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European Online Go News

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on January 27, 2021 by Antti TörmänenJanuary 27, 2021

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.

Posted in IGF News Feed

5th Latin American Pandanet League Starts in January

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on January 22, 2021 by Antti TörmänenJanuary 22, 2021

As of January 24, fourteen Latin American countries divided in two leagues will be fighting to reach the top in the 5th Pandanet Go Latin American Team Championship.

Novel in this season is Cuba playing in League A and standing as a strong competitor for the Championship, as their top three boards rank as 5 dan and the team has an average level of 3 dan.

Meanwhile, in League B, we also find a strengthened Uruguay with the recent incorporation of Martin Benenati 5d, promising a close fight with Chile and Venezuela who are also trying to fight their way back to League A.

Showdown starts immediately on the first round with heavy matches like Argentina v. Mexico, who last season finished second and fourth, respectively, and Brazil v. Peru who finished first and third, respectively.

Follow the 1st round of the Championship on Sunday 24th at 19 hrs GMT-6 on the LatinAmericanTeam Champ room in Pandanet.

Posted in IGF News Feed

European Women’s Go Championship 2020

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on December 26, 2020 by Antti TörmänenDecember 26, 2020

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.

 

Download SGF

 

Report by Artem

Posted in IGF News Feed

Brazil Wins 4th Pandanet Go Latin American Team Championship

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on December 23, 2020 by Antti TörmänenDecember 26, 2020

In a hard-fought match, Brazil overcame Argentina to become the champion of the 4th PGLATC.

Of the three games played, the first one to finish was the third-board match between Brazil’s Helcio Alexander and Argentina’s Luciano Salerno. While Salerno kept the lead throughout most of the game, a later invasion proved too deep which gave the victory to Alexander.

Later on, the second board finished with a large point victory for Brazil’s Wang Sen Feng over Argentina’s Santiago Tabares.

At last, the first board finished with a victory of Argentina’s Fernando Aguilar over Israelian-Brazilian Amir Fragman, in a game with plenty of fighting and group exchanging.

So the result was a 2-1 victory for Brazil. Congratulations!

Records of the games:

 

Download SGF

 


 

Download SGF

 


 

Download SGF

 

You can also check out Mateusz Surma 2p’s commentary of this match behind this link.

Report by Emil García

Posted in IGF News Feed

China Organises Online International Youth Go Tournament

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on December 23, 2020 by Antti TörmänenDecember 23, 2020

92 players out of 26 countries and four continents are playing in the ‘1st CCTV World Youth Amateur Weiqi Tournament’ which is organised by the Chinese Weiqi Association along with the CCTV Sports Youth Channel.

The tournament is divided into two groups: youth team and children’s individual. In the youth section, teams are composed of three players.

The tournament is divided into a regular season, playoffs and finals. The regular season uses a Swiss system of 7 rounds, from which the top eight players go on to the playoffs. In the playoffs, there are first two rounds with a single knock-out system until the final. The final is then played as a best-of-three match.

At the current point, the regular season has been finished. Playoffs are being played in December and the final’s date is yet to be defined. You may follow the games through YIKE Go server. Dates, results and more information is available on the event’s Facebook page.

Report by Emil García

Posted in IGF News Feed

Mexico Plays Friendly Online Match with Japanese Go Exchange Society SIIG

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on December 23, 2020 by Antti TörmänenDecember 23, 2020


SIIG at a university go event in Mexico City, 2015


On November 23rd, an eleven v. eleven players online team match took place on KGS between Mexico’s representative team and the ‘Sociedad Internacional de Intercambio de Go’, SIIG.

The SIIG is a Japanese-based society of retired women and men who like to share through go and that has traveled to many countries in the globe in past years with that purpose. In Latin America they’ve been in Argentina, Chile, Cuba, and Mexico. The last time they were in Mexico was in October 2015, and since then, five online go matches with Mexico have been played.

So far all 5 matches have been victories for the Japanese team, and although the result of this last match was a 6-5 victory for SIIG, this is perhaps the closest Mexico has ever come to the win.

You can visit SIIG website behind this link or join the ‘Sala SIIG de Japón’ room on KGS under Social to find many SIIG members to play a match with.

Report by Emil García

Posted in IGF News Feed

Dominican Republic Plays Online Team Match with Mexico

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on December 23, 2020 by Antti TörmänenDecember 23, 2020


Dominican Republic players

On December 13, the first online team match between Dominican Republic and Mexico took place on the Pandanet Go Server. The match was played on eleven boards, resembling a football soccer match.

