Belgian Go Federation

6 out of the 7 "European made" pro participated in the 1st edition of this on-line league (Mateusz Surma did not participate).

Artem won the final against Pavol Lisy (3-0), who had defeated Ilya Shikchine in the challenger designating match.

Complete results: https://www.eurogofed.org/pros/league.html

On 19/05/2020, Belgium team, composed by Lucas Neirynck (+), Jan Ramon (+) Lucman Bonoider (-) Gabriel Mercier (-) makes draw against United Kingdom in the 9th round of the ETPC.

Results: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/599

Belgium ends in the middle of B-league (5th out of 10 teams).
Serbia ends 1st and goes up in A-league and Italy, who ends 2nd, will play a barrage match against Israël to possibly do the same.

Definitive Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps (extreme right on the screen).

In A-league, Russia, France, Czechia and Ukraine will play each other in a final tour this Summer to find out who will succeed France, winner of last year.

The Corona Cup is an on-line tournament organised by Lukas Podpera.
This tournament meets a great success with 360 participants from all parts of Europe.

Ex-yoengusaeng (ex-insei) Kim Young Sam appeared - once more - to be too strong for the European competitors: he wins unbeaten the Corona Cup.

Behind Kim, Pavol LISY (SK, 2p) ended second with 5 wins.

Four players follows with 4 wins: Benjamin DREAN-GUENAIZIA (FR, 6d), Ilya SHIKSHIN (RU, 3p), Anton CHERNYKH (RU, 6d) and Sinan DJEPOV (BG, 5d). Ben makes a great performance, and so did Anton and Sinan, who are still teenagers !

Outside the "top group", Vassili JAKOVLEV-CHERNUSHEV (RU, 4d) managed to win 5 games.

Inversely, strong players as Artem KACHANOVSKIJ (UK, 2p), Lukas PODPERA (CZ, 7d), Stanislaw FREJLAK (PL, 7d) only got a mild 3-3 score...

Lucas NEIRYNCK (BE, 5d) scores 2 wins.

Complete results here: https://goweb.cz/turnaj/corona-cup-2020/

News from Artem Kachanovski:
The team of Europe plays this time against the Chinese Junior National Team.
Each team will have ten players.
Two rounds are scheduled: one on 19/04 and one on 20/04 at 12:00 CEST. Each round there will be ten games played.
The Chinese team is composed by professional players of maximum 16 years.
Artem stated : "if we win at least 1 game, it will be already a brilliant result".

Results: https://www.eurogofed.org/china-europe/1st-junior/pairings-results.html

Comments on the results: European players, even the professional ones, have still to grow: China won 18-2 ! (wins by Viktor Lin and by Ali Jabarin; many games were lost by resignation after only +/- 150 moves) :-(

Starting from March 21, the EGF professionals (except Surma) play in an online league at https://online-go.com/ every Saturday and Sunday at 18:00 CET/CEST. One match is played per day: a single pair of participants will play a two game match, switching colours in the second game. Another participant will comment these games live on the EGF Twitch channel.
Tournament system: Round-robin, "best of 2" in each match (2 games with alternating colors).

https://www.eurogofed.org/pros/league.html

This tournament (described in the news here under) turned out as a nightmare for the European team. :-(

Ariane Ougier (FR, 4d) lost to the Chinese female representative, who was then soon outcasted by Benjamin Dréan-Guénaizia (FR, 6d).

Benjamin won the next game too, before losing to a certain Yu Suhao (6d).

This Yu Suhao crushed the rest of the European players - 9 straight wins - including the strongest European amateurs and even some professionals !
(in this order) he eliminated: Benjamin Dréan-Guénaizia (FR, 6d), Anton Chernykh (RU, 6d), Cristian Pop (RO, 7d), Lukas Podpera (CZ, 7d), Alexander Dinerstein (RU, 3p), Stanislaw Frejlak (PL, 7d), Ali Jabarin (IL, 2p), Mateusz Surma (PL, 2p) and Artem Kachanovskii (UK, 2p) !

China won 10-2, only 3 of the 10 members of the Chinese team had to play ! What a lesson of humility for Europe !

More comments on this match by Artem here: https://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=292

photo Yu Suhao: https://www.eurogofed.org/newsp/2020/1st%20China-Europe%20match//yu-suha...

On 07/04/2020, Belgium team, composed by Lucas Neirinck (+), Jan Ramon (-) Gabriel Mercier (+) and Dominik Versyk (-) makes draw against Netherlands (on paper stronger than us) in the 8th round of the ETPC.

Results: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/598

Belgium stays presently in the middle of league B and will very likely remain in this league next year. There is still one round to play (we will play UK)

Standings after the 8th round: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps (extreme right on the screen).

Onze Noorderburen lanceren een mooi initiatief: een "Nederlandse Internet Go Competitie (NiGC)" die de organisatoren ook voor alle Belgische spelers willen openstellen. De server wordt uitgerust met een chatmodus zodat spelers met elkaar kunnen praten en / of commentaar kunnen geven op hun partijen. De voertaal zal nederlands zijn.
Meer info en aanmelden: www.nigc.nl.

The tournament system is "arena" tournament. Each round there is a game: one player from each team.
Each team is composed by 10 players, ranked in order of increasing strength. The loser is eliminated, while the winner keeps playing in the next round. The tournament is over when one of the teams has no players anymore. The Chinese team consists of strong amateur players (some of them - top amateurs, world champions). Our European team has a few pros, the rest are strong amateurs.
More info here: https://www.eurogofed.org/1st-china-europe-match/