News

Recent Go News: Summer and first half of Autumn
By Artem Kachanovskyi | News | 09.10.2020 20:58 | Views: 2682
All the major European tournaments have gone online due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Last spring I was still hoping that things can get better, and that perhaps in late summer or the early autumn we can all meet and play go again. Obviously, this has not been the case.

Anyway, having online tournaments is of course better than having no tournaments at all. I personally appreciate a lot that the organizers of the go competitions found a way to go online instead of just canceling.

At the end of May, I wrote an article called "recent Go news".  It's been long time since then, and so many things have happened in European go... I've got an idea to tell you shortly about all the major events that came up since I wrote last time. After all, I am sure that even if you follow the news, you still enjoy reading a summary of all the biggest events.

So, let me tell you about each event one by one.


1. European Professional Online Go League - Season 2

The second season of the Pro League started in June and ended in September. It's hard to believe that it was us, European pros, who organized such an event once again. Many thanks to the EGF who sponsored the League, and AI-Sensei who were our partners.

This time we invited Ryan Li 1p from Canada to play with us in the League. Then he showed us a tesuji, winning both the round-robin stage and the final... Now we all want to take revenge.

You can find all the details on the League webpage.

Below you can see the record of the 4th (and last) final game between Ryan and Ilya.


The third season of the League is expected to start in November.


2. Annual General Meeting

The AGM normally takes place at the European Go Congress. But as this year the Congress in Ukraine was postponed to the year 2021, the EGF decided to organize the Meeting online on July 28th.

You can find the short summary of the meeting in the article by Lorenz Trippel, the EGF Secretary.


3. PGETC Final

The Pandanet Go European Team Championship Final is normally played at the beginning of the European Go Congress as well.

This year the Final took place online on 29-30 August, at the Pandanet. The French team remained undefeated in all three rounds and kept their title of the Champions of Europe.

The final results:
1. France
2. Russia
3. Czechia
4. Ukraine

For more information, you can read an article written by Antoine Fenech - the captain of the French team.

Happy French Team


4. European Students vs Fudan University

This was another match between China and Europe, with an "arena" (or "win-and-continue") format. The competition started on August 27th and ended on September 23rd. For more details, you can read the article with an announcement.

This time the result was way closer than in the matches played earlier this year. The Fudan University team won with a score of 11-10 in the end.


5. European Professional Championship

The Pro Championship took place at Pandanet on September 24th - 27th. There were eight participants: seven European pros, plus Alexander Dinerchtein 3p (Russia).

Before the last round, Ilya had the highest number of wins: five. He had to play Andrii, who had four wins. In case if Andrii would have won against Ilya, he would become the European Professional Champion. You can watch this exciting game below.

The winner of the competition was Ilya Shikshin 3p (Russia).
Ilya with the trophy (photo from the European Championship 2019)


6. Silk Road Tournament

This year the Silk Road Tournament had a new format. 16 participants played the first round as a knock-out and then places 1-8 were determined in the following 3 rounds.

Participants:
- Europe: 7 (Europeans pros)
- China: 7
- Singapore: 1
- Thailand: 1

In the first round, Europeans were paired up against the Chinese players (except Ilya - he played against Thailand's representative). Unfortunately, all the Europeans lost their games, except me. A few of us lost by time because of having some significant lags on the Chinese server YIKE on which we played our games. But the referees made a decision according to the official instructions: if a player loses by time, the result cannot be changed. That was a great pity for all of us: losing by time because of conditions and not because of the game, felt completely unfair.

After the first round, the EGF asked the Chinese organizers to let me play the next games on OGS. And they agreed.

In the next game, I played against the previous year runner-up Li Jiaqi 6d (China). It was one year ago that we played each other in the last round, and I won by half a point, thus winning the tournament as well. For more details, see the article about Silk Road Tournament 2019.

In my game with Li Jiaqi, things were going well from the start. The situation was getting better and better. My opponent died with a huge group, and then it was only left to make all my groups safe. Then came the moment when my self-confidence played a bad joke with me. Thinking that the victory is already there, I didn't notice a sharp way in which my opponent can kill a group, although there were many ways to avoid that scenario. That was shocking for me. After I saw my opponent's tesuji at move 210, I immediately understood that now the situation turned around, and there is no chance to win the game. I finished the game and lost by 10.5 points. See the game record below.


After losing the second round, I was fighting for places 5-8. In the third game, I won without any big problems.

In the fourth game, the situation was developing well for me. But I lost by time, after making a move during the final seconds. That was a pity. So, in the end, I took 6th place.

This year Silk Road Tournament was a strange competition, with many games decided by timeout.

After the tournament finished, I asked the organizers for some photos. And suddenly it turned out, that for the Chinese players the tournament was actually offline. Between themselves, they played normally, face-to-face. And against us, they played at the same venue, just on the laptops.

Li Jiaqi 6d (China) playing against me


The winner of the tournament was Li Jiaqi 6d. After beating me, he won the following two games, and the tournament too.

Perhaps, the final game


7. European Championship

One more event that had to take place at the European Go Congress, but instead was moved online.

