Team Toguz Korgool USA was back in action a few weeks ago, as my colleague and teammate Bobby and I made our way to Bishkek to represent the United States again in the Asian Championships of Toguz Korgool (actually called the Open Championships of Asia, which is why we were allowed to compete, but in Russian the name literally means Asian Championships).  So, we dusted off our boards, played a few practice matches, and sat down with some of our friends from the World Nomad Games for another run of 7 friendly matches in the name of cultural preservation and friendship.

First of all, for those of you who are wondering what Toguz Korgool is (it’s also called Togyzkumalak in Kazakhstan), take a moment to read my primer on the game here.  Basically, it’s a type of mancala where you have 9 bins of 9 stones, and you capture by landing your last stone in a bin with an odd number (this added stone makes that bin even). And if you land your last stone in a bin with 2 stones in it, then you make that bin a black hole that captures everything in that bin (except in bin 9, and you can’t make one in the same bin as your opponent).  If you run out of stones, your opponent captures all the stones on their side of the board.  First to 82 wins!  Easy to learn, hard to master.

Anyway, arriving at the Asian Championships felt in many ways like a homecoming – the teams from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia were all the same people, and it was wonderful to see them and their coaches again.  One of the coaches of the Kazakh team, Ainur eje, had sort of “adopted” us during WNG and had been giving us advice and tips as well as congratulating us on our successes, not to mention making time to help us practice our Kazakh!  What other sport in the world do you know where your competitors’ coaches help you?  Well, probably because we’re not actually competition for her students; we’re all there to celebrate this game that we’ve come to love.

I should also make known my gratitude to the Federation of Toguz Korgool of Kyrgyzstan, who invited me and Bobby to participate, and also to the World Togyzkumalak Federation which helped arrange our accommodation so that we would be able to participate.  Not only did they make this possible, but they’ve also become friends of ours.  I look forward to seeing them again in the future, hopefully encouraging more people in the US to learn this game.

I arrived and almost burst into laughter, because my first match would actually be a rematch of my last match at the World Nomad Games with Serik Aktayev, who is one of the best players in the entire world.  He destroyed me at WNG, but I was happy that I was able to make fewer mistakes and play a better game this time around.  He still beat me, obviously, but I was happy to see that I’ve improved my play a bit.  He’s also a great guy, and I’ve been learning a lot watching him play and reading some of the strategy he’s written.

After the first match, we had a very nice opening ceremony.  Somehow, the organizers had secured the dresses and the country signs from the World Nomad Games, so I had a bit of a déjà vu.  But this time, I got to carry the US flag.  As it so happens, “USA” in Kyrgyz actually begins with “A,” so I was the second to walk in.  As it happened, Iran was the third.  Well, you all can guess what I did… I scared the living daylights out of the nice Iranian girl behind me by turning around and asking her where she was from in Iran…in Farsi.

Songs, dances, the national anthem, and some speeches later, we were back in the chair.  But not before I was interviewed by the Kyrgyz Ministry of Sport, in Kyrgyz of course:

My second match I won decisively against a nice ethnic Kazakh man from Urumqi, China.  An entire group of Kazakh people came from Urumqi to compete, which led to an awkward but funny exchange when the Russian coat check lady couldn’t understand why a Kazakh person wouldn’t know Russian.  Ah, Central Asia.

My third match was with Ermanat Hulibek, one of our previous acquaintances from Mongolia, also Kazakh (Mongolia, like China, has Kazakhs who have lived there for centuries), and who did very well in WNG.  I held him off for a while, but he’s also one of the best players in the world, and he also defeated me handily.

I don’t know what was going on with the chess computer doing all our draws, but somehow, at this point, little old me was seeded to play against one of the really good Kyrgyz guys.  In a new record, I imploded in less than 15 minutes, miscounting a bin that allowed him to capture 26 stones in one single turn…Oops!  He, too, is one of the best players in the world, so I wasn’t surprised! I just wish that I had given him a better game than I did.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh matches were good and close.  The fifth was a LONG match against a nice guy from Turkmenistan who studies in Kazakhstan.  I played really well in that game, and won.  In the next game, with a cool Karakalpak guy from Nukus, Uzbekistan, I played well, but a SINGLE mistake near the end cost me the match.  As I made the mistake, I could tell I had messed up – he ran me out of moves just before I could have won.  My last match was a win with a nice guy from Tajikistan, who was blown away that I could sort of speak Tajik.  It was nice to dust off my Tajik – I use it so rarely here.

By the way, in case you were keeping track, I broke my languages in one day record: English, Farsi, Tajik, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Russian, Uzbek, Karakalpak (because apparently I speak that too – it’s between Uzbek and Kazakh), Azeri (also apparently I understand this language too), and Turkmen (yup, this one too).  My head still hurts thinking about it, but how cool is it that in a tournament of Asia that I was able to greet everyone and conduct all conversation related to play in the language most comfortable to my opponent?  It really goes to show how artificial all the separations of Turkic languages are.

Overall, my record was 3 wins, which is not quite as good as World Nomad Games, but I was also facing VERY strong opponents here.  In fact, this was my first time winning a match against a Central Asian person (at WNG I won matches against Antigua, Antigua, Czech Republic, and Poland).  Bobby also exceeded his goal for himself with two wins, a great improvement from WNG. I’m not sure of what place I finished in exactly (I think it was about 10th) because I had to go back to work in Osh, but we had a fantastic week of play.  And, it sounds like Bobby and I may be invited to the World Championships next fall, so keep your fingers crossed that I’ll be back in Central Asia sooner rather than later!