Belgian Go Federation

https://www.gofed.be/en/tournament/leuven

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).

The Belgian Championship Preliminaries of 2022 took place in Brussels on the 5th and 6th of March 2022.

In total, 5 rounds were played, and the following players have qualified for the 2022 Belgian Championship Finals:

Huang Haisen 1d
Sven Cuyt 1d
Renaud Gaban 4k
Guy Dusausoy 5k

The full results can be found here

EGF: https://www.eurogofed.org/announcement_2002-03-06.html
IGF: https://mail.telenet.be/service/home/~/?auth=co&loc=fr_FR&id=54282&part=...

Here is the position of the board of the Belgian Go Federation concerning the war in Ukraine.

This statement has been communicated to the European Go Federation (EGF).

NB: a special EGF general meeting has been organized Thursday 03/03/2022 to discuss and vote on some resolutions.

The Belgian Go Federation....

1. condemns the Russian invasion in the strongest terms and expresses strong support for the Ukrainians, but also for the Russians who have the courage to affirm their opposition to the war.

2. calls the EGF and the European Go community to condemn the war on Ukraine in the strongest terms; even though as being apolitical the EGF may want to refrain from strong ethical / political statements, the EGF constitution makes it our mission to protest against actions perturbing or even destroying Ukrainian Go activities.

3. appeals to cancel all events planned in Russia (and to the extent it can't be guaranteed that events won't get disturbed by violence or sanctions also in Belarus and Ukraine).

4. hopes that the administrators of the Russian Go Federation will (join us to) condemn the Russian invasion (should they be able to do so without risking their own safety !).

5. thinks that the Russian Go players should not be allowed to represent their country in EGF events, but should not be further stigmatized and should be authorized to participate individually under neutral EGF banner.

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

Deadline of the resgistration are coming nearer. So do not hesitate any longer: register yourself in the
4th season of the Belgian Go Master League : https://www.gofed.be/node/1302
or in the Belgian Championship 2022: https://www.gofed.be/node/1281
Registration in both events are free but you have to be a BGF member.

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 !

Belgian team goes on his impressive start in the 12th European Team Championship: our team (composed this time by Jan Ramon, Lucman Bounoider, Gabriel Mercier and Sven Cuyt) won the 3rd round on the same score as the one of the first 2 rounds: again a sweeping victory 4-0 !

Complete results here:
3rd round: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/784