The tournament is still going on. There is one thing that makes it special: the prize-money is collected via the crowdfunding campaign. That's because normally the prizes would be covered by the EGC organizers, but this year we have no Congress. I didn't feel too optimistic when I heard first about the idea of crowdfunding. But when I checked the EC 2020 webpage, I was surprised: more than 2.000 euro are already collected (the goal is 5.000 euro). You can still support the competition if you have a wish. Depending on how much money you donate, you receive some benefits.

There have not been any big surprises until now in the tournament, it seems. Except that Lucas Neirynck 5d (Belgium) won against Alexander Dinerchtein 3p (Russia).

You can see the tournament charts, game records, and all the other details on the EC 2020 webpage.
Recent Go News: Summer and first half of Autumn

This article was written by Artem Kachanovskyi

EGF professional Go player.
Born 12th December 1992.
Started to play Go in 1999.
Promoted to 1p in 2016, 2p in 2018.
Living in Ukraine, Kyiv.
All his articles on the EGF website.

No comments posted...
Leave a Comment
* Name
* Email (will not be published)
*
Please, enter the name of go in korean!
*
* - Required fields

Calendar

DateCoCityEvent
22.03.2023
26.03.2023
TR Ankara European Youth Go Championships
25.03.2023
26.03.2023
ES Madrid I Malasaña Tournament
25.03.2023
26.03.2023
PL Wrocław II Wiosenny Turniej Go we Wroclawiu 2023
01.04.2023
02.04.2023
DE Leipzig 2. Spring Fuseki
07.04.2023
09.04.2023
NO Oslo Nordic Go Championships
08.04.2023
09.04.2023
HU Budapest Hungarian Easter Open International Tournament
08.04.2023
10.04.2023
FR Paris 50th Paris International TournamentB
14.04.2023
16.04.2023
SI Bled 32nd Slovenian Open
15.04.2023
15.04.2023
ES Seville XXIV Seville Go Tournamet
29.04.2023
29.04.2023
IE Dublin April Rip-Off
29.04.2023
30.04.2023
AT Innsbruck Tyrolian Masters
29.04.2023
01.05.2023
CZ Prague 51st Prague Tournament - Korean Ambassador´s CupB
06.05.2023
06.05.2023
CY Nicosia Spring Go Tournament
06.05.2023
07.05.2023
ES Madrid XXIV Madrid Open Tournament
06.05.2023
07.05.2023
DE Berlin 11. Chinacup Berlin
13.05.2023
14.05.2023
FR Strasbourg Women Championship
19.05.2023
21.05.2023
NL Leiden 3rd Dutch OpenC
20.05.2023
20.05.2023
ES Santa Cruz de Tenerife I Cómics y Mazmorras Cup
20.05.2023
21.05.2023
HR Stubicke Toplice 30th Croatian OpenC
27.05.2023
28.05.2023
HU Budapest Hungarian Grand Prix
27.05.2023
29.05.2023
GB London 4th Not The London Open
17.06.2023
18.06.2023
PL Wiselka Porfirion Cup Tournanent 2023
01.07.2023
02.07.2023
RO Bucharest Dream Primer Cup
15.07.2023
16.07.2023
CZ Pardubice Pardubice - Radek Nechanicky MemorialC
22.07.2023
05.08.2023
DE Leipzig 65th European Go Congress
23.07.2023
30.07.2023
DE Leipzig European ChampionshipA
06.08.2023
13.08.2023
ES Sepúlveda Spanish Go Camp
16.08.2023
18.08.2023
SE Leksand Pair Go Championship
16.08.2023
20.08.2023
SE Leksand Swedish Summer Camp
19.08.2023
20.08.2023
SE Leksand Leksand OpenC
19.08.2023
26.08.2023
HR Zaostrog 5th Summer SEYGO Festival
24.08.2023
25.08.2023
HR Zaostrog Zaostrog Open
09.09.2023
10.09.2023
PL Wrocław V Wrocław Open 2023
15.09.2023
16.09.2023
RO Timisoara - Temeschwar European Student Go Championship
16.09.2023
17.09.2023
RO Timisoara - Temeschwar Walter Schmidt Memorial
23.09.2023
24.09.2023
ES Madrid I Cervantes Tournament
23.09.2023
24.09.2023
IE Dublin Confucius Cup DublinC
07.10.2023
08.10.2023
AT Vienna Vienna International
14.10.2023
15.10.2023
PL Warsaw 3rd "China Town" Weiqi Cup
28.10.2023
29.10.2023
DE Mannheim 25. Mannheim AjiC
18.11.2023
19.11.2023
RS Niš Niš Open 2023C
28.12.2023
31.12.2023
GB London 49th London Open Go Congress
28.12.2023
31.12.2023
GB London Grand Prix Final 2023
18.05.2024
20.05.2024
DE Hamburg KidoCup/Affensprung

See also the full EGF Calendar and the EGF World Calendar.

You can submit your event by filling this form

Awesome Baduk
Awesome Baduk lessons from pro teachers
www.awesomebaduk.com