Belgian Go Federation

The scan of 3 old issues of "Belgo", the magazine published by the Belgian Go Federation, have been recently added in the archives (issues 90, 91 and 92; from 2017 and 2018). Enjoy !
https://www.gofed.be/node/662

Belgian team made a flying start in the new edition of the European team championship: in the 1st round, Belgian competitors (Lucas, Jan, Lucman, Gabriel) crushed their Swiss rivals by 4-0 !

Results: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/591

Standings after the 1st round: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps (extreme right on the screen)

The Brussels Tournament takes place on 26/10 and 27/10.
You can register by sending a mail to board@gofed.be stating your name, country, club and level.

More info can be found here.

Here you find some interviews and (mostly positive ! :-) regards on the EGC that Belgium organized this summer !

https://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=274

Chinese Xin HE remained unbeaten in the 14th edition of the KPMC (Korean Prime Minister Cup, more or less the Korean version of the World Amateur Championship).

He ended ahead of:
CHOI Won Jin from Korea (who only lost to He),
KAWAGUCHI Tsubasa from Japan (who only lost to Choi) and of
LO Sheng-Shieh from Taïwan (who only lost to Kawaguchi).

Best Westerner (and European): young (he is 15 years old) German raising star Arved PITTNER (5d), who ended 5th.

Our representative, Dominik Versyk (2d) ended 36th out of 62 competitors, with a 3/6 score (expected wins against Bulgaria, Ecuador and Brunei, and expected defeats to USA, Australia and Netherlands).

Complete results here: http://kpmc.kbaduk.or.kr/eng/result/gameTable.asp

32 competitors representing almost all the best European players have been struggling for the title of European Champion in a specific competition: the European Championship.

The system of this tournament is a mix of double knockout and single knockout systems.
Its starts with a double knockout in the first 5 rounds.
In the second phase, the last 8 players compete for the championship in a single knockout tournament from the quarters of finals to the final.

1. Preliminaries rounds:

After three rounds in the main knockout, and two in the looser section, 4 players remained unbeaten: favourites pro Ilya Shikchine, Mateusz Surma and Pavol Lisy, joined by the surprising Lukas Podpera (7D, CZ), who took revenche of his lost final in the pro qualification tournament some weeks ago by beating new pro Tanguy Le Calvé (1p, FR).
In the winners section, most results were the ones expected...But still, some surprises occurred:
-The two greatest surprises were the victories of 2 amateurs against professionals competitors: Jonas Welticke (6d, DE) defeated Alexander Dinerstein (3p, RU) in the 1st round, whereas Lukas Podpera (7d, CZ) triumphed over Artem Kachanovskyi in the 2nd round.
- Russian Vjacheslav Kaymin (6d) eliminated two opponents better ranked than him: Cristian Pop (7d, RO) in the 1st round, and Stanislav Frejlak (7d, PL) in the second one (but he finally lost to Ilya Shishine in the 3rd round).
In the losers section, there were some astonishing results: in the 1st round, Antoine Fenech (5d, FR) got rid of Csaba Merö (6d, HU), Oscar Vazquez (5d, SP) eliminated Nikola Mitic (7d, SE) and "home player" Belgian representative Lucas Neyrinck (5d, BE) surprised Cristian Pop (7d, RO). In the 2nd round, pro Alexander Dinerstein was eliminated by Stanislas Frejlak (7d, PL)...who also put another pro, Tanguy Le Calvé, out in the 5th round of the losers' section !

2. Quarter of finals:

After the last round of the losers section, the 8 quarter- finalists in the European Championship were known.
Five of the eight active European professionals were still in the race (the 3 missing ones being: Andreii Kravets - did not take part in the European Championship -, Alexander Dinerstein and Tanguy Le Calvé). The 3 surviving "amateurs heroes" were Lukas Podpera, Viktor Lin and Stanislaw Frejlak.
And 2 of these 3 amateurs made even their way up to the semi-finals: as Lukas Podpera prevailed over Ali Jabarin, and Stanislaw Frejlak over the last year winner, Pavol Lisy (taking his revenge of his defeat against him last year in Pisa).
A more expected result was the victory of Ilya Shikshin over Viktor Lin, whereas the duel between the 2 pros Mateusz Surma vs. Artem Kachanovskyi turned in favor of the latter.

3. Semi-finals:

Semi-finals offered us Lukas vs. Ilya, and Stanislaw vs. Artem.
Here, there was no wonder again: the 2 pros won.

4. Small final (for the 3rd place)

Lukas Podpera took the bronze medal by beating Stanislaw Frejlak in the small final

5. Final:

In the end of a gripping final, Ilya won just by HALF A POINT against Artem, and is 2019 European champion (for the 6th time !).

Complete results here: https://www.eurogofed.org/egc/2019.html

No less than 670 participants took part in the open (main) tournament of the 2019 European Congres.

