Belgian Go Federation

Nobody expected this just a few days ago, but Kim Youngsam 7d managed to win the EGC 2016 Main Tournament!

At the end of the 7th round, Taïwanese Chan YiTien (world amateur champion in 2014 !) was the only unbeaten player...and thus favorite (Kim YS has already been defeated 2 times).

But in the 8th round, Ilya Shickine did a great performance by beating Chan.

And when Ilya went on to beat in the 9th round his last European rival Ali Jabarin (IL, 1-p), he joined Chan as co-favorite.

In the 10th and last round, Chan lost to Kim YS so that Ilya had just to win against Zhang (CN, 7-d) to be the only one with 9 wins...But he lost, offering the final victory to Kim YS (after tie-break).

Finally, it was a very narrow result, as four players ended with 8 points.
1. Kim Young Sam
2. Ilya Shikshin with merely 1 SOS point less than Kim
3. Chan Yitien, with the same SOS as Ilya, but 2 less SODOS pts
4. Ali Jabarin, 2 less SOS than Chan Yitien

Three players ended with 7 wins:
5. Mateusz Surma (PL, 1-p)
6. Zhang QiuMeng (CN, 7-d)
7. Pavol Lisy (SK, 1-p)

Here are the complete results:
http://egc2016.ru/en/congress/events/main

Remarks:

1. Ilya Shikchin is 2016 European champion as he won the "European Championship" (a knock-out tournament for the 8 best European competitors after 4th round of the main tournament).
(see "news" here under).
("Il y a Shikchin...et puis les autres !" :-)

2. Fan Hui(FR, 2-p), European champion in 2013, 2014 and 2015, was well partly present in St P...but did not compete!

2. the other professional European players (Artem Kachanovski, Alexander Dinerstein and Catalin Taranu) did not play the entire main tournament...Among them, only Artem made his way to the European Championship; the 2 others did badly.

****

And what about the Belgians ?
Peter, Julien and Catherine were brilliant!
Thomas Connor (3-d) : 5/10
Peter Leyssen (2-k): 7/10 !
Kris Boyen (3-k): 4/10
Julien Wautelet (10-k): 8/10 !
Catherine Fricheteau (10-k): 6/9 !
Laurent Martin (12-k): 5/9