Website of The International Go Federation

World Amateur Go Championship (WAGC) is an annual go event organised by the International Go Federation (IGF). Each IGF member country nominates one representative, and in total usually there are around 70 participants.

The WAGC is held since 1979. In 2020, for the first time in go history, the tournament was to take place in one of the European countries – Russia, Vladivostok city. Because of the COVID-19 outbreak, the tournament was postponed till 2021. The new dates for the 41st WAGC are June 2–10, 2021. The location remains the same.

Unfortunately, the pandemic doesn’t seem to get any better even despite the vaccination. Due to this reason, the organisers of the 41st WAGC decided to allow online participation for those representatives who are not able to arrive in Vladivostok. In that case, national federations whose representatives play online must ensure the presence of a referee or an official of the federation in the playing-room and/or video monitoring of the competition process. More information on this aspect will be announced by the organisers later.

Representatives from 77 countries are invited to participate in the 41st WAGC:

1. Asia: 17 countries and territories
   Brunei, China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Korea, India, Indonesia, Japan, Macau, Malaysia,
   Mongolia, Nepal, DPR Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam
2. Near and Middle East: 3 countries
   Iran, Israel, Turkey
3. Europe: 37 countries
   Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom
4. Africa: 3 countries
   Madagascar, Morocco, South Africa
5. North & Central America: 7 countries
   Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, United States
6. South America: 8 countries
   Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela
7. Oceania: 2 countries
   Australia, New Zealand

In case you are an official of the national go organisation in one of the listed countries, and you have not received an invitation yet – please use the following email address to contact the WAGC organisers: n.kovaleva@gofederation.ru (Natalia Kovaleva).

For more information see the 41st WAGC website: https://wagc2020.org/

Report by Artem

Cover page of the first issue

The European Go Journal is a monthly journal about the game of go, officially supported by the European Go Federation. The author is Artem Kachanovskyi, a 2 dan professional of the EGF.

The journal consists of three sections:

• Go news – focusing on Europe, including major worldwide go events. This section contains also game reviews.
• Reading material: interviews and an ‘art and photography’ chapter.
• Studying material – analysis of playing situations using AI, go problems, tesuji of the month.

The journal is distributed in two forms: digital and printed. It’s possible to subscribe to the journal on Patreon.

For more information see this article on the EGF website.

Report by Artem

The third season of the European Professional Online Go League started in December 2020. Six players participated this time:

• Ilya Shikshin 3p (Russia)
• Artem Kachanovskyi 2p (Ukraine)
• Pavol Lisy 2p (Slovakia)
• Ali Jabarin 2p (Israel)
• Andrii Kravets 1p (Ukraine)
• Tanguy Le Calve 1p (France)

After the round-robin stage, the top three places were distributed in the following way:

1. Ilya Shikshin
2. Pavol Lisy
3. Tanguy Le Calve

In the semi-final match, Pavol lost the first game against Tanguy, but then he won the following two, thus qualifying for the final match against Ilya.

In the final match, Ilya won with a score of 3-1. By the way, Ilya was promoted to 4p after his victory in the European Grand Prix Finale 2020.

So, the winner of the third season is Ilya. Here are the winners of the first two seasons:

1. Artem Kachanovskyi 2p (Ukraine)
2. Ryan Li 1p (Canada)

For more details, please see the European Professional Online Pro League webpage.

Below you can see the game record of the last game of the Final.

11th Pandanet Go European Team Championship started in October 2020. Four rounds have been played already. At the time of writing the leader is the team of Ukraine, which unexpectedly defeated the favourite in the last round, the team of France. The next round will take place on February 2, the highlight of the round being the match between Ukraine and Russia.

In the third season of the European Professional Online Go League, the round-robin stage has come to an end. Ilya Shikshin 3p was undefeated and proceeded to the final by taking first place. Pavol Lisy 2p and Tanguy Le Calve 1p will play a match to determine who challenges Ilya for the title of the winner of the League.

European Grand Prix Finale 2020 has started on January 8th. At the time of writing the competition is in the semi-finals: Ilya Shikshin 3p v. Pavol Lisy 2p, and Artem Kachanovskyi 2p v. Stanislaw Frejlak 7d.

Report by Artem

This year the European Women’s Go Championship took place online, similarly to the majority of the other competitions.

16 players from 8 different countries participated in the event. The tournament system was very similar to the one of the European Grand Prix Finale:

• four groups of four players
• round-robin in a group
• two players from each group proceed to the play-off

The final had a best-of-three format. The two players who made it to the final were Manja Marz 3d (Germany) and Natalia Kovaleva 5d (Russia). Natalia won two games in a row, thus winning the European Women’s Go Championship 2020.

Here are the final results:

1. Natalia Kovaleva 5d (Russia)
2. Manja Marz 3d (Germany)
3. Dina Burdakova 5d (Russia)
4. Isabel Donle 1d (Germany)

For more details please see the tournament webpage: https://eurogofed.org/women/2020.html
Below you can view the second and decisive game between Manja and Natalia.

Report by Artem