Belgian Go Federation

I have the great pleasure of announcing that many new projects are taking place with the Swiss Go Association and their Official Go instructor, In-Seong Hwang, Korean 7d. After his wonderful work (which all players highly enjoyed) at the Go camp (report and pictures), In-Seong Hwang offered to go on working with us to develop Go in Belgium.

We have so many new and entertaining projects... You can read some here in English or en français.

It is a great opportunity to grab for us!

We had a great time at the 2011 Belgian Go Camp. There were 33 participants; the teachers were In-Seong Hwang, 7d from Korea, and Lucas Neirynck, 4d Belgian champion. Find a full report here and the pictures here. See you at the next Go camp!

The Ghent tournament is finished. We had a nice group of about 23 players. There were only 2 dan-level players, but we did have a very nice and consistent group of players between 10 and 15 kyu, making it a very rewarding tournament for beginning players. The tournament was -of course- free, but the players were very generous in their donations, so we had nice prizes for the winner Kwinten Missiaen and numbers 2 and 3, Bram Vandenbon and Dominique Versyck respectively.

Full results.

The Belgian Rengo Championship took place last week in Brussels. There were 10 players (5 pairs). The first round end up with the outstanding victory of the 4k&11k pair against the 2d² pair.

The final winners:

1. Kevin Prist 1d & Ly Vu Duc Khang 2k
2. David Kathchaturian 4k & Simon Pin 11k
3. Lochen Vincent 5k & Jemine Marie 2k (first mixed pair)

Full results here

Congratulation to the winners, thank you all for participating and see you again in good shape next year!!

Jan Ramon 4d was representing Belgium in 2011 World Amateur Go Championship in Japan!

With 3 victories out of 8 rounds (with a hard pairing), he ended 25th in a field of 57 competitors.

Final winner was Bai, the Chinese representative, who remained unbeaten.
2nd was Korean Choi.
3rd, and best Western player, was Eric Liu from USA.
4th, and best European contender, was the Frenchman Thomas Debarre.
5th, and oldest participant (85 y old !): Hirata from Japan (former winner - in 1995).

Find a nice report here: http://ranka.intergofed.org/
(and discover f.i. the incredibly original openings played by the Polish player :-)

WAGC web site

I wanna go to Japan!

Voor de tweede keer ging het Blitz kampioenschap door in Leuven. Om half twee verzamelden we allemaal in Café Amedee, om uit te maken wie de beste Blitz speler is in België. In totaal kwamen er 8 spelers opdagen, waarvan de helft thuisspelers.
Er werd beslist om de toernooivorm te veranderen in een round-robin toernooi. Zo kon iedereen tegen iedereen spelen.
Rond 2 uur begonnen we aan de eerste wedstrijden.
De rondes volgden elkaar vlug op. Voor de laatste ronde was nog veel mogelijk. Dominique en Dieter stonden op 5 punten en Joost volgde met 4 punten. Dieter en Joost moesten in de laatste ronde nog tegen elkaar spelen. Uiteindelijk won dominique en was hij de terechte winnaar, met maar één verloren partij tegen Dieter. Joost won tegen Dieter en snoepte daarmee de 2e plaats af van hem.
Rond 7 uur waren we klaar met alle partijen en kon iedereen met ten minste 2 gewonnen partijen naar huis gaan. Een fijne maar vermoeiende namiddag die zeker voor herhaling vatbaar is.

Kris

De volledige uitslag (volgorde volgens SODOS/onderlinge partij):
1. Dominique Versyck 6
2. Joost Vannieuwenhuyse 5
3. Dieter Daems 5
4. Kris Boyen 3
5. Demian Walvisch 3
6. Bart Caers 2
7. Joshua Habets 2
8. Jean-Denis Hennebert 2

The last round of the first Pandanet Team Championship was played on Tuesday 17th May. It was crucial for Belgium to score at least one point against Croatia: if we had lost this one we would be dropped to league C for next year. But our players did quite well as we managed to draw. Please find the games on the website.

Many thanks to all players. I hope we can do it again next year. It wasn't easy but I'm really proud such a small country could stay in the B league.

Belgium lost severely against Austria (0-4). No wonder: they were stronger on paper anyway.

Now remains the last round to play. The teams ending 9th and 10th will to be demoted in 3rd division. Belgium is 8th, just one point ahead of Croatia...against which we will play in this last round in May ! Suspens ! (a draw would be enough).

Belgium Austria Score 0-4
Jan Ramon (janr) 4 dan Viktor Lin (Sandmann) 5 dan W+26.5
Lucas Neirynck (Cucurucucu) 4 dan Bernhard Scheid (Pok) 5 dan B+7,5
Kwinten Missiaen (Kwik) 1 dan Jürgen Suntinger (Juergonaut) 3 dan W+14.5
Dominique Versyck (dversyck) 1 kyu Wolfgang Krames (Koffein) 2 dan B+resign

This round was played on Sunday 27th March at 8:00pm. We scored three wins against Spain, which is quite a nice result. The games should be online soon on the official website.

Exciting games for this Belgian Championship! Congratulations to all the players and especially to Lucas Neirynck who took back the title of Belgian Champion.
You can find some pictures of the tournament here, the full results here, the games of the two first boards on BelChamp1's account on KGS, and soon an accurate report and commented games in BelgoNet.