Belgian Go Federation

On October 11th-12th, Belgium won against Switzerland the second round in the European Team Go Championship. Read the report of captain Nelis.

Thanks to 4 consecutive victories against Dutch 5-d players in the tournament of Delft (that he won undefeaded) last WE, Lucas reached 413 points our national rating. This means he becomes the first Belgian 5-d ever ! Congratulations to him !

Just for the record: the 1st Belgian...
1-d: Marc Ginoux (1988)
2-d: Alain Wettach (1993) (ChiYiu Wong had reached > 100 pts in 1992)
3-d: Alain Wettach (1996)
4-d: Jan Bogaerts (1999)

This year Bonn hosted the European Championship.

As usual, the terrible 7-d Korean players dominated the tournaments: Song Jun Hyup, remained unbeated (10/10 in the main + 5/5 in the week-end tournament) ahead of his countryfellow, Kim Young Sam (9/10 + 4/5).

Highest ranked European competitor was Ilya Shikshin (7-d, RUS) with 8/10 and 4/5.

Ilya, in the absence of f.i. Taranu, Dinerstein and Kachanovski was the great favourite. But...

...But European Champion 2012 is, surprinsigly enough, JAN SIMARA (6-d) from CZ, who defeated Ilya Shichin in the final.

How is this possible ? Because the system to elect the European champion is the following: after the 7th round, the 8 best ranked European players in the main tournament played a final phase in a knock-out tournament.

Pavol Lisy (6-d, SK) (who climbed 1-k to 5-d in 18 months by the way) and Thomas Debarre (6-d, FR) were the half-finalists.

Nine Belgian participated.
Great performance of Kwinten Missaen in the main (7/10 - less good in the WE tournament 2/5)
Results of the others:
Claude Burvenich (who is / used to be the best Belgian woman)(2-k) 6/10
Kris Boyen (4-k): 6/10 + 1/5
Steve Hertecant: (5-k): 3/5
Dennis Wolfs (7-k): 4/10 + 3/5
Bart Caers (10-k): 5/10
Laurent Richard (16-k): 7/9 (!)
Stephanie Theunissen (15-k): 5/10
and 2 beginners, unknown to me:
Alexander Wagner (25-k): 3/3 + 4/4
Frederik Berger (30-k): 3/5 + 2/4

Please find the complete results of the main tournament here:
http://www.egc2012.eu/congress/main-tournaments/open-european-championsh...

and of the the WE tournament here:
http://www.egc2012.eu/congress/main-tournaments/weekend-tournament/resul...

François Gonze was the Belgian representative for the WAGC 2012. You can read his report here and if you've logged on with an active account on this website (which should be the case if you registered for 2012), you can see commented games from this event and from the Belgian Championship reviewed by top Chinese and Korean players.

If it doesn't work, please contact your club captain :-)

Kwinten Missiaen (2D,Leuven) has won the Antwerp Tournament with a perfect 5/5 score. Second place was for Nelis Vets (2D). There were 18 participants.

16 May 2012

Belgium (composed this time by the strongest team possible: Lucas Neyrinck, Jan Ramon, Nelis Vets and Kwinten Missaen) ends beautifully this 2nd edition of Pandanet European Team Championship by crushing Switzerland 4-0.

So, Belgium ends as 4th out of 10 team in the 2nd league. Even if this is not enough to go up into 1st league, this is quite a good performance for our small go country...

Please note that the 4 best European teams of the 1st league (Rusland, Ukraine, Tchequia, France) will compete again each others in the next European Go Congress (Bonn, end July). Rusland, who has dominated the competition up till now, is the great favourite. More generaly, the domination of the East European countries is impressive.

here are the complete results: http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

François Gonze, our representative in this 33rd World Amateur Championship, won 3 games (out of 8) and ended 40th out of 56 competitors.

Winner was, as expected, the Chinese player (Qiao) ahead of the Korean one.

Best Westerner was Hungarian Pal Balogh (6th)

Follow the competition and see the results here: http://ranka.intergofed.org/

Monday 16 April 2012, 20:00 CET/CEST

A defeat of Belgium despite a good prestation (victory by Kwinten against a 4-d and a short defeat by Lucas against of the young rising star, Dusan Mitic 6-d).

It will be difficult now to go up to 1st division.

Dusan Mitic (StrayCat) 6 dan Lucas Neirynck (Cucurucucu) 4 dan B+2.5
Nikola Mitic (nidza92) 5 dan Nelis Vets (Nelis) 2 dan W+Resign
Mijodrag Stankovic (keks) 4 dan Kwinten Missiaen (Kwik) 1 dan W+22.5
Milos Bojanic (Bojanic) 4 dan Dominique Versyck (dversyck) 1 dan W+Resign

détails here: http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

Tuesday 20 March 2012, 20:00 CET/CEST

A splendid victory by Belgium.

Jannik Rasmussen (JRDK) 4 dan Lucas Neirynck (Cucurucucu) 4 dan B+Resign
Thomas Heshe (daydreamer) 4 dan Jan Ramon (janr) 4 dan B+Resign
Uffe Rasmussen (Laudrup) 3 dan Nelis Vets (Nelis) 2 dan W+8.5
Torben Pedersen (Denmark5) 3 dan Dominique Versyck (dversyck) 1 dan B+Resign

Lucas Neirynck won the Belgian Championship 2012 with 8 wins out of 9. Jan Ramon ended second with 7 wins. Four players made 5 wins, and based on SODOS 3rd-6th place go to Kwinten Missiaen, Kevin Prist, Bram Vandenbon and Francois Gonze. Both weekends were played in Cafe Amedee in Leuven and a number of games were broadcast on KGS.