Belgian Go Federation

Belgian team got his 1st win of the season, against Turkey (Lucas Neirynck +, Jan Ramon +, Lucman Bounoider +, Gabriel Mercier -) !

Thanks to this win, Belgian is no longer last ranked... but not yet out of danger.

Last round (in which Belgium will play Sweden, a direct concurrent) will be decisive !

The rules specify that the last ranked team will be demoted to lower (here c-league) league whereas the one before last will play a play-off against the 2nd best ranked of the lower league to determine which one will "move" from a league to another.

Results of the round here: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/682

Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

On 13 April, Belgian team lost 1-3 to Finland (Lucas Neirynck +, Lucman Bounoider -, Gabriel Mercier -, Sven Cuyt -).

This means not only that Belgium remains last, but also that the threat of a relegation to C-league is increasing.
But there are still 2 rounds to go to avoid this.

Results of the round here: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/681

Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

On 09/03, Belgian team (Lucas Neirynck +, Lucman Bounoider -, Gabriel Mercier +, Sven Cuyt -) makes a draw against Germany, thanks to a feat by Gabriel (2-d), who succeeded to beat a 5-d !

This is the 3 draw following.
Belgium remains in 10th and last position, but as there are only 2 points difference with team classed 6th, Belgium is far from doomed to the C-league !

Results of the round here: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/680

Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

A desappointing reduced number of participants (6 only ! ) took part in the 2021 preliminaries of the Belgian championship. Still the competition went very smoothly.
The 4 qualified players for the finals are: Lucman Bounoider (3d), Thomas Connor (4d), Alexandre Terefenko (6k) and Guillaume De Keijser (6k). Congratulations to them !

Complete results here: https://www.gofed.be/tournament/results&tournament=BCP&year=2021

PS: the already qualified players are: Lucas Neirynck (6d), François Gonze (4d), Sven Cuyt (1d) and Gints Engelen (2k).

On 05/02, Belgian team (Lucas Neirynck +, Lucman Bounoider +, Gabriel Mercier -, Sven Cuyt -) makes a draw against Italy.

This a good result as Italy is the leader team in B-league....but still: Belgium remains in last position.

Results of the round here: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/679

Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

Kim OUWELEEN (4d) from Netherlands won the 31th edition of the tournament of Leuven.
20 players participated in this on-line tournament.
Glenn Kjetil VASDAL (1d from...Norwegen) and Sven CUYT (BE, 1d) completed the podium.
Kim remained the only undefeated competitor.

Complete results

Belgian team (Jan Ramon -, Lucman Bounoider-, Gabriel Mercier +, Sven Cuyt +) made a draw against Croatia in the 4th round of the ETC.

Belgium remains at the last place in the B-league. :-(

Results of the round here: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/678

Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

The results of the 2020 interclub are in. We had 6 participating clubs this year Ath,Phénix, Hasselt, Gent, Leuven and Pantin. Leuven was ultimately victorious with Phénix and Hasselt in second and third place respectively.

Unfortunately we had to void a large number of matches because the players where not paying members of the federation. This had a large impact on the result, changing the final winner. Hopefully we can work to avoid this in future interclubs.

Detailed results can be found here

The 2nd edition of the Corona Cup was very successful: no less than 400 (!) players participated in this tournament, played on-line due to the Covid crisis (let us hope there will never be a 3rd edition ! ;-).

Like the 1st edition, organized during the 1st lock-down, the Korean ex-insei Kim Young-Sam (8-d) won unbeaten. He confirms more than ever his leading place in the European rating list.

Silver medal was Artem Kachanovski, who was the only top competitor with 5 wins.

Artem ended ahead of four players with 4 wins:
- Ilya Shikchin,
- Lucas Podpera (who organized the tournament),
- Anton Chernykh
- and Kim Seong-Jim (who was beaten by the the other Kim, but also, surprisingly enough, by a mere 5-d).

Our country fellow Lucas Neirynck ends 8th with a 3/6 score.

Complete results here: https://goweb.cz/turnaj/ii-corona-cup-2020-online/

Things are going worse and worse for the Belgian team (Lucas, Lucman, Gabriel, Sven): our guys lost heavily to the Dutch team (0-4), despite the presence of our champion, Lucas Neirynck.
But Lucas was confronted to one of the European legendary player, Rob Van Zeijst (7-d) and lost.
And the 3 other games were imbalanced on paper, with three Dutch 6-dan opposed to our low dan Belgian guys.
(note: Gabriel wrote in the FaceBook page of the BGF (https://www.facebook.com/groups/100421440086165/) that he and Lucman missed opportunities to win their game)

Belgium remains of course at the last place in the B-league. :-(

Results of the round here: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/677

Standings: https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps