My hobbies






Bowling

One of the more recent interests, I played bowling regulary for maybe 4 years now. We used to play once a week for about 4-5 hours. Few times a year we made wekend expedition to some city/town with bowling to check it's quality and have some fun.
When I have good day my average is 150-160. I have couple of 200+ games, the best one is 228. We used to play tuesdays in LABENE.
Chess
I learned to play chess when I was about three years old and I am playing it still now. My national ELO rating is usually somewhere around 2000. I'm playing for Ružinov the 3rd Slovakia nationoal chess league. Favourite openings are something after e2-e4 as white, Russian game for black. I prefer slower games, I'm rather weak at quick games...

Go-moku, Renju  
I learned to play Go-moku at elementary school. I loved the game since then. You can play with me at http://www.itsyourturn.com . Just invite player McUH for a game and we will see who is better! I think it's a great game...
Renju is nice extension to Go-moku to give both players about equal chances, since in original Go-moku black has a sure win.
I was introduced to Renju in Prague. Three swedish players presented the rules to us.  At the end we played small tournament (three from Sweden, about five from Czech republic and me from Slovakia). I managed to place third just after two best swedish players.
I love the game but don't play it much since there are not many players in Slovakia. I paticipated on Internet swap-gomoku Euroleague in 2005/2006 season.


Go  

I was introduced to Go by my colleagues at work. At first I didn't find it too appealing, but with time I begun to appreciate it's beauty. So far I'm not member of any club, but I attend local tournaments from time to time and play on IGS under the nick of McUH. My current strenght is somewhere around 4th kyu.


Golf  

Golf is recent addition to my interests. I was facinated by the game for some time and finally decided to try it out. I attended basic golf training at Čierna voda and finally passed exams for green card at October 2009. Sadly I have no talent for this and my skill is poor, but I'm trying to improve. At the moment I'm member of Golf club Carpatia.


Poker  

Few years back I started to play poker as well, I play for [not too much] money at Expekt and I tried several other online Pokers too. Favourite game is No-limit Texas-Hold'em. For now I play online only but I plan to visit a live tournament someday. Nowadays I don't play often anymore.


Martial arts  

I began to be interested in martial arts when I was thirteen. I train karate since then. I have achieved the 1st kyu rank in Goju-Ryu style at the year of 1996. I have also qualifications as a judge and trainer. Before military service I trained few children who achieved 6th kyu that year. I was member of Slávia STU karate club. I must thank Ing. Branislav Hromada for most of what I know in this area.
I participated on few local tournaments, mostly in semi-contact kumite. With many breaks I'm again training regulary though infrequently at Karate klub Karlova Ves.


Computers  

I got my first computer at the year of 1988. It was Atari 130 XE , great computer indeed. I began at once be interested in programming. I used many programming languages so far, namely Basic, Action!, Assembler, Pascal, C/C++, Visual Basic, Visual C++, UNIFACE ...
At the university I began to be interested in parallel programming, distributed systems and databeses.
I like making computer games, especially computer algorithms (AI) to play them. I've made quite a lot of simple games so far. As student I was interested at Go-moku algorithms and created couple of computer programms capable of playing Go-moku. Later I was interested in Go and I've made Go-playing algorithm which is (an probably always be) unfinished but it plays decently for computer program.
Well, I like to play computer games too. I'm mostly interested in strategy and RPG, but play also some simulation/first-person. On-line I play mostly board games like go-moku or chess (see http://www.itsyourturn.com ), but I experienced also first-person/startegy games. More recently I played also Guild wars.
Games I liked most: Civilization,..., Master of Orion II, Heroes of Might and Magic, Diablo, Warcraft, Albion, Shogun Total War, Steel Panthers and naturaly old good 8-bit International karate.


Others 

I also like reading books. I'm mostly interested in science fiction and fantasy of which I have a large collection (mostly in English). But I've read some historical novels too (the best of them is SHOGUN by James Clavell). I'm interested in philosophy as well, especially taoism .
Concerning music, I like Vangelis, R. Miles, Enya, S. Vega and similar kinds. I can also listen to classic - I mostly like Mozart, Vivaldi and Wagner. But the best CD I've ever heard is from Phil Sawyer - Beautiful World in Existence. There are some great songs in swahili.