Following his victories in rounds one and two of the Korea Prime Minister Cup, Norway’s Jostein Flood took time out to give Ranka the following account of his recent game-playing activities.

This is my first visit to Korea. I came almost a week ago. I was selected as one of the BIBA group of players who were invited by Blackie–that’s 9-dan pro Kim Seung-jun–to visit his go club and then watch the round of sixteen in the Samsung Cup. I saw a lot of very strong professional players from China and Korea, and a lot of difficult games.

I haven’t been playing much go recently or studying the game very much. I’ve been spending too much time playing and studying backgammon. I’m one of the stronger players in Norway, and I’ve played in a lot of tournaments in Norway and some abroad, including the Nordic Open in Copenhagen and the World Championship in Monte Carlo. A friend of mine was the developer of Jellyfish, the first commercial backgammon computer program. Go is definitely the more interesting and fascinating game, but backgammon is a more social game, and it has a money element. Money is not the motivation for playing go–the game itself is so interesting that it isn’t necessary to play for money. For backgammon there has to be some money component; otherwise the game is not interesting enough. Sometimes I play a little poker too.

Basically I don’t think what place I end up in here is so important and how many games I win is not too important either. The important thing is to play interesting games, to enjoy the games, to meet many new people, and to have a good time. Although of course I would like to win as many games as possible.

Note: BIBA stands for Blackie’s International Baduk Academy, and Jostein won one more game afterward to end with the fourth-highest finish among the players who started out in the lower McMahon group.