Belgian Go Federation

In April, Belgian team (Jan, Kwinten, Nelis, Gabriel) lost heavily (0-4) like previous month, this time against Hungary.

With 2 rounds still to be played, Belgium is now 8th out of 12 teams in this B-league, having only 2 points more than the potentially descending teams !

Here are the results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/293

And here the standings after this round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

Lucas Neirynck conquered his 6th title of Belgian Champion (see palmares here: http://www.gofed.be/node/260).
He remained unbeaten in the finals of the Belgian Championship.

François Gonze ended at the 2nd place.

Gabriel Mercier, Kevin Prist and Jan Ramon, ex aequo, completed a (large) podium.

These 5 players are qualified for the 2017 finals.

Thomas Connor, Nelis Vets, Vincent Quoilin and Joost V. will have to fight in the premiminaries to get a qualifying place to the finals...

PS: Wang Yue was absent (and informally replaced by Tom, a double digit kyu)

Here are the results:

1. Lucas Neirynck 9/9
2. François Gonze 7/9
3. Gabriel Mercier, Kevin Prist and Jan Ramon 6/9
6. Thomas Connor 4/9
7. Nelis Vets 4/9
8. Vincent Quoilin 2/9
9. Joost Vannieuwenhuizen 1/9
10. Tom 0/9

details: http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Tournament_Card.php?&key=T160319T

So as to think about something else in this dark day...
This dynamic video shows the day-to-day evolution of the top 10 go players since 1974...

Interesting to see the emergence of China and Korea since 1990...(and sudden AlphaGo's appearance at 2nd place a few days ago)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRvlyEpOQ-8

DeepMind’s groundbreaking artificial intelligence (A.I.), AlphaGo, defeated Lee Sedol in the final game of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match, winning the five game match with a 4–1 score.

AlphaGo now goes down in history as the 1st computer Go program to defeat a top professional player, and was awarded an honorary professional 9 dan rank by the Korean Baduk Association (note: AG is even ranked nr 2 on http://www.goratings.org/ :-).

More info on https://gogameguru.com

PS:....among many others sites and articles...the event was largely commented !
For instance: Michael Silcher (member of the board) was interviewed on RTBF. Listen to him here: http://www.rtbf.be/radio/podcast/player?id=2091036&channel=lapremiere

François Gonze, 3d won the tournament of Leuven with a perfect score. Lucas Neirynck, 5d ended 2nd (4-1); Jan Ramon, 4d completed the podium (3-2).

This edition met a big success with a total of 46 participants!

Complete results: http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Tournament_Card.php?&key=T160220D&p...

To participate in this tournament, competitors must have professional status and passport of EGF member.

There were 5:
Fan Hui (FR)
Mateusz Surma (PL)
Ilya Shikshin (RU)
Ali Jabarin (IL)
Alexander Dinerstein (RU)

Missing professional players were: Pavol Lisy, Guo Juan, Catalin Taranu, Antti Tormannen and Svetlana Shikshina.

Impressively enough, Fan Hui won unbeaten (4-0) !

All the other pros, except Alexander Dinerstein (0-4), got a 2-2 score (Mateusz Surma winning the tie-break games to end as 2nd).

Complete results here: http://senseis.xmp.net/?EuropeanProfessionalGoChampionship

End February, Belgian team (François + , Kwinten -, Nelis +, Gabriel -) made a draw against UK in the 7th round.

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/291

And here the standings after this round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

In February, Belgian team (Lucas -, Jan +, Kwinten - , Gabriel -) lost against Italy in the 6th round.

Here are the results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/290

And here the standings after this round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

KE JIE, the Chinese teenager prodige did it: he defeated Lee Sedol in a major international tournament: the Mily Cup.

And yet Lee Sedol is (was ?) considered commonly as the best player in the world
(especially since his victory on Gu Li in a "jubango" - match in 10 games - played in 2014).

The match was fierce: Ke Jie won 3-2...and the decisive 5th game by...half a point (with the - official - Chinese rules; with the Japanese rules, he would have lost by half a point !).

Here you find the video live commentary of this unforgettable game (in English): https://gogameguru.com/2nd-mlily-cup-final/

On 5 January, Belgian team (Lucas -, François - , Nelis -, Gabriel +) lost against Slovakia in the 5th round.

Belgium is now 4th (out of 12 teams) in this B-league.
Israel and...Slovakia are dominating by far

Note that Lucas was lucky (?) enough to play against a pro (Pavol Lisy)

Here are the results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/289

And here the standings after this round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps