Belgian Go Federation

(report by François Gonze)

The 10th Korean Prime Minister Cup International Amateur Baduk Championship (more or less the Korean version of the World Amateur Championship) was held from the 22th to the 27th of November in Seoul, Korea.
There were 52 participants.

Our representative was François Gonze (3-d).
He ended up 24th on 52, winning his three first games against Equator (1d), Slovenia (1k) and Indonesia (4d), and then losing against Thailand (5d), Japan (7d) and Canada (7d).

The winner was the Chinese Hu Yuquing.

Best European was Cristian Pop (RO, 7d), who won against Japan in the first round, thanks to a big mistake by the japanese player in a very intense fight.

Top places:
1. Hu Yuquing (China) (6/6)
2. K. Heesu (Korea) (5/6)
3. Cristian Pop (Romania) (5/6)
4. Eric Lui (USA) (5/6)
5. Japan (5/6), my opponent in 5th round
6. Chinese Taipei (4/6)
7. Thailand (4/6), my opponentin 4th round
...

On 28th of October, Belgian team (Jan +, Nelis -, Kwinten + , Gabriel -) made draw against Turkey in the 3rd round (a rather expected result).

Here are the results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/287

And here the standings after this round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

Ukranian Bohdan Zhurakovskyi (5-d) won the 2015 Brussels Tournament (which met a great success with its 71 participants).
Olivier Drouot (3-d) and Antoine Fenech (5-d) completed the podium.
Complete results here: http://www.gofed.be/tournament/results&tournament=BT&year=2015

On 6/10, Belgian team (same players as previous moth) won against Norway.

Here are the results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/286

And here the standings after this round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

This weekend the 8th Gent Go Tournament took place.

The tournament was won by Thomas Connor (3D), Oscar Vasquez (2D) took second place and our noble president Joost Vannieuwenhuyse (2k) was third.

The tournament had a total of 20 worthy participants, up from last year.

Full Results

A new season (the 6th edition) of the European Team Championship has just started. On 15th September, Belgian team (Nelis -, Kwinten - , Christopher +, Gabriel +) made draw against Denmark in the 1st round (a rather expected result).

Here are the results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/285

And here the standings after this round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

The 8th Antwerp Tournament was won by Dick Riedeman (3d) who won all his games, the runner up was Jefferson Huang (4d) with 4 wins.

All results can be found here

In the European Championship / European Go Congress organised this year in Liberec in Czechia, Frenchman (ex-Chinese) Fan Hui became European Champion - for the 3rd time in a row !

He won the final against Ali JABARIN (Israël, 1-p)

Ilya Shikchine (RUS, 1-p) beat Thomas Debarre (Fr, 6-d) in the "little" final for the 3rd place.

Here are the complete results of the European Championship (only for players with an European passport):

--> results of the top 8 players (quarterfinals, semifinals and finals)
http://egc2015.cz/results/main/playoffs

--> results of the top 24 players
http://egc2015.cz/sites/default/files/Results_European_Championship.pdf

***

Wang Zhemin (China, 3-p) won the open main tournament undefeated, ahead Kim Young-Sam (KOR, 8-d) (who lost only to him). Further, the 4 European-made professionals (Pavol Lisy, ALi Jabarin, Ilya Shikchine and Mateusz Surma) joined by Ukranian Artem Kachanovskij (7-d).

Complete results of the main tournament:
http://egc2015.cz/results/mainwall

***

Kim Young-sam won the week-end tournament (in which Wang did not play) with a perfect score, ahead of four players with 4/5: Dinerstein (RUS, 3-p), Lisy (SK, 1-p), Chan (TW, 7-d) and Ma (CHI, 7-d).

Complete results of the WE tournament:
http://egc2015.cz/results/wallweek

PS: 8 Belgian participants played in the European Congress / tournament: Joost Van Vannieuwenhuyse, Kris Boyen, Roel Van Nyen, PHilippe Tranchida, Jonh Cassidy, Voja Stojanovic, Bart Cars and Catherine Fricheteau.
All of them scored about 50 %, what seems to proove Belgian rating is well-balanced compared to the other European countries ! :-).

***

Last but not least: France (5 pts) won the Pandanet European Team Championship 2014-2015, ahead of Ukraine (5 pts) , Czechia (2 pts) and Romania (0 pts)
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/teams/7/FRA

Changhun Kim (KOR) won the 36th World Amateur Go Championship (held in Thailand), ahead of Aohua Hu (CH) (losing only to the Korean) and young Jyun-Fu Lai (Taiwan).
Satoshi Hiraoka (Japan) ended 5th just ahead of the best Western players, Cornel Burzo (RO) and Artem Kachanovskyi (UA).

Our representative, Thomas Connor, ended 34th with 2 victories (with all "expected" results).

Complete results here: http://www.pandanet.co.jp/event/worldama2015/live_e.htm

(note that for the 1st time in its history the WAGC employed the MacMahon system)

Dominique Versyck is our new Belgian Blitz Champions of 2015, the runner up was Demian Walvisch who only lost to Dominique.

We had a cozy 8 participants this year, which is just the right amount to play a full 'round robin' of 7 rounds.

Detailed results to be found here.