I lost the game. The immediate reason was a careless slip in a fight in the late middle game. A more indirect reason was that Markus managed to turn the game into an interesting contest of fighting skill. I win more often than not. But it's obvious Markus has gained a lot of knowledge and skill lately. I'm really happy to have more competition in Lahti. We're already playing even games.

Markus' rank is actually 1 kyu. It is not and cannot be higher for the reason that he has never attended an EGF sanctioned tournament. His name is completely absent from European Go Database. I would need to see Markus play several games against our local 1 dan, Antti Pekonen, to be able to tell whether or not he was closer to 1 dan or 2 dan in skill at the moment. But he is no 1 kyu by current Finnish standards. That I'm quite sure about. In order for Markus to attain a rank commensurate with his skill, he would need to attend several EGF class A or B tournaments and play consistently at 1 dan level or higher, or play in just one and score 4/5 or 5/6 against dan players.