Belgian Go Federation

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)

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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.
He won for the 9th time in 10 participations.

***

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 +, Lucman + 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.

On 19/03, Belgian team lost to a direct competitor, Austria (1-3), losing the hope of being promoted to the A-league next season.

On board 1, Lucas Neirynck lost to Victor Lin by 2,5 points. As François Gonze (board 2) and Gabriel Mercier (board 4) also lost, the victory by Jan Ramon (board 3) was not enough to avoid the defeat...

Now Belgium (8 points) stands in the middle of the "peloton" in this B-league which is dominated by Austria (12 points) and Serbia (11 points).

There are still 2 rounds to go.

Results of the round: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/499

Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps
(at the right of the screen)

On 19/02/2019, Belgian team made draw against Turkey.

Lucas Neirynck won (against Denis Karadaban) and so did Gabriel Mercier, but François Gonze and Nelis Vets lost.

Belgium is now still 3rd (with 8 points), 2 points behind Serbia (with the 2 Mitic brothers, both 7-d) and Austria (with Viktor Lin, a strong 6-d)...

Results of the round: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/498

Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps
(at the right of the screen)

François Gonze (4d, Louvain-la-Neuve) has won with a prefect score the 29th edition of the tournament of Leuven ahead of his clubmate Gabriel Mercier (3d) and Nelis Vets (2d, Leuven).

Two other competitors remained unbeaten:
Laurent Calmus (5k, Brussels Le Pantin) and
Alexandre Teferenko (10k, Ath).

There were 33 participants.

Complete results: https://www.gofed.be/tournament/results?tournament=LEU&year=2019

On 22th of January, Belgian team made draw against the Netherlands (2-2).
Lucas Neirynck (6-d) won against Gilles Van Eeden (6-d), but François Gonze (4-d) lost against the other dutch 6-d, Peter Brouwer. Jan Ramon won and Gabriel Mercier lost.

Belgium is now 3rd with 7 points, but the standings are very close (there are only 2 points difference between the leader and the 6th team)

Results of the round: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/497

Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps
(at the right of the screen)

By beating on 11/12/2018 a strong Swedish team (Lucas +, Jan +, Gabriel -, Nelis +) in the 4th round of the ETC , Belgium remains in the race for the title in the B-league.

Results of the round: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/496

Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps
(at the right of the screen)

The favourites qualified for the final rounds through the preliminaries rounds of the 2019 Belgian Championship (in which only 9 contestants played).

These are: Jan Ramon (3-d), Gabriel Mercier (3-d), Lucman Bounoider (3-d) and Nelis Vets (2-d).

They will join Lucas Neirynck (6-d), François Gonze (4-d), Thomas Connor (4-d) and Thibaut Pillon (2-d) in the final rounds in Spring 2019.

Complete results: https://www.gofed.be/tournament/results&tournament=BCP&year=2019

Note the final rounds formula has changed: instead of a round-robin (everybody meets everybody) with 10 finalistes during 2 WE, it will now be played with 8 finalists in a "double-life" knock-out tournament (in one WE).