Belgian Go Federation

Based on ranking Belgium outclassed Norway. The Belgian team lived the to the expectations and pulled off their 3th consecutive victory, this time against Norway.

This places Belgium on top after three rounds (with an impressive 11-1 record !) !

Dreaming of promotion seems premature as several strong countries remain. Next round against the Netherlands will likely provide a serious test.

Games and results here: http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/89

Interclubs season 2012 has been finished.

All games were played with no forfeited games.

The teams played double rounds, so every club had a chance to enjoy the atmosphere of all the other clubs.

The tournament was exciting, as the final results are very close:
Gent got third place with 5 points (10 weighted points). Antwerpen gets second place with 6 points (11 weighted points). Leuven takes the title and the trophy with 7 points (and an amazing 15 weighted points).

I would like to congratulate all teams with these nice results. Extra congratulations go to Leuven for the victory. I would like to thank the captains Kris Boyen, Joost Vannieuwenhuyse and Kenny Debacq and look forward to the 2013 interclub tournament.

Cheers,
Robby Goetschalckx,
Interclubs organisor

There were 13 participants.
The 5 best "on paper" are qualified for the final round.

1. François GONZE - 4d - 7/7
2. Yue WANG - 2d - 6
3. Dominik VERSYCK - 1d - 5
4. Ci-Yiu WONG - 2k - 4 - 28 SOS-1 - 30 SOS
5. Michael MEESCHAERT - 1k - 4 - 28 SOS-1 - 29 SOS

6. Kris BOYEN - 4k - 4 - 26 SOS-1
7. Demian WALSHISCH - 4k - 4 - 25 SOS-1
8. Benoit HUBERT - 3k - 3 - 27 SOS-1
9. Kenny DEBACQ - 6k - 3 - 21 SOS-1
10. Alex VAN HAEREN - 10k - 3 - 20 SOS-1
11. Laurent MONSEUR - 14k - 3 - 17 SOS-1
12. Thomas DETOURNAY - 5k - 2
13. Maciej SKONIESCKA - 15k - 1

Complete results will follow later

http://www.gofed.be/en/tournament/belgian

Kwinten Missaen, 2-d, our representative in the 7th Korea Prime Minister Cup ended 24th in a field of 70 participants.
He made 3/6 (with a victory against a 3-d).
Not quite unexpectedly, the winner was a Korean ahead of a Chinese.

Here are the complete results: http://www.eurogofed.org/results/world/kpmc2012.htm

and here, you can read some interesting interviews of some European top players:
http://intergofed.org/13-igf-news-feed.html

The Brussels tournament was won by Pavol Lisy ahead of Ondrej Silt, Lluis Oh and Pal Balogh, all 6-dan.See the full results À word about the winner: Pavol Lisy, 6-Dan from Slovakia, is just 17 years old. He ended 3rd in the last European Go Championship. In 2010-11, he climbed from 1st Kyu to 5 Dan in 18 months !

On October 11th-12th, Belgium won against Switzerland the second round in the European Team Go Championship. Read the report of captain Nelis.

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)

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.