I recognized the name immediately. I'm a total Vance nut and am currently anxiously awaiting the first volume of the Compact Vance Integral Edition. But perhaps that's more relevant for a "Vance expenditures and significant others" thread...

Mine was created during a role playing game (a paper one, not a videogame), at first, my character was called 'Eles', and was fighting with a hammer.
The scandinav god, Thor, is often represents with a huge hammer, so I finished to call "Elesthor" =)

I used to go by etl3, my college ID, since I couldn't really come up with a name I liked.

So I went to Japan, I'd estimate I was around 4 kyu at the time, but very unbalanced, since I had spent most of my ddk days eating problems for my 3 meals a day. Naturally, my Go was incredibly crude and highly unstable. I would cut anything and fight anywhere, and somehow come out on top.

So I went to a Japanese igo kaisho, and was paired against the weakest player in the room, since it was dan hours(kyus were expected later in the day, they segregate them so that they can schedule dan level lessons and lectures at different times than kyu level lectures; it's not really strictly enforced, people just naturally come at different times to get the right teaching), but they let me in as an exception. So it was me vs a much older 1d, probably in his 60s. We started at 4 stones, greeted each other, and played.

I destroyed him, didn't make it through midgame with my brute force, rage style.

His comment after the first game and he found out that I'm not Japanese: "Ohhh.... beikokujin, ka... yaru na... yaru na..."
(Ohhh, so you're an American... not bad, not bad."

He decided to go down to three stones. Didn't make a difference. The same kind of thing happened again.

He said to himself: "Ahhh, chotto... komaru yo ne..."
(This is a little annoying... isn't it...)

Down to two stones. Less than 150 moves, and resignation again.

This time he said nothing. He was pretty visibly upset.

1 Stone, I took black. He died in late middlegame.

Again, he was silent. He roughly passed me the white stones and we continued, some of the other people his age started gathering around to check out who the young kid was.

And when he resigned after I killed a group in the first fight, he got up without cleaning up the board, walking away and muttering to himself, "Keh... nanja sono purei... tada no bouryoku dake jarou..." (What the hell is that play style... it's just mere violence, that's all...)

That phrase kinda stuck in my head, "tada no bouryoku," mere violence. Made me smile a bit to get a comment like that, so I took his insult as a compliment. So when I decided to choose a new screenname, I thought of what the guy had said, and named myself Violence.

I thought to myself, that my violent nature across the board is the only reason I won games as a DDK, and an SDK. It was my only virtue, so why not make it my name?

Heh, nice story... kinda reminds me of a pickup game I played at the Penn Go Congress a couple of years ago. I was rated about 9kyu at the time. A lady from the group of Japanese tourist asked me for a game, but wouldn't give me any more than 4 stones. She was 1d. I beat her fairly easily I thought.

If that was who I think it was, I was roped into being her pairgo partner during the 2008 congress (she'd been demoted to 1k). Seems her original partner dropped out on her and I was in the right place at the right time.

Halfway through the first game I figured out why: she was nowhere near 1k. Maybe 10k. We got crushed. The second game we got crushed in, too, but that one at least was funny because our opponents had a similar strength gap, 4d and 6/7/8/9k (goddess, I don't remember what her rank was-- is she here, btw?), so there were mistakes on both sides.

I was paired against her in the open the next day and got my revenge. I recall making 10th or 11th line territory. It was a hollow victory, though: I think I used 6 or 7 minutes on my clock and she used over an hour.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Is this that nice Japanese lady who was at the Portland congress, and would play all day long, from early morning until midnight, every day?

I played her a couple times and she was in the midnight madness tournament that I TD'd. She was a very nice lady, and very enthusiastic about go, but yeah, not a very strong player.

Yes, probably.

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

My observation is that Europeans demote their ranks quite readily, if they think they don't make the cut. However, Asians typically keep their highest attained rank even though they no longer have that playing strength. So, you might get so-called 5 dans among old men but their actual strength barely make 1 dan.

