Belgian Go Federation

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

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.

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

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

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

On february 20 and 21 the 26th Leuven Tournament will be held. You can learn more and register here .

On June 6th the BGF organizes the 2015 Belgian Blitz Championship. This tournament is open and free for all BGF members.

More information here

On the first weekend of Juli the 8th Antwerp Go Tournament will be held.

Prize money will be atleast € 500 but will scale up number of participants.

More Information and registration
Registered players

The 2nd Pro-qualification-tournament, which took place 6-7-8 March, selected the 2 new European pro among the "top" European (amateurs - of course) players.

These are Ilya SHIKCHIN and Mateusz SURMA
(my guess was right :-)

www.eurogofed.org/proqualification/

They join Pavol LISY and Ali JABARIN, the 2 first European "home-made" pro, who qualified trough a tough competition last year
(see: http://www.eurogofed.org/results/proq14.htm)

On Sunday 01/06 (2 PM to 6:30 PM) the BGF organises the Belgian Blitz (quick games) championship, open to and free for all members of the BGF.

More info: www.gofed.be/node/746