Sun Tengyu (CN, 7p) is the great winner of the 2019 open European championship. He remains unbeaten after the 10 rounds.
Sun Tengyu was the favorite, as he is one of the best pro in the world (he is ranked # 72 in the famous "go ratings" website held by Remy Coulomb, ahead of champions like Gu Li or Lee ChangHo f.i.)

The podium is completed with
- Yoon NamGi (KR, 7d), the last year's winner, as silver medal; and
- with Jia Ganglu (CN, 2p) as bronze medal.
Both got 8 wins.

Four players ended with 7 points, in order of decreasing SOS:
4th: Stanislaw Frejlak (PL, 7d),
5th: Liu Tanghao (CN, 6d),
6th: Yong Min Lee (KR, 7d),
7th: Viktor Lin (AT, 6d)
8th: Kim Jong Min (KR, 6d).

The 9th is one of the heroes of this congress: Yann Flambard from France, a genuine 1d, who ends with the incredible balance of 9 wins and 1 undecided game. Among his victims: one 3d, three 4d and two 5d !

Kim DoHyup (KR, 7d), 10th, appears to have the highest SOS among the competitors with 6 wins.

Beside the top contenders, only three players managed to reach 8 points:
- Nicola Flagothier (BE, 1k) (who has beaten one 3d and one 4d !)
- Srejpan Medak (HR, 7k)
- Petro Prydatkevych (UK, 15k)

***********

WE tournament:

No one among the top competitors succeeded in remaining unbeaten: five players ended with 4 victories, four 7d Korean amateurs: Song Hong-Suk (1st), Yoon NamGi (3rd), Kim Kibaek (4th), Kang Koo Hong (5th) and one Chinese professional: Zhang Taiyu (1p) (2nd).

Best competitors with 3 victories were Pavol Lisy (2p) (6th) and Ali Jabarin (2p) (7th). Dominik Boviz - who was not in the Mac Mahon super group- ended 8th with 4 wins.

Good sign for the level of the European top players: Pavol Lisy and Dominik Boviz prevailed on a Chinese Professional (Huang Yan, 5p) plus some Europeans managed to prevail on Korean 7d amateurs!

In total, 11 players got a perfect score: Samuel Teissier (2d, FR), Liu Xinyu (2d, DE), Fumihiro Tsubura (1d, JP), Nicola Flagothier (1k, BE), ...

He did it once again: Lucas Neirynck is Belgian champion.
For the 9th time in 10 participations (he only lost one game (to Thomas Connor in 2015); his global score in the 10 finals of the Belgian championship is 76+, 1-).

***

This year, for the 1st time, the final of the Belgian championship was organized as a knock-out tournament with (partially) 2 lives
(see: https://www.gofed.be/webfm_send/477).

Unfortunately, 2 qualified competitors did not participate:
- Thomas Connor (4-d), who had notified his absence in advance
- Lucman Bounoider (3-d), who suprisingly did not show up.
They were replaced respectively by reservists Joost Van Nieuwenhuizen (1-k) and Laurent Calmus (5-k) (who had joined just as a scribe).

There were no surprise during the 1st day of the competition.

The semi-finals, played the 2nd day, opposed Lucas Neirynck to Gabriel Mercier (Winner: Lucas) and Jan Ramon to François Gonze ( Winner Jan).

François won the "little final" and climbed onto the podium.

And Lucas, as you know, triumphed in the final on a good-performing Jan.

Here is the final standings:
1. Lucas Neirynck (6-d)
2. Jan Ramon (4-d)
3. François Gonze (4-d)
4. Gabriel Mercier (3-d)
5. Nelis Vets (2-d)
6. Thibaut Pillon (2-d)
7. Joost Van Nieuwenhuizen (1-k)
8. Laurent Calmus (5-k)

Chinese Chen Wang triumphed in the 2019 World Amateur Championship.
He remained unbeaten (8/8).

Second is Korean Jaesung Lee with 7/8, who lost by a half point to Chen Wang.

Further, five competitors got 6 victories, in order of the tie-breaker:
- the player from Hong-Kong
- Albert Yen from USA (best Westerner)
- Pal Balogh from Hungary (best European)
- the player from Canada
- and Dmitro Bogatski from Ukraine.

Our delegate was François Gonze.
He ended 26th out of a field of 59 competitors, with 4 victories (against South Africa, Turkey, Lituania and Czechia - this last one is a real feat: Jan Simara was European champion in 2012 !) and 4 losses, to Albert Yen (US), Pal Balogh (HU), Vietnam and Geert Groenen (NL). Congratulations to him !

In the last 2 rounds of the 2018-2019 season, Belgian team won.

In the 8th round (played on 18/04) against Denmark (3-1): Lucas +, Lucamn + Gabriel - and Nelis +
https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/500

In the 9th round (played on 07/05) against Switzerland (3-1): Lucas +, Jan +, Lucman + and Nelis -
https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/501

Belgium ends at the 3rd place, behind Austria (2nd) and Serbia (1st) who climb in 1st division next year.

Final standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

***

The 4 finalists in the A-league are: Russia, Hungary, France and Ukraine.
They will play "live" the final round in Brussels on the 19th of July.