Belgian Go Federation

The most (qualitatively) important European tournament of the year was organized this WE in Berlin (top amateurs had to fight in a preliminary tournament to join the European pros for this Grand Slam tournament).

Ali Jabarin (1-p, IL) won 1st prize (10.000 € !) by beating in final Artem Kachanovski (1-p, UA)
(winner of the 1st edition last year, Ilya Shikchin, lost already in 1/4 finals)...

Here are the results:

Preliminary round
Lukáš Podpera vs Artem Kachanovskyi B+Resign
Alexander Dinerchtein vs Andrij Kravets W+Resign
Catalin Taranu vs Csaba Mero W+12.5
Dusan Mitic vs Cristian Pop W+2.5

Quater Final
Artem Kachanovskyi vs Ilya Shikshin W+Resign
Pavol Lisy vs Dusan Mitic W+Resign
Alexander Dinerchtein vs Ali Jabarin B+5.5
Mateusz Surma vs Catalin Taranu W+1.5

Semi-Final
Mateusz Surma vs Ali Jabarin B+6.5
Pavol Lisy vs Artem Kachanovskyi B+3.5

Final:
Ali Jabarin vs Artem Kachanovskyi W+Resign

Small Final: Mateusz Surma vs Pavol Lisy B+Resign
Place 5-6: Alexander Dinerchtein vs Catalin Taranu W+Resign
Place 7-8, Dusan Mitic vs Ilya Shikshin W+Resign

Dominique Versyck (2-d) made his comeback into Belgian go life by winning the 1st edition of the tournament of Liège. Second was Guillaume Lescuyer (2-k)

There were an encouraging 22 participants.

Complete results:
Results

In April, Belgian team (Jan, Kwinten, Nelis, Gabriel) lost heavily (0-4) like previous month, this time against Hungary.

With 2 rounds still to be played, Belgium is now 8th out of 12 teams in this B-league, having only 2 points more than the potentially descending teams !

Here are the results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/293

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

Lucas Neirynck conquered his 6th title of Belgian Champion (see palmares here: http://www.gofed.be/node/260).
He remained unbeaten in the finals of the Belgian Championship.

François Gonze ended at the 2nd place.

Gabriel Mercier, Kevin Prist and Jan Ramon, ex aequo, completed a (large) podium.

These 5 players are qualified for the 2017 finals.

Thomas Connor, Nelis Vets, Vincent Quoilin and Joost V. will have to fight in the premiminaries to get a qualifying place to the finals...

PS: Wang Yue was absent (and informally replaced by Tom, a double digit kyu)

Here are the results:

1. Lucas Neirynck 9/9
2. François Gonze 7/9
3. Gabriel Mercier, Kevin Prist and Jan Ramon 6/9
6. Thomas Connor 4/9
7. Nelis Vets 4/9
8. Vincent Quoilin 2/9
9. Joost Vannieuwenhuizen 1/9
10. Tom 0/9

details: http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Tournament_Card.php?&key=T160319T

In March, Belgian team (Kwinten, Nelis, Dominique, Gabriel) lost heavily (0-4) against a strong opponent: Poland.

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/292

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

So as to think about something else in this dark day...
This dynamic video shows the day-to-day evolution of the top 10 go players since 1974...

Interesting to see the emergence of China and Korea since 1990...(and sudden AlphaGo's appearance at 2nd place a few days ago)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRvlyEpOQ-8

This week the first match of the interclub 2016 will be played. A stunning amount of 8 clubs are participating, the highest amount in a decade.

You can find the interclub schedule and results here: http://www.gofed.be/en/tournament/interclubs

May the best club win.

DeepMind’s groundbreaking artificial intelligence (A.I.), AlphaGo, defeated Lee Sedol in the final game of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match, winning the five game match with a 4–1 score.

AlphaGo now goes down in history as the 1st computer Go program to defeat a top professional player, and was awarded an honorary professional 9 dan rank by the Korean Baduk Association (note: AG is even ranked nr 2 on http://www.goratings.org/ :-).

More info on https://gogameguru.com

PS:....among many others sites and articles...the event was largely commented !
For instance: Michael Silcher (member of the board) was interviewed on RTBF. Listen to him here: http://www.rtbf.be/radio/podcast/player?id=2091036&channel=lapremiere

Although the match is already won by AlphaGo, the remaining games are played to the full. Lee Sedol won game 4 holding white thanks to a brilliant move in a difficult middle game. This move was even qualified as "god move" by Gu Li, 9p.

This win is quite important from a symbolic point of view. It also exposes some weaknesses of AlphaGo that were invisible so far.

Game 5 will be held on Tuesday 15 March. It has been agreed that Lee Sedol will hold black.

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/go-grandmaster-lee-sedol-grabs-consolation-...

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.