News

Ilya Shikchine is (once again) European champion !

Ilya Shikchine (RU, 1p) won the final of the European championship against Mateusz Surma (PL, 1p).

He is thus European champion, for the 5th time (2007,2010,2011,2016,2017).

Here are the complete results of the 2017 European championship: http://www.egc2017.eu/events/main-tournaments/european-championship/

And here is the report by EGF: http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=144 (cf. point 2)

European championship 2017

The European go congress has just begun.
During the 1st week, the best 24 European players will fight for the title of "European Champion" in a knock-out tournament with 2 lives (in the first rounds).
You can follow this here: http://www.egc2017.eu/events/main-tournaments/european-championship/

The "open" championship (with some very strong non-Asiatic competitors) is no less captivating.
You can follow the results round by round here: http://www.egc2017.eu/events/main-tournaments/open-european-championship...

By winning the 2017 pro qualification tournament, Andreii Kravets (UA, 7d) becomes the new (6th) EGF pro

By winning the 2017 pro qualification tournament, Ukranian Andreii Kravets (7d) becomes the new (6th) EGF pro.

He defeated in final young Austrian Viktor Lin.

Andrii was one of the favorites: according to the EGF rating list, he is (...was !) the strongest European amateur player, and he had lost in the final last year to his compatriot Artem Kachanovskyi...

Congratulations to him !

Complete results:
http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualification/index_2017.html

The big surprise was the young Oscar Vasquez from Spain, who reached the 1/4 finals. Oscar had climbed from 2-d to 4-d after few month training in China. He is just 14 years old !

Read the report by EGF here: http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=138

Bram Vandenbon (2d) wins in Ghent

Bram Vandenbon is the winner of the 2017 edition of the Gentse Go Toernoi (he was already holding the title). There were 13 participants.
Please note the surprising victory of Joost (2k) on Dominique (2d).

Here are the results: https://www.gofed.be/files/gofed/tournaments/results/GEN2017.txt

Jefferson Huang (aka: Huang Yong-Sen) (3d) wins in Antwerpen

In Antwerpen, Jefferson Huang (3d), back in the official Belgian go life and who had won the 1st edition in 2008, emerged from a field of 8 (a somewhat desappointing figure) players.

Still, M. Huang was defeated by Laurens Teirlinck ("8-k") with 8 handicap stones. Laurens, whose progression is constant, was the only competitor who remained unbeaten.

Complete results here: https://www.gofed.be/files/gofed/tournaments/results/ANT2017.txt

European pro qualification tournament

This year, a 6th European professional player will be selected by a qualifying tournament in which about (*) the 16 best - amateur, of course - European players take part.

(*) some are missing: the Mitic brothers, Fionin, Debarre,...

It is a knock-out tournament with "2 lives" for the 3 first round (after, normal K-O).

The 3 first rounds are played in Wien on 15+16/06 and the 3 final rounds in Czechia on 13+14/07...

Results here: http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualification/index_2017.html

PS: the favorites: Kravets, Le Calvé, Podpera, Pop.

Update: the quarter finals are:
Oscar Vazquez, the young Spanish rising star 14 years old and big surprise of this qualifying tournament will play Rob Van Zeijst (55 ans, European champion in... 1981 (!), 1990 and 1993
Merö-Lin
Burzo-Kravets
Welticke-Podpera

You find a detailed survey here: http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=133

Alexander Dinerstein wins 9th Kido Cup

Alexander Dinerstein (RU, 3p) won the 9th Kido Cup in Hamburg, with just one defeat, just like Pavol Lisy (Sk, 1p). But Alexander has won their encounter.

Complete results: http://www.dgob.de/tourn/tourn.cgi?f=17dekit8.txt&mode=cml

Note that none of the three 6d amateurs could beat a pro..

Chinese Bai BaoXiang once again best amateur in the world (38th World Amateur Championship)

Chinese Bai from China remained undefeated (8 out of 8) like last year, and is thus definitively the best amateur in the world.

There were no competitor with 7 victories, but 8 with 6.

On basis of SOS tiebreaker, Lee Sangbin (South Korea) ended 2nd and Lai Yu Cheng (C. Taipei) 3rd (despite having been beaten by Lukas Podpera from Czechia).

Best caucasian player was: Daniel Ko (USA) (#4)
Best European was: Cornel Burzo (RO) (#7).

Note the participation of a North Korean competitor (#6), who did well but was rather unfortunate: he lost by 0,5 pt a long time winning game against Lee from South Korea (!) and he gave a hard time to Bai, losing to him by 1,5 pt).

There was no Belgian representative this year.

More info here: http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=130

European Team Championship: Belgium lost the test-match against Norway and is demoted to C-class :-(

Belgian team had to win a test-match against Norway to maintain itself in B-league (cf. https://www.gofed.be/node/1040).

Unfortunately, our team lost - by a hair's breadth (2-3) so that next year Belgium will play in C-league. :-(

Lucas and Nelis won, but François, Kwinten and Gabriel lost.

Here are the completed results: http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/404

AlphaGo retires from competition after humiliating humankind !

As expected, during the AI summit in Wuzhen (cf. https://www.gofed.be/node/1036), AlphaGo (AG) swept all its human opponents: Ke Jie, the best player in the word (3-0 !) and the team composed by 5 top Chinese professional (1-0).

Unexpected was the announcement by DeepMind that this games were the last ones AG had played and that they hence turn their interest to other domains than go...(the question "how many handicap stones a top pro would need to beat it" will thus remains open! :-(

DeepMind won't (unfortunately) communicate AG's program, but they will publish an article in "Nature" (a famous scientific review).

They also have released 50 games played by AG against itself...
http://www.go4go.net/go/alphago

Most of them are full of creative/ strange moves...In this video, Hwang In-seong (8d) showed the revolution in the way of thinking AG has brought (high level,in English!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO_JmGH8Iu8

More info here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Go_Summit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo
http://361points.com/articles/thoughtsonalphago/

Many articles were published during this event:

among dozens of them:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/30/15712300/alphago-ai-humanity-google-a...

A extended press review (in French): http://rfg.jeudego.org/item/320-wuzhen-ou-le-dernier-tournoi-d-alphago