Belgian Go Federation

Frenchman Benjamin Dréan-Guénaïzia (6-d) is the 2022 European champion.
He won (rather surprisingly) the final against the great favourite (in absence of Russian Ilya Shikchine), Ukranian Artem Kachanovskij (2-p).
Frederick Blomback (Sweden, 6-d) won the small final against Serbian Nikola Mitic (7-d).

Artem is suffering the "Raymond Poulidor's syndrome": up till now, he has never been European champion. He was finalist in 2022, 2021 and 2019, and semi-finalist in 2020 and 2017.

Complete results of the European Championship: https://www.eurogofed.org/egc/2022.html

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The Korean professional Won Jin Choi (1-p) won unbeaten the open tournament, ahead of his countrymen Kim Yuchan (another 1-p) (9 wins out of 10 rounds) and Kim Dohyup (7-d) (with 8/10).
Chinese Yang Yaolin ("5-d") ended 4th with 7 wins.
Best European is Stanislaw Frejlak (PL, 1-p), 6th with 6 wins.
To be noticed: the great performance of the young Italian (16 years old) Davide Bernardis ("4-d") who ended 8th with 6 wins (he beat a Korean 7-d and Cornel Burzo, 6-d).
And also the good results by our 2 Belgian participants: Sven Cuyt, 3/4 as a 2-d and Wouter Baert, 4/5 as a 8-k. Congratulations to them.

Complete results of the open tournament: https://egc2022.ro/main-wallist/

Young teenagers Kevin Yang and Alexander Qi topped a competitive field at the North American Go Federation’s (NAGF) 2022 Pro Qualification tournament and were granted the pro statute in the American Go Association.

Both are 14 years old ...and have learned to play just 5 years ago !

F.i. Kevin Yang reached shodan by October 2019 and jumped to 7d in August 2021 (and thus pro in June 2022).

Kevin's score against European pro players in a recent on-line competition (https://www.eurogofed.org/pros/league/transatlantic2.html) is amazing: 10 wins, 1 defeat !

I wonder whether such quick progressions have already been seen before, even in Asia (?).

Sven Cuyt (1-d), our rising star and Belgian champion, has won the 2022 edition of the tournament of Ghent.
He remained undefeated, ahead of the dutch Martin Bierbooms (2-d), Bram Vandenbon (2-d), Dominique Versyck (2-d) and the winner of the Belgian Championship Haisen Huang (2-d).
There were 13 participants.
Complete results here: https://www.gofed.be/webfm_send/589

For this 2022 edition, the final of the Belgian championship was again played in the Belgium-China association.

The championship was marked by a disappointing number of participants (not even 8 members were registered at the start) and last minute forfeits of Lucas and Gints (Gints was still able to play half the tournament) because of Covid restrictions.

But also, this edition was full of suspense and surprising results, especially as the best ranked and thus favorite Thomas Connor got eliminated after Sven managed to claim victory against him twice, once by just half a point!

And finally in the end it's Yong Sen Huang who wins the final against Sven after a sharp game ending with a deadly Ko.

Here is the final standings:
1. Yong Sen Huang (1d)
2. Sven Cuyt (1d)
3. Thomas Connor (4d)
4. Gints Engelen (1k)
5. Joost Vannieuwenhuyse (2k)
6. Guy Dusausoy (4k)

Thanks to everyone to have made this event exciting and congratulation to the winner Yong Sen Huang!

As Yong Sen Huang is not a Belgian citizen, Sven Cuyt is the 2022 champion of Belgium. Congratulation to him also !

Haisen Huang (aka Huang Yongsen) (1-d) won the 32th edition of the tournament of Leuven, ahead of Sven Cuyt (1-d), both with 4 wins.
Gints Engelen (2-k) took the bronze medail and Marie Jemine (1-d), back to a tournament after a long absence, took 4th place.
There were 28 participants.
Complete results here: https://www.gofed.be/tournament/results?tournament=LEU&year=2022

Belgian team won the last round against Slovakia 3-1 (wins by Lucas, Jan and Gabriel; loss by Sven), and ends at the 1st place of the C-league.
That means that the team will play in the B-league.
Congratulations to all members of the team !

Results of the round here: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/788
Final standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

Belgian team has been defeated for the 1st time this season.
Norway won 3-1 against a Belgian team in which Lucas Neirynck and some other "big shots" did not play this time, and thus less strong than usually.

Before the last round, Belgium remains leader, but Lithuania (who did win this round) has catched up: both teams have 9 points.
And further, Spain (8 points) and even Norway (7 points) can still hope to climb in B-league !
Hitchcocks's suspense thus ! :-)

Results of the round here: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/787
Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

In the 5th round of the European Team Championshipon played on 22/03, Belgium team (Lucas +, Jan Ramon -, Lucman Bounoider - and Sven Cuyt +) made (only) a draw against Ireland (2-2).

Belgium remains leader, 2 points ahead of Lithuania, with still 2 rounds to play.

Results of the round here: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/786
Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

NB: in 1st division, Russian team has been excluded (decision of the EGF/IGF).

Belgian team won once again (Lucas Neirynck +, Jan Ramon +, Lucman Bounoider +, Gabriel Mercier -), this time against the most direct concurrent, Lithuania (for the 1st time this season, the Belgian lost a game).

Belgian dominates the C-division more than ever.

Complete results here:
3rd round: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/785

Standings after 4 rounds:
https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

The European Grand Prix is an annual series of tournaments with the top-finishers collecting so-called “bonus points”, these tournaments include the European Championship and the Grand Slam + various international competitions held by local organizers.
The idea behind the Grand Prix is to incentivize strong European players to attend various competitions all around Europe.

The EGF invites the 16 most successful participants, who are divided into four groups of four players.
A round-robin (every one plays everyone) is played out in each group in order to determine the two players that will qualify to the knockout stage.

"Our" Lucas Neirynck was one of the 16, but was logically eliminated in the 1st stage despite a victory to Jan Prokop (6-d, CZ): he was defeated by Mateusz Surma (2-p) and Ilya Shikchine (4-p).

The usual suspects qualified for the quarters of finals, in which a big surprise was the elimination of Artem Kachanovskij (2-p) by Nikola Mitic, a mere 7-d.
The other results were: Lisy-Surma 1-0, Jabarin-Vazquez 1-0 and Shikchine-Podpera 1-0.
In semi-finals, Lisy beat Mitic and Shikchine beat Jabarin.
In final, Shikchine won, proving once again he is definitively the strongest European player !