Belgian Go Federation

News from Artem Kachanovski:
The team of Europe plays this time against the Chinese Junior National Team.
Each team will have ten players.
Two rounds are scheduled: one on 19/04 and one on 20/04 at 12:00 CEST. Each round there will be ten games played.
The Chinese team is composed by professional players of maximum 16 years.
Artem stated : "if we win at least 1 game, it will be already a brilliant result".

Results: https://www.eurogofed.org/china-europe/1st-junior/pairings-results.html

Comments on the results: European players, even the professional ones, have still to grow: China won 18-2 ! (wins by Viktor Lin and by Ali Jabarin; many games were lost by resignation after only +/- 150 moves) :-(

Starting from March 21, the EGF professionals (except Surma) play in an online league at https://online-go.com/ every Saturday and Sunday at 18:00 CET/CEST. One match is played per day: a single pair of participants will play a two game match, switching colours in the second game. Another participant will comment these games live on the EGF Twitch channel.
Tournament system: Round-robin, "best of 2" in each match (2 games with alternating colors).

https://www.eurogofed.org/pros/league.html

This tournament (described in the news here under) turned out as a nightmare for the European team. :-(

Ariane Ougier (FR, 4d) lost to the Chinese female representative, who was then soon outcasted by Benjamin Dréan-Guénaizia (FR, 6d).

Benjamin won the next game too, before losing to a certain Yu Suhao (6d).

This Yu Suhao crushed the rest of the European players - 9 straight wins - including the strongest European amateurs and even some professionals !
(in this order) he eliminated: Benjamin Dréan-Guénaizia (FR, 6d), Anton Chernykh (RU, 6d), Cristian Pop (RO, 7d), Lukas Podpera (CZ, 7d), Alexander Dinerstein (RU, 3p), Stanislaw Frejlak (PL, 7d), Ali Jabarin (IL, 2p), Mateusz Surma (PL, 2p) and Artem Kachanovskii (UK, 2p) !

China won 10-2, only 3 of the 10 members of the Chinese team had to play ! What a lesson of humility for Europe !

More comments on this match by Artem here: https://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=292

photo Yu Suhao: https://www.eurogofed.org/newsp/2020/1st%20China-Europe%20match//yu-suha...

On 07/04/2020, Belgium team, composed by Lucas Neirinck (+), Jan Ramon (-) Gabriel Mercier (+) and Dominik Versyk (-) makes draw against Netherlands (on paper stronger than us) in the 8th round of the ETPC.

Results: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/598

Belgium stays presently in the middle of league B and will very likely remain in this league next year. There is still one round to play (we will play UK)

Standings after the 8th round: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps (extreme right on the screen).

Onze Noorderburen lanceren een mooi initiatief: een "Nederlandse Internet Go Competitie (NiGC)" die de organisatoren ook voor alle Belgische spelers willen openstellen. De server wordt uitgerust met een chatmodus zodat spelers met elkaar kunnen praten en / of commentaar kunnen geven op hun partijen. De voertaal zal nederlands zijn.
Meer info en aanmelden: www.nigc.nl.

The tournament system is "arena" tournament. Each round there is a game: one player from each team.
Each team is composed by 10 players, ranked in order of increasing strength. The loser is eliminated, while the winner keeps playing in the next round. The tournament is over when one of the teams has no players anymore. The Chinese team consists of strong amateur players (some of them - top amateurs, world champions). Our European team has a few pros, the rest are strong amateurs.
More info here: https://www.eurogofed.org/1st-china-europe-match/

On 03/03/2020, Belgium team, composed by Lucas Neirinck (+), Gabriel Mercier (-), Nelis Vets (-) and Joost Vannieuwenhuyse (-) was beaten by Turkey 1-3 in the 7th round of the ETPC.

Results: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/597

Belgium is presently 4th out of 10 teams, but there are only 2 points difference between us and Netherlands, who is 9th...and who will be our next opponent in April.

Standings after the 7th round: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps (extreme right on the screen).

A nice initiative by Lukas Podpera (CZ): https://www.eurogofed.org/tm/files/tournaments/Corona%20Cup%202020%20-%2...
More than 350 participants, among whom plenty of pro and strong amateurs (# 24)
Results here: https://goweb.cz/turnaj/corona-cup-2020/

The new Covid measures forbids any cultural related activities gatherings.
Go clubs have to stop their activities involving gathering of players starting from this day. This includes weekly meetings as well as any sort of Go tournament (such as Interclubs).

Therefore, until the situation improves, we advice players to meet on Internet to play Go (OGS, KGS...).
See list of Internet Go sites here.

Most of the 2020 festivals have been cancelled. The last one that remained "I Love Science Festival" has been cancelled 2 weeks before too. :(

I Love Science Festival CANCELLED

https://ilovescience.brussels/en/practical-information
CANCELLED
Brussels Expo (Palais 1) - Laeken

The Belgian Go Federation will be there in to present the game of Go and play many mini-board games with festival visitors.
To participate, you don’t need to be of very high level, but enthusiasm and a bit of preparation for presentation and pedagogy is needed.

Made In Asia

https://www.madeinasia.be
Brussels Expo - Laeken
CANCELLED

Bruxelles Games Festival

https://brusselsgamesfestival.be/en/
Parc du Cinquantenaire - Brussels
CANCELLED

EPFC - Enseignement de Promotion et Formation Continue

https://www.epfc.eu
Avenue de l’Astronomie, 19 - 1210 Bruxelles
CANCELLED