Belgian Go Federation

Due to the low number of players registrered (only one!) to the Youth and Student Belgian Championship, it has been cancelled. The Student champion title has been attributed to Thomas Connor, the only registrered player.

Despite the low number of participants, the Belgian Go Camp was a real succes this year. You can read a report made by Semi Lee here. Thank you for your participation!

Thanks to 4 consecutive victories against Dutch 5-d players in the tournament of Delft (that he won undefeaded) last WE, Lucas reached 413 points our national rating. This means he becomes the first Belgian 5-d ever ! Congratulations to him !

Just for the record: the 1st Belgian...
1-d: Marc Ginoux (1988)
2-d: Alain Wettach (1993) (ChiYiu Wong had reached > 100 pts in 1992)
3-d: Alain Wettach (1996)
4-d: Jan Bogaerts (1999)

The 2nd World Mind Sports Games occured from 13/08 to 23/08 in Lille/Rijssel. 1st edition was organised in Beijing in 2008...so it was a bit closer this time :-)

Belgium had one competitor in the individual men competition (13 to 16/08), Lucas Neirynck (4-d), and one team in the team competition (from 17 to 19/08): Benjamin Gigot (3-d), Bram Vandenbon (1-d), Kristof Bossee (1-d)

RESULTS:

Lucas made 2/5: defeats face to a representitive of Macau (5-d), of Japan (6-d) and of Netherlands (6-d); victories against an Austrian (a young 4-d, who made 4/5) and an USA (6-d !).

Gold medal is a Taïwanese, Lai Yu Cheng (7-d) (the best 4 are from Taïwan)

Our team made 2/5:
Belgium-Macau: 0-3
Belgium-France 2: 0-3
Belgium-Italy 2: 3-0
Belgium-Canada: 0-3
Belgium-Netherlands 2: 2-1

Gold medal: the Taïwanese team: no wonder: the 3 players in this team were the podium in the "individual man championship :-)

Another important competition was organised during these 2nd WMSG: the European qualification tournament for the 2nd Sport ACCORD Mind Sport Games (don't be confused !), which will take place in December 2012 in Beijin.
This competition was only for 10 European top players, the top 3 would represent Europe in that competition.

This time, Ilya Chikchin (RU, 7-d) made honor to his stature of favourite and was unbeaten winner, ahead of Csaba Merö (HU, 6-d), who lost only against Ilya. Jan Hora (CZ, 6-d) was the lucky one among the 3 competitors with 3 victories (the 2 others being Pavol Lisy and Remi Campanie).

Complete results here, with also women, pair, youth,...championships (without any Belgian representatives):

http://www.wmsg2012.org/

This year Bonn hosted the European Championship.

As usual, the terrible 7-d Korean players dominated the tournaments: Song Jun Hyup, remained unbeated (10/10 in the main + 5/5 in the week-end tournament) ahead of his countryfellow, Kim Young Sam (9/10 + 4/5).

Highest ranked European competitor was Ilya Shikshin (7-d, RUS) with 8/10 and 4/5.

Ilya, in the absence of f.i. Taranu, Dinerstein and Kachanovski was the great favourite. But...

...But European Champion 2012 is, surprinsigly enough, JAN SIMARA (6-d) from CZ, who defeated Ilya Shichin in the final.

How is this possible ? Because the system to elect the European champion is the following: after the 7th round, the 8 best ranked European players in the main tournament played a final phase in a knock-out tournament.

Pavol Lisy (6-d, SK) (who climbed 1-k to 5-d in 18 months by the way) and Thomas Debarre (6-d, FR) were the half-finalists.

Nine Belgian participated.
Great performance of Kwinten Missaen in the main (7/10 - less good in the WE tournament 2/5)
Results of the others:
Claude Burvenich (who is / used to be the best Belgian woman)(2-k) 6/10
Kris Boyen (4-k): 6/10 + 1/5
Steve Hertecant: (5-k): 3/5
Dennis Wolfs (7-k): 4/10 + 3/5
Bart Caers (10-k): 5/10
Laurent Richard (16-k): 7/9 (!)
Stephanie Theunissen (15-k): 5/10
and 2 beginners, unknown to me:
Alexander Wagner (25-k): 3/3 + 4/4
Frederik Berger (30-k): 3/5 + 2/4

Please find the complete results of the main tournament here:
http://www.egc2012.eu/congress/main-tournaments/open-european-championsh...

and of the the WE tournament here:
http://www.egc2012.eu/congress/main-tournaments/weekend-tournament/resul...

François Gonze was the Belgian representative for the WAGC 2012. You can read his report here and if you've logged on with an active account on this website (which should be the case if you registered for 2012), you can see commented games from this event and from the Belgian Championship reviewed by top Chinese and Korean players.

If it doesn't work, please contact your club captain :-)

Kwinten Missiaen (2D,Leuven) has won the Antwerp Tournament with a perfect 5/5 score. Second place was for Nelis Vets (2D). There were 18 participants.

The Belgian Go association has the honour to welcome for a few days (from Wednesday 4/7 to Sunday 8/7)2 Korean professional young women, Park So Hyun and Ko Ju Yeong.

See a picture of them here: http://www.egc2012.eu/congress/professionals

More specifically:

1. Next Wednesday (from 7:30 PM to 10:00 PM) in Brussel

They will play simultaneous games in the go club "Phenix - Outpost".
Every members is invited. This activity is free of charge.
Please come and experiment personally the strenght of a professional go player !

2. During the forthcoming tournament of Antwerpen, on 7/7 and 8/7:

During the tournament, they will comment various games
On Saturday night, they will play simultaneous games and/or comment a game of the tournament played by some dan level players.
One more reason to participate in the tournament of Antwerpen !

16 May 2012

Belgium (composed this time by the strongest team possible: Lucas Neyrinck, Jan Ramon, Nelis Vets and Kwinten Missaen) ends beautifully this 2nd edition of Pandanet European Team Championship by crushing Switzerland 4-0.

So, Belgium ends as 4th out of 10 team in the 2nd league. Even if this is not enough to go up into 1st league, this is quite a good performance for our small go country...

Please note that the 4 best European teams of the 1st league (Rusland, Ukraine, Tchequia, France) will compete again each others in the next European Go Congress (Bonn, end July). Rusland, who has dominated the competition up till now, is the great favourite. More generaly, the domination of the East European countries is impressive.

here are the complete results: http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

François Gonze, our representative in this 33rd World Amateur Championship, won 3 games (out of 8) and ended 40th out of 56 competitors.

Winner was, as expected, the Chinese player (Qiao) ahead of the Korean one.

Best Westerner was Hungarian Pal Balogh (6th)

Follow the competition and see the results here: http://ranka.intergofed.org/