Belgian Go Federation

In the 1st round of the 9th edition of the Pandanet Cup (the European Team Championship) played on 2 October Belgian team (Jan , Lucman, Gabriel , Roel) was smashed (0-4) by on-paper stronger Serbian team (in which played the terrible Mitic brothers, both 7-dan).

Results of the round:
https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/493

The "usual suspects" dominated the 13th edition of the Korean Prime Minister Cup (which is +/- the Korean version of the World Amateur Championship):

The (unbeaten) winner was Li Yan Lyu, from China.

Behind him followed: Korean Chan Ho Jung, Japanese Fukashi MURAKAMI and ChiHin Chan from Hong Kong (all with 5 victories out of 6 rounds).

Best Westerner (and European) was Rob Van Zeijst (NL) who ended 5th.

Our representative this year was Bram Vandenbon (2d).
He ended 25th (out of a field of 59 contenders) with 3/6 (wins against Chili, Mexico and Argentina; losses to Netherlands, Hong Kong and Italy).

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

In an exciting finish, Yoon Nam-gi (KR, 7d) won the Open European Championship. He ended up as the only player with 1 loss.

Behind him, 3 players ended with 2 losses, in the order of SOS tie-breaker:
- Kim Dae-hyuk (KR, 7d), who was the only who managed to beat Yoon
- Liao Xingwen, professional player (6p) from China, who was long the favourite but suffered two losses at the tailend of the tournament, against Yoon Nam-gi and against Kim Young-sam.
- Kim Young-sam (KR, 7d), the best ranked player in Europe.

Further, 6 players ended with 7 wins out of 10, ranked 6th to 10th.
The best among them are still other Asian competitors: Lou Yun Xiao (5th), Hong Sungwon (6th) and Cho Eunjin (7th).
Best Europeans were: Dominik Boviz (HU, 6d) (8th), ahead of Mateusz Surma (PL, 1p) (9th) and former European champion (1981, 1990, 1993) Rob Van Zeijst (NL, 7d) (10th).

There were in total 900 participants, among whom 9 Belgian ones.
All our compatriots ended with +/- average results (except Pierre Detivaux who scored 4/5 as a 3 kyu).

Complete results here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WMxarqLdjSBFkxIDAxGYPdAsGpkxkZge/view

NEXT YEAR THE EUROPEAN GO CONGRESS IS ORGANIZED IN BRUSSELS. BE THERE !!!

The Weekend Tournament of the European Go Congress in Pisa gathered 653 players (among whom 10 Belgian ones).

It has been won by the Chinese pro Liao Xingwen (6p) who remained unbeaten.

Behind him, with one defeat: three Korean amateurs: Yoon Nam-gi (2nd), Kim Young-sam (3rd) and Hong Sung-won (4th),
and another Chinese pro, Liu Sijia (5th).

Further, among a dozen of competitors with 3 wins, best European are Artem Kachanovskyi and Alexander Dinerstein...

Best Belgian is Lucas Neirynck (5d), 28th, with 3/5.
Congratulations to Joost Vannieuwenhuyse (1k) and Bart Caers (10k) who both got 4 victories.

Complete results here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16DnlQ5JNrUR1f9c3Gk46O4QupCrB5wTE/view

The European championship was organized this year in Pisa, along with the European Go Congress.

This competition is reserved to the 32 best European players.

The system is a knock-out tournament with 2 "lives (till the 1/4 of finals).

The favorites were of course the 7 participating pros. Nevertheless, two of them failed to reach the quarter of finals:
* Andrei Kravets (UA), who lost in the 2nd round to Thomas Debarre (FR, 6d) and to Cornel Burzo (RO, 6d) in the looser's pool
* Alexander Dinerstein (RU) who surprisingly lost already in the 1st round to Johannes Obenaus (DE, 6d) and in the looser's pool to another pro, Ali Jabarin (IL).

Thus three amateurs (7-d): Dusan Mitic (RS), Cristian Pop (RO) and Stanislaw Frejlak (PL), joined five pros in the quaterfinals. But all lost, respectively against Shikchin, Surma and Lisy (proving the gap between pros and amateurs). In the only pro duel, Ali Jabarin eliminated Artem Kachanovskyi.

