Belgian Go Federation

AlphaGo, the go playing software developed by Google Deepmind, has defeated Lee Sedol with three straight wins in their long awaited match!

This amazing achievement comes five months after AlphaGo won 5-0 against Fan Hui. Most of the commentators before the match predicted that AlphaGo had no chance to win against such a strong player as Lee Sedol. However, AlphaGo proved them wrong and edged Lee Sedol in every part of the first three games.

This week end, 16 top European amateurs fought to become the fifth European professional go player.

Ukranian Artem Kachanovskyi beat his countryfellow Andrei Kravets in final and join the four ex-amateurs who already qualified as pros through similar competitions in 2014 (Lisy, Jabarin) and 2015 (Shikshin, Surma).

Complete results can be found here: http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=40

François Gonze, 3d won the tournament of Leuven with a perfect score. Lucas Neirynck, 5d ended 2nd (4-1); Jan Ramon, 4d completed the podium (3-2).

This edition met a big success with a total of 46 participants!

Complete results: http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Tournament_Card.php?&key=T160220D&p...

AlphaGo will face its ultimate challenge: a 5-game challenge match in Seoul against the legendary Lee Sedol, the top Go player in the world over the past decade

Read everything about the match here:
http://deepmind.com/alpha-go.html

(comments on youtube are planed)

Here some reactions and prognoses by some pro players:
http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=36

To participate in this tournament, competitors must have professional status and passport of EGF member.

There were 5:
Fan Hui (FR)
Mateusz Surma (PL)
Ilya Shikshin (RU)
Ali Jabarin (IL)
Alexander Dinerstein (RU)

Missing professional players were: Pavol Lisy, Guo Juan, Catalin Taranu, Antti Tormannen and Svetlana Shikshina.

Impressively enough, Fan Hui won unbeaten (4-0) !

All the other pros, except Alexander Dinerstein (0-4), got a 2-2 score (Mateusz Surma winning the tie-break games to end as 2nd).

Complete results here: http://senseis.xmp.net/?EuropeanProfessionalGoChampionship

End February, Belgian team (François + , Kwinten -, Nelis +, Gabriel -) made a draw against UK in the 7th round.

Belgium is now in the middle of the "peloton" (6th out of 12 teams) in this B-league.

Here are the results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/291

And here the standings after this round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

In February, Belgian team (Lucas -, Jan +, Kwinten - , Gabriel -) lost against Italy in the 6th round.

Here are the results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/290

And here the standings after this round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

An amazing feat occurred recently. The go software AlphaGo developed by Google DeepMind beat Fan Hui in a 5 games match with a clean 5-0!

This is a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Please read more at the following links.

http://deepmind.com/alpha-go.html
http://www.britgo.org/deepmind2016

Antti Törmannen (ex-7d from Finland) had been insei since some months by the Nihon Ki-in in Japan.

He has just been promoted professional by special recommendation "due to satisfactory results in the insei league and pro examen" (like late Hans Piesch some ...18 years ago).

Congratulations to him !

Here you can read an interview of Antti:
http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=26

KE JIE, the Chinese teenager prodige did it: he defeated Lee Sedol in a major international tournament: the Mily Cup.

And yet Lee Sedol is (was ?) considered commonly as the best player in the world
(especially since his victory on Gu Li in a "jubango" - match in 10 games - played in 2014).

The match was fierce: Ke Jie won 3-2...and the decisive 5th game by...half a point (with the - official - Chinese rules; with the Japanese rules, he would have lost by half a point !).

Here you find the video live commentary of this unforgettable game (in English): https://gogameguru.com/2nd-mlily-cup-final/