Belgian Go Federation

Chinese Zhao Yikang won unbeaten the 2017 edition of KPMC (the Korean Prime Minister Cup; Korean version of the World Amateur Go Championship) ahead of the Japanese and of the Korean representatives.
Five players ended with 5/6, among whom the best Western player was the Mexican Abraham Florencia and best European was the Russian Dimitri Surine.

This year, "our guy" was François Gonze. He ended 16th with a 4/6 score (wins against Ireland, Singapour,Sweden and Macao; lost against Netherlands and VietNam).

Note also the participation of the (ex ?) player from Brussels Philippe Fanaro, who represented Brazil and ended 32th with a 3/3 score.

There were 56 participants.

Complete results here: http://kpmc.kbaduk.or.kr/eng/result/gameTable.asp

Zhang Tao (CH, 5p) wins undefeated the open European championship.
His countrywoman Li Xiaoxi (CH, 2p) ended 2nd having just lost against him.
Bronze medal - and 1st European - is Mateusz Surma (PL, 1p), who only lost against the 2 Chinese pros.
Winner of last year edition of the open championship, Kim YoungSam (KR, 7d), finished 4th with 7/10.
Follows another 7d Korean, Lee Kibong, best player on SOS tie-breaker among the 6 players with 6/10...
There 821 participants, among whom 17 Belgian ones.

Complete results: http://www.egc2017.eu/events/main-tournaments/open-european-championship...

Kim YoungSam won the WE tournament (in which the Chinese pros did not take part)ahead Pavol Lisy (SK, 1p) and the new European pro, Andrii Kravets (UK, 1p), who both only lost to Kim.
There were 635 participants, among whom 19 Belgian ones.

Complete results: http://www.egc2017.eu/events/main-tournaments/weekend-tournament/

Globally, the Belgian results are in the average, with some remarkable performance:
in the main tournament: 4/5 for Thomas Connor (3d), Gabriel Mercier (3d) and Philippe Tranchida (4k); 5/7 for Laurens Teirlinck (5k)
in the WE tournament: 5/5 (!) for John Cassidy (7k); 4/5 for Philippe Tranchida (4k), Roel Van Nyen (3k), Victor Schneider (4k) and Juliette Brault (15k).
Congratulations to them !

Ilya Shikchine (RU, 1p) won the final of the European championship against Mateusz Surma (PL, 1p).

He is thus European champion, for the 5th time (2007,2010,2011,2016,2017).

Here are the complete results of the 2017 European championship: http://www.egc2017.eu/events/main-tournaments/european-championship/

And here is the report by EGF: http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=144 (cf. point 2)

The European go congress has just begun.
During the 1st week, the best 24 European players will fight for the title of "European Champion" in a knock-out tournament with 2 lives (in the first rounds).
You can follow this here: http://www.egc2017.eu/events/main-tournaments/european-championship/

The "open" championship (with some very strong non-Asiatic competitors) is no less captivating.
You can follow the results round by round here: http://www.egc2017.eu/events/main-tournaments/open-european-championship...

By winning the 2017 pro qualification tournament, Ukranian Andreii Kravets (7d) becomes the new (6th) EGF pro.

He defeated in final young Austrian Viktor Lin.

Andrii was one of the favorites: according to the EGF rating list, he is (...was !) the strongest European amateur player, and he had lost in the final last year to his compatriot Artem Kachanovskyi...

Congratulations to him !

Complete results:
http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualification/index_2017.html

The big surprise was the young Oscar Vasquez from Spain, who reached the 1/4 finals. Oscar had climbed from 2-d to 4-d after few month training in China. He is just 14 years old !

Read the report by EGF here: http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=138

Bram Vandenbon is the winner of the 2017 edition of the Gentse Go Toernoi (he was already holding the title). There were 13 participants.
Please note the surprising victory of Joost (2k) on Dominique (2d).

Here are the results: https://www.gofed.be/files/gofed/tournaments/results/GEN2017.txt

In Antwerpen, Jefferson Huang (3d), back in the official Belgian go life and who had won the 1st edition in 2008, emerged from a field of 8 (a somewhat desappointing figure) players.

Still, M. Huang was defeated by Laurens Teirlinck ("8-k") with 8 handicap stones. Laurens, whose progression is constant, was the only competitor who remained unbeaten.

Complete results here: https://www.gofed.be/files/gofed/tournaments/results/ANT2017.txt

Alexander Dinerstein (RU, 3p) won the 9th Kido Cup in Hamburg, with just one defeat, just like Pavol Lisy (Sk, 1p). But Alexander has won their encounter.

Complete results: http://www.dgob.de/tourn/tourn.cgi?f=17dekit8.txt&mode=cml

Note that none of the three 6d amateurs could beat a pro..

Chinese Bai from China remained undefeated (8 out of 8) like last year, and is thus definitively the best amateur in the world.

There were no competitor with 7 victories, but 8 with 6.

On basis of SOS tiebreaker, Lee Sangbin (South Korea) ended 2nd and Lai Yu Cheng (C. Taipei) 3rd (despite having been beaten by Lukas Podpera from Czechia).

Best caucasian player was: Daniel Ko (USA) (#4)
Best European was: Cornel Burzo (RO) (#7).

Note the participation of a North Korean competitor (#6), who did well but was rather unfortunate: he lost by 0,5 pt a long time winning game against Lee from South Korea (!) and he gave a hard time to Bai, losing to him by 1,5 pt).

There was no Belgian representative this year.

More info here: http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=130

Belgian team had to win a test-match against Norway to maintain itself in B-league (cf. https://www.gofed.be/node/1040).

Unfortunately, our team lost - by a hair's breadth (2-3) so that next year Belgium will play in C-league. :-(

Lucas and Nelis won, but François, Kwinten and Gabriel lost.

Here are the completed results: http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/404