Well, I used to be 5 dan, but nowadays I don't dare to call myself anywhere near 5 dan. I still hold a 5 dan diploma though, and listed as a 5 dan by my association. If I enter a competition, I am still expected to enter as a 5 dan. And then I would have to explain that my 5 dan was attained way back in 1996. Oh well.

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My homepages: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Unkx80 and http://yeefan.sg/.

That maybe so, but I would guess you are still at least 4 dan from your posts on L19. I don't think you've got much weaker, unless 4/5 dans where you are are stronger than in Europe

Well, Lou Yuxiang, also 5d from Singapore, did just beat Fernando Aguilar in the WAGC

But in general, I think the ranks in Singapore are probably close to those in Europe and China.

I do agree unkx80 is probably not weaker than 4d at the moment, and would be able to play 5d again easily with sufficient energy put into it

A good friend of mine, Dutch 5 dan, stopped playing in 1995 for 10 years. When he started again in 2005, he initially struggled a bit, but was still playing around 4 dan. Currently, he's getting back his rhythm and playing at a (weakish) 5 dan level again, slightly stronger than myself.

Lovely story.

(too bad there is no "Like" button for us mere mortals)

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FusekiLibrary, an opening library.
SGF converter tools: Wbaduk NGF to SGF | 440 go problems | Fuseki made easy | Tesuji made easy | Elementary training & Dan level testing | Dan Tutor Shortcut To Dan

I came up with my current name "freegame" because I used to Skype a lot with a friend of mine who also plays go. One night we were having fun trying out crazy names on KGS to see if they were still available.

I tried (among others) freegame and rankedgame. Both were not yet taken so I decided to resister them to use as a pair. Only about a year later or so did I actually started using them.
freegame is obviously for free games. It is now also my KGS+ and teaching account.
rankedgame is for ranked games only.

I haven't played with rankedgame account for a long time, but I log on every now and then to avoid that I lose it.
most of the time I use freegame and sometimes one of my other accounts with less interesting names.

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Laurens
Go school: freegame's Teaching School
Author of: The Next Move a book for 15-3kyu players.

Well POGO for two reasons.

one is the food...

The second is this

"PO"
This is derived from my mmo days where i was usually known as prophet/nightprophet.
This however was not my first mmo name. that was Fallensin's or kabal.
I gained prophet by Claiming something then it usually happening later such as allience wars, guild breaking up, market flucuations,freinds breaking up with current loves etc. most of it is statistical odd's, and i was usually never wrong. i for some reason have a keen sence of perseption.

"GO"
go,baduk,igo?

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The unoffical Corndog Of Lifein19x19.
Please,Do not microwave for more then 60 second's as screaming will acure.

I used to have a different online name, but I kind of outgrew it. I then avoided making accounts anywhere for a while as I couldn't come up with a name I liked. I wanted the name to not be taken anywhere by anyone else, so that I could use it everywhere. One day I decided enough was enough and I was not leaving my computer until I found an unused name that I liked. I google-searched a lot of names and racked my brain trying to decide on something I liked, and finally came up with "Twilight Eagle". Unfortunately, someone had taken that name too! After looking up in a dictionary the difference between "Twilight" and "Dusk", I decided that Dusk was an acceptable alternative.

Why an Eagle? Well, I'm not actually a huge bird fan, but I liked how an Eagle is strong, sharp-sighted, and feared by its prey. I also liked how it gave some tie-ins to America's national bird, even though I'm not actually American.

So from then on, I've been happy going by Dusk Eagle on the Internet.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

was it to be random?

when i was about 11 years old i forgot my aol account password. I decided rather than remember it i would jsut create a new id,I was using my mom's boyfriend's computer and i looked down at his mouse pad and saw a little slogan with an octopus that said
"wessanen octopus, has it got you yet?" So i became wessanenoctopus. Later i forgot that password and made the wessanenoctUpus acount and it stuck. I believe that was a run on sentence; i apologize in advance.

I also use badukboris these days...its easy to remember, and much easier to spell out. For go players its baduk boris, for non go players I say bad uk boris. I am not from uk but thats not really important.