allow us to offer a reward for some things that benefit the management of the IBA. Be sure to check it out now, and join the discussion about this on our new forum !

Thanks to a joint project by Marc, Simon, and Israel, since yesterday the International Baduk Academy’s website has been expanded with a new FORUM ! (you can access it either from the upper links’ panel, or by clicking on the Forum hyperlink)

Please be sure to visit it, and feel free to write your questions, suggestions and experiences!

It’s also possible to ask for a review of your games under Reviews and Lessons.

Enjoy your stay!

You can find the weekly league results below from 26th of October to 1st of November, as well as the results of the games played against the teachers for this period.

This week Simon, Mrs. Park, and Marc did the best, congratulations for them!

For full size please click on the photos.

On the 22nd of October, a few reporters from one of the Korean baduk TV channels visited our school, to make a longer riport on International Baduk Academy.

The reporters of Skybaduk TV stayed whole day, making interviews with professor Lee Ki-bong and nearly all of the students. You can check some of the photos taken during professor’s regular morning group lesson at the gallery.

They will compose a twice 50 minute program from the material they filmed here yesterday which will focus solely on International Baduk Academy and will be visible on Skybaduk TV channel!

We were very glad to welcome them and hope that we will have more visitors too in the near future.

On 9th of Septermber 2008 during Chuseok - Korean National Thanksgiving - holidays, the students of International Baduk Academy visited the Korean Go Association, where one of the matches of the yearly Korean Baduk League took place.

We were glad to meet with a lot of strong players, including Park Cheon-sang 9P, Choi Cheol-han 9P, and on top of it Lee Chang-ho 9P, who even agreed on making some photos with professor Lee Ki-bong and the students which you can look at in the gallery.

I’m sure that all of the students enjoyed the trip very much and learnt a lot from the commentary on the professional games played. We hope to go to the Korean Go Association once in a while again.

The 1st World Mind Sports games were held in Beijing from 2nd of October to 18th of October. Many of our past and present students participated there, the International Go Federation even made an interview with one of them, Alexandra Urban which was also presented in the Daily Bulletin at the tournament.

You can read the interview at the Bulletin of IGF at the following address:

http://ranka.intergofed.org/?p=528

While many of our students were participating in the 1st World Mind Sports Games in Beijing, the students who stayed in Korea also participated in a big tournament, the Chungnam Dojisa Cup.

This tournament has been organized for more years, and it always had many different groups such as senior, female, etc. However, this was the very first time that the organizers formed a foreign group, too. 8 of our students were participating in the tournament: Mod (6d), Javier (6d), Michael (4d), Simon (3d), Him (3d), Louis (2d), Soren (2d), and Tony (1d).

The tournament also had impressive money prize: the 1st place got 700 000 won, the first runner-up 500 000 won. Mod and Tony ended up sharing the 3rd place for which they got 300 000 won each. The 4th to 8th place also received 100 000 won, so in the end almost everybody from our Academy received a money prize!

We really enjoyed the tournament, and hope to participate on it next year, too!

You can check the photos taken on the tournament in the gallery.

On the 6th of September 2008 we were happy to welcome the students of the 중원 바둑도장 (Chung Wan Baduk School). Since the aim of the school is to teach their students English and Baduk we were asked to play a little tournament. The strength of both schools are quite even so no handicap was given. After two interesting rounds in which no school appeared to be superior, we went for dinner. With relinquished strength the players tried to make the decessive win and decide the tournament for their school but all attempts were futile as the outcome was a perfect draw. After all we had a fun time (pictures of how much fun we had can be found in the galery) and we hope that the students of the 중원 바둑도장 will visit us again for a rematch.

Very recently, we established a Scholarship System with various scholarship opportunities to help our students, who want to reduce their expenses while studying at the International Baduk Academy. For more information please click on the tab reading “Scholarship” or here.