In the semifinals, Ilya Shikchin got rid of Mateusz Surma while Pavol Lisy prevailed on Ali Jabarin.

By beating Ilya Shikchin (RU, 2p) in final with 2,5 pts, Pavol Lisy (SK, 2p) became European champion 2018, succeeding to Ilya, who was reigning champion since 2016.

Ali Jabarin ended 3rd by winning the "small final".

Here are the complete results:
https://egc2018.it/en/european_championship.html

PS: our compatriot Lucas Neirynck (# 29 in the EGC ranking list) has the right to compete, but was promptly eliminated with all the honors : he lost in the 1st round to Mateusz Surma (PL, 2p) - one of the "big shots" - and in the 1st round of the looser's pool to Anton Chernykh (RU, 6d).

Following the resolution of the General Assembly, the Federation has adopted this year a new formula for the interclubs.

They were (supposed to be) organized in 2 rounds:
- a preliminary phase with (expectfully) two regional pools of 3 to 5 clubs, and
- a final phase with 4 clubs (= the 2 best clubs of each pool).
(read details here: in NL: https://www.gofed.be/node/1087; in FR: https://www.gofed.be/node/1084).

Unfortunately, this new formula met a modest success: only 4 clubs competed (Leuven, Gent, Antwerp and Brussels-Phénix) !

It was decided that the final phase was not necessary, as the 4 best clubs were already known.

Leuven emerged as winner with 6 points ahead of Gent (6 pts), Brussels-Phénix (4 pts) and Antwerp (2 pts).

Round 1: Leuven-Gent 2-1 Phenix-Antwerp 2-1
Round 2: Leuven-Antwerp 3-0 Gent-Phénix 3-0
Round 3: Phénix-Leuven 2-1 Gent-Antwerp 2-1

Two players played and won 3 games: Gertjan Verhaeren, 8-k (Gent) and Sven Cuyts, 4-k (Leuven).

A few weeks after having won in Liège, Wang Zichen (CH, 4d) also triumphed undefeated in the 2018 edition of the tournament of Antwerpen.

2nd was Huang Yongsen, 1d with 3/5.

Bronze medal was Dominique Versyck (2d) (3/5), despite his loss to the young and promising Louis Baudaux (3k).

Jelle Janssens (5k) made 4/5.

There were 14 participants.

Complete results can be found here.

Chan Yi-Tien (Chinese Taipei) won undefeated the 39th World Amateur Go Championship. He has already been amateur world champion in 2014.

Korean Sangcheon Kim was the only player with one loss and took second place.

Six players finished with six wins: in that order: Chen Wang (CH), Stanislaw Frejlak (PL)(best Westerner), Fukashi Murakami (JP), Juri Keronen (SF), Dusan Mitic (RS) seventh and Jose Islas (MX).

Our representative was Thomas Connor, who ended 32th out of 61 competitors with 4 out of 8 (losses against Oscar Vazquez (SP), Christian Pop (RO), Benjamin Dréan-Guenaiza (FR) and Switzerland; wins against Brazil, Portugal , Venezuela and Macau).

Complete results here: https://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/event/amakisen/worldama/39/result.html

Wang Zichen from China (4d) won undeafed the tournament of Liège with 4 victories, ahead of Thomas Connor (4d) (3/4) and Marie Jemine (2d) (2/4)...
There were 16 participants.

Complete results here:
https://www.gofed.be/webfm_send/504

Belgian team (Lucas +, Jan +, Gabriel -, Joost -) made a draw against Lithuania (which ends 2nd) in the last round of the 2017-2018 season of the European Team Championship.

Belgium ended 1st, with 13/14 points (6 victories, 1 draw).
And is promoted to B-league for the next season !

Congratulations to all our players !

Results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/433

Standings:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

PS: in this competition, an Italian player has been disqualified after being accused of receiving the help of "Leela", a program of professional strenght. Nevertheless, many observers think the cheating is not proven...(to be followed).