Cristian Pop

Cristian Pop is a Romanian amateur 7 dan, and former insei. He is one of the strongest players in Europe.

Pop started playing go in school around the age of 15. In college he shared a room with Catalin Taranu, and they studied together. He moved to Japan in 1997 to become an insei, and studied under Saijo Masataka. After two years, he returned home to Romania.

Tournament results

Pop won the Romanian Championship nine times, in 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2005 and 2006, 2013, 2014, 2017.

He represented Romania several times at the World Amateur Go Championship and his best result so far was 4th place in the 28th WAGC held in May 2007.

Pop won the European Ing Cup in 2003, and came second in both the European Ing and the European Fujitsu cup several times. He has also won many major European tournaments, including the October 2009 Kido Cup tournament in Germany.

Teaching

Pop has a homepage where he offers Go lessons: http://www.goschool.resurse.com/index.php

He is once again teaching on KGS as Solaris.

Further reading

Interview with Cristian Pop by 361points Blog.

Interview with Cristian Pop by GoSensations.

Cristian Pop's KGS games

Pop has an extensive array of nicknames: P, Poppy, Popic, Popicu, Popica, Popescu, Popica-Grande and Papa-Popica-Grande.

Pictures

christian pop 2020 (Image credit: Foxwq.com)