News

Mini Go Congress in Trier

The German Go Association is organizing a "Mini Go Congress" in Trier on January 13 & 14, 2018. Trier is about 250km away from Brussels, so actually quite easily reachable.

Further information and registration in French is available here:
http://www.triergo.de/Tournoi/
and in German here:
http://www.triergo.de/Turnier/

Lucman Bounoider undefeated at the Selction Tournament of the Belgian Championship 2018

The Selection Tournament of the Belgian Championship 2018 took place on the week-end of the 25th and 26th of November in Antwerpen.

This year, 17 players took part to this tournament, a great success!

The biggest surprise of the week-end was the performance of Lucman Bounoider, 3d: he remained undefeated, winning his games against Oscar Vazquez, 5d and Thomas Connor, 4d. Congratulations to him!

The five seats for the finals of the Belgian Championship are given in order to:

1. Lucman Bounoider
2. Oscar Vazquez
3. Thomas Connor
4. Thibault Pillon
5. Bram Vandenbon

They will play in the finals against Lucas Neirynck, Gabriel Mercier, François Gonze, Kwinten Missiaen and Nelis Vets.

In case one of the finalists drops off, the next candidates are:

6. Victor Schneider
7. Joost Vannieuwenhuyse
8. Marie Jemine

Full results of the tournament can be found here.

Belgium team still unbeaten after 3 rounds in the European Team Championship

After wins on Georgia (4-0), Slovakia (3-1) and Croata (3-1), Belgium team remains unbeaten after 3 rounds in the European Team Championship in C-league.

If things go on like this, Belgium will reintegrade next season the B-league (from which we were demoted last year)...but the season has just begun...

Standings: http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

Results:
round 1: http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/427
round 2: http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/428
round 3: http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/429

Registration for the Selection Tournament of the Belgian Championship 2018 is open!

Registration for the Selection Tournament of the Belgian Championship 2018 is now open!

Please find all relevant information here.

Jonas Welticke wins Brussels Tournament 2017 with a perfect score

The 32nd Brussels Tournament took place on the weekend of the 28th and 29th of October.

Jonas Welticke, 6d, from Germany, won the tournament undefeated. Second was Chen Qi, 4d, and third Oscar Vazquez, 5d.

Complete results can be found under this link.

Stronger than Lee Setol 3 days after having learned the rules !

Who could do this ? AlphaGo of course !

The Deep Mind team has just released a new version of AlphaGo, AlphaGo Zero.

This new version is stronger than the previous versions (AG Zéro won...100-0 against the AG LeeSetol version !).

But now comes the most amazing info...

Why did they named it "Zero" ?

Because, contrarily to the previous versions that has been "fed" by thousands of games played by the humans since centuries, AG Zero version has learned everything from scratch, from just learning the rules.

Just after 3 (yes, three !) days of playing against itself and learning from its own mistakes, without any pollution by human play (!), AG Zero has already reached the level of the LeeSetol version; and after 40 days, s/he - it surpassed the KeJie version, to become the best ever playing entity in this world.

More than even, IA will be modelling our world, and not only in go !

Read more here: (I recommend you to watch the graphic and the video !): https://deepmind.com/blog/alphago-zero-learning-scratch/

PS: the Deep Mind team opened a forum
https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/76xjb5/ama_we_are_davi...

Coming soon: the 32nd Brussels Tournament on the 28th & 29th of October

Do not miss the most important Belgian (go) event of the year !

More info: https://www.gofed.be/en/tournament/brussels

25 Years EGCC Anniversary Go Tournament - 21 & 22 October

In order to celebrate its 25 years existence, the European Go Cultural Center organises a special tournament on the week-end of the 21st and 22nd of October.

The EGCC is located in Amstelveen, only a 2 hours drive from Brussels. This is an excellent opportunity to take part to a major European event, close to Belgium.

Full information and registration form are available under the following link: http://www.go-centre.nl/Events/AnniversaryTournament.php

Commented AlphaGo's games

Recently, 2 series of commented AlphaGo games were published on the net.

1. Michael Redmond, the 9-d pro from USA, makes very detailed review of all the 50 games AlphaGo played against itself
(remenber: these games were given as a heritage to the Humanity by DeepMind, when Google decided to quit the world of go).

Up to now, 7 games have been commented.

The comments exist on 2 forms: vidéo and sgf files (which are more detailed...but less entertaining).

The level is rather high (difficult for a double digit kyu player), but still the comments are very interesting...

You can find the videos here:
game 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjsN9BRInys
game 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83B6MfrCAsg
game 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bybkv-8zegg
game 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVwcTZBJR3g
game 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ugqVWcPE_4
game 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IChbHs6LTg
game 7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNPpbgI2Sa8

2. No less interesting: Fan Hui and Ke Jie comment the 3 games of the match AlphaGo - Ke Jie (they spreak chinese but subtitles are available in English).
Especially interesting is that Fan Hui asked "live" AlphaGo what it should have played in case of alternative moves...

Game 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIu9P9wEIsc&feature=youtu.be
Game 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF486mbvAOI&feature=youtu.be
Game 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUZxe7bXKxo&feature=youtu.be

Enjoy !

Chinese Zhao Yikang wins 2017 KPMC - François Gonze 16th

Chinese Zhao Yikang won unbeaten the 2017 edition of KPMC (the Korean Prime Minister Cup; Korean version of the World Amateur Go Championship) ahead of the Japanese and of the Korean representatives.
Five players ended with 5/6, among whom the best Western player was the Mexican Abraham Florencia and best European was the Russian Dimitri Surine.

This year, "our guy" was François Gonze. He ended 16th with a 4/6 score (wins against Ireland, Singapour,Sweden and Macao; lost against Netherlands and VietNam).

Note also the participation of the (ex ?) player from Brussels Philippe Fanaro, who represented Brazil and ended 32th with a 3/3 score.

There were 56 participants.

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