Belgian Go Federation

Open Championship:

Tong Yulin, a professional player from Shangai won the open competition of the 2014 European Championship with a perfect score.

2nd is Wang Chen (9/10), also from Shangai (Wang Chen is the reigning World Student champion), with 8/10.

3rd is another Chinese: Sui Zexiang, 8/10 (one of the very top amateur players).

4rd (and 2014 European Champion; see hereunder) is the French professional (from Chinese origin) Fan Hui.

The fact that Kim Young-Sam, one of these terrible 7-d Korean amateurs who dominated the previous editions of the European Championship (f.i. Kim was open champion in 2011) landed only as 5th is a good indication the strengh of these players !

(Tong Yulin remained also undefeated in the WE tournament.)

European Championship

The final part of European Championship, which is reserved to the European players, starts after the 6th round of the main (open) tournament. The 8 best European players are then selected to play a knout-out tournament.

Here are the results of the final part
(name of the winner first):

Quarter Finals
Fan Hui - Csaba Mero
Ilja Shikshin - Lukas Podpera
Ali Jabarin - Artem Kachanovskyi
Alexandr Dinerchtein - Pavol Lisy

Semi-Finals
Alexandr Dinerchtein - Ilja Shikshin
Fan Hui - Ali Jabarin

Final: Fan Hui - Alexandr Dinerchtein

So, Fan Hui defended his European champion title !

PS: they were only 2 Belgian participants this year: Kris Boyen (4-k) scored 4/10 and Sander Theetaert (17-k) 5/10.

Complete results here:
http://www.eurogofed.org/results/congress/egc2014.htm

Yitien Chan (Chinese Taipei) snatched victory in the 35th World Amateur Championship with a 7/8 score.

In a tie-break lottery, he scores 46 pts SOS, followed by 45 pts SOS for Korea and 43 points for China.

The followers are Hong Kong (4th), Ukraine (5th), Czech Republic (6th), Russia (7th), Sweden (8th), Japan (9th) (only !) and USA (10th).

The Belgian representative, Dominique Versyk, ended 31th among 54 participants, with a 4/8 score (...and expected results).

Complete results here: http://ranka.intergofed.org/?page_id=10900
and a report here: http://ranka.intergofed.org/

On 12/06/14, Go Seigen, considered by many as the best player ever in the history of go, turned 100 years !

http://www.usgo.org/news/2014/06/go-seigen-turns-100/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Seigen

15 days after Pavol LISY (see our "older news"), Ali JABARIN, 19 years old, from ...Israël (!) became on 20/06 the second European professional go player by winning the loser's section of the 2014 pro qualification tournament...

Here are the results:
http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualification/#tournaments

Thomas CONNOR is 2014 Belgian blitz champion.

He ended with 5 wins out of 6 rounds, just one 1-"sos point" ahead of unlucky Dominique VERSYCK, winner of the 3 previous editions, who was the only other competitors with 5 wins.
10 players took part.

Complete results will follow soon.

Young Pavol LISY (18 years !, SK, ex 7-d) became last WE the 1st European player to be promoted professionnal go player within the European Go Federation.
He won 4 straight games against other European top candidates.

20th of June, he will be joined by another European top amateur to be selected among half-finalists of the "1-defeat competition": Cornel Burzo vs. Lukas Podpera and Mateusz Surma vs. Ali Jabarin.

Here are the results:
http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualification/#tournaments

(I remember that, 2-3 years ago, Pavol took only 18 months to raise from 1-k to 5-d !)

Despite this heavy lost against Denmark (with 2 narrow defeats), Belgium ended 7th of 10 teams and will stay in the B-league next year.

For your information: in the A-league, the 4 best teams: Tchequia, Russia, Ukraine and France will play aginst each other for the title during the European Go Congress in Sibiu (Roumania) this summer.

Complete results here: http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

Belgium knocked Norway down 4-0 on the 8th round of European Team Championship held on IGS. We are currently ranked #6 out of 10 in League B and it looks extremely unlikely for Belgium to go down one league at the end of this year's championship.

Complete results are available at
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

Belgium lost against Slovenia, and will have to fight until the very end to avoid relegation into C league.

Complete results here:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/158

Standings after 7 out of the 9 rounds:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

No miracle: Belgium has been (rather logically according to the rankings) crushed by Netherlands 0-4...

Complete results here:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/158

Standings after 6 out of the 9 rounds:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps