Belgian Go Federation

The European Go Journal is a monthly journal officially supported by the European Go Federation (EGF). It was launched in February 2021. The journal is compiled and written by Artem Kachanovskyi, and co-written, proofread and designed by his Team.

The EGJ is a roughly 50-page A4 magazine featuring the following go-related topics:
Recent go news - focused mainly on Europe but including major events from around the globe.
Game commentary.
Interviews with go players.
Art and photography.
AI studies - analysis of fuseki and joseki with superhuman go computer programs.
World of Tesuji – Remarkable moves from professional games.
Problems and answers.

More info here: https://eurogojournal.com/about

PS: The digital copy of the 1st issue (February 2021) is available for download free of charge :-)

From 19th October 2020 on, each Monday always at 8.30 pm (CEST), the "Jena International Go School" will have Go News in English streamed on Twitch.
www.twitch.tv/jenainternationalgoschool

It is supposed to always last 30 minutes, including Go News from the world (who won which tournament, what is currently happening in the Go world), various interviews with Go players, but also about Go politics and looking sometimes behind the scenes. There will also be tsumego competitions etc. in which everybody can participate and win prices.

Who could do this ? AlphaGo of course !

The Deep Mind team has just released a new version of AlphaGo, AlphaGo Zero.

This new version is stronger than the previous versions (AG Zéro won...100-0 against the AG LeeSetol version !).

But now comes the most amazing info...

Why did they named it "Zero" ?

Because, contrarily to the previous versions that has been "fed" by thousands of games played by the humans since centuries, AG Zero version has learned everything from scratch, from just learning the rules.

Just after 3 (yes, three !) days of playing against itself and learning from its own mistakes, without any pollution by human play (!), AG Zero has already reached the level of the LeeSetol version; and after 40 days, s/he - it surpassed the KeJie version, to become the best ever playing entity in this world.

More than even, IA will be modelling our world, and not only in go !

Read more here: (I recommend you to watch the graphic and the video !): https://deepmind.com/blog/alphago-zero-learning-scratch/

PS: the Deep Mind team opened a forum
https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/76xjb5/ama_we_are_davi...

On 8th April at 6 PM at the Bozar Ciné 1, the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival (www.BIFFF.net) will show "The Divine Move" - a Korean thriller in which the central theme is baduk !

http://www.bifff.net/fr/festival/movie-fr/divine-move-the/

The organisation of the BIFF offer the Belgian Go Federation 20 free places to our members.

Should you be interested to receive a free entrance, you only have to send us an e-mail (board@gofed.be) BEFORE 01/04 with your firstname and name.

In "exchange", we would like you to promote (= speak about) the film and the BIFF among your friends, relatives,...(should they play "go"...or not !).
The Belgian Go Federation will animate a stand to present the game and the Federation to the spectators when they come out after the movie

remarks:
- you have to be member of the Belgian Go Federation to ask a free place
- if we receive more demands than tickets, we will hold a lottery
- of course, please be sure to come when you ask a place !

For those who are interested, the Dutch federation is hosting a wintercamp in Overasselt.
There will be, among other things, workshops and tournaments.
The camp starts December 27th and ends the 31st.

More info can be found here

For those who are interested; the Go-club from Eindhoven is hosting the 35th edition of their tournament on 15-16 November.
More information can be found here:
info

The American Go Foundation just released a new book free for download. It is a complete introduction to the game of go, known as baduk in Korea. The rules are thoroughly explained with lots of examples and exercises to guide the beginner to master the rules.

This is most certainly a nice book to recommend to newcomers in clubs and it could be used as a teaching material. You can download it by following this link : http://agfgo.org/downloads/LoveBaduk.pdf .

Christopher Annachachibi, a Belgian player from Brussels, just launched a website dedicated to the game of go. He describes it as a "plateforme d’échange de connaissances et d’expériences sur le Go. Commentaires de parties en ligne ou hors ligne."

There is also a nice guide for beginners. Have a look at http://c2p.hisoland.be/ .

The Belgian Go Federation was present at the Japan Expo Belgium on Nov. 4th-6th. It was great, there were many people eager to learn Go, and we distributed about 400 leaflets with Go clubs addresses; we hope to have as many new players!

The place was very noisy and busy; teaching Go is not easy when the players can't even sit and the teacher can't talk louder than the Japanese drums. We invite all interested players to join the nearest club or try KGS to play online. Note: there is a small mistake in the papers, the club organizing lessons for beginners is located in 1083 Ganshoren (not 1038). More info on the clubs page.

Dear new players, don't try to buy hundreds of books to get started. Don't even watch Hikaru again. Just play, play many many games, and you'll become very strong soon. Good luck!

If you want to learn Go or if you've just learned how to play, you might be interested to meet other people who are in your case. That kind of activity will be organised in Liège soon, please doodle here : http://doodle.com/d2itmqigcqyz8p2e