Dominican Republic players have been developing at a fast pace, even so that their first board is already 4 kyu. Nonetheless most of their players are still double digit kyu but with a lot of enthusiasm to learn more about the game.

Mexico’s team was set up accordingly to Dominican player’s level in order to make the match as fair as possible. You may check both teams line up in this post. The result turned out to be a 10-1 victory for Mexico.

Report by Emil García

Posted in IGF News Feed

Second Corona Cup Finished

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on December 20, 2020 by Antti TörmänenDecember 20, 2020

The first edition of Corona Cup took place in spring 2020 and had 361 participants – exactly the same as the number of intersections on the go board.

The second edition was held on the KGS and lasted more than one month, from November 2 till December 15. The participants played one game a week, and each pair could arrange the date and time of the game by themselves – a very flexible schedule.

This time the tournament attracted even bigger number of players: 400 participants from 34 different countries.

Kim Youngsam 7d from Germany repeated his success, winning the Corona Cup once again. The runner-up was Artem Kachanovskyp 2p (Ukraine), while the bronze medal went to Ilya Shikshin 3p (Russia).

For more information please see the following links:
Article on the first edition of Corona Cup
Announcement of the second edition of Corona Cup
Tournament table

Report by Artem

Posted in IGF News Feed

Third Season of European Professional Online Go League Starts

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on December 2, 2020 by Antti TörmänenDecember 2, 2020

On December 5, the third season of the European Professional Online Go League begins. The tournament system remains the same as the previous season: participants play a round-robin league, followed by a semi-final and the final. Each match is played in a best-of-three format and commented live on the EGF Twitch channel.

This time six European Professional players are participating:

  • 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)



The first match starts on December 5 at 18:00 CET: Ilya Shikshin 3p plays against Pavol Lisy 2p with a live commentary by Ali Jabarin 2p and Tanguy Le Calve 1p.

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

Report by Artem

Posted in IGF News Feed

Interview on the Online European Go Championship Organisation

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on November 18, 2020 by Antti TörmänenNovember 18, 2020

The European Go Championship (hence, ‘EC’) ended two weeks ago. The winner this year was Ilya Shikshin 3p from Russia. You can find more details in the article on the results of the EC2020.

This year, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the EC had to be played online. This brought up a special format that was used, and of course a special organisation experience.

Below you will find an interview with Jean-Yves Papazoglou from France, the Vice-President of the European Go Federation. This year, as usual, he took care of organising the EC. Let’s see what he tells us about this new experience of organising the online EC.

1. How do you feel after the tournament is over? Was it a hard job to organise the European Championship online?
It was a big relief once the European Championship finished on November 2nd with an ultimate and decisive game between Ali Jabarin 2p (Israel) and Ilya Shikshin 3p (Russia). Traditionally this championship is organised during our annual European Go Congress with money prizes offered by the congress organisation. Hence, as it was not possible to run it live in Ukraine, we awaited better times to organise it later in the year which finally was not possible due to the resurgence of the COVID-19 virus in Europe. Early September, we decided to run it online without prizes. After a few days, no EGF pros registered and protested that no money prizes were available. We had the idea to suggest our go fan lovers support this championship via crowdfunding. And it worked very well beyond our expectations and all EGF pros (except for one) decided to participate.

2. How many people worked in a team for the EC organisation?
Basically, it was myself supported by the EGF Executive Board, Lorenz Trippel, our secretary, and Ali Jabarin (or the EGF pros) for any decision we had to take. For example, we hesitated how to ensure the live commentaries via our EGF Youtube channel with a preliminary subscription or via the EGF Twitch channel with free access to all. The final choice was to offer free access and to expect additional donations thanks to the promotion we did during the commentaries. It worked thanks to many enthusiastic donors who appreciated the games and the several-hours-long live commentaries from our top EGF players.

3. Please describe briefly the tournament system that was used this year.
This year we changed the system, as it was an online tournament and the period to run it was an extended one (from September 21 to November 2). We started with 32 players selected out of the 8 from the previous European Championship and the best rated EGF players. Like in tennis at the Roland Garros tournament, we organised two qualification rounds for the players beyond rank 8. The top 8 qualified to play against the players ranked 1-8. After two single-elimination rounds, the top 4 entered the final phase with a best of three games. All games were played with Fischer time: 60mn + 30 s/ move which means an average of 4-hour games.

4. How did the organising process go?
As the time to organise it was very short (only 2 weeks), we are happy that we had 32 players motivated to play it, and nearly all the strongest EGF players applied. One difficulty with online games was the video recording system we suggested to the players to avoid cheating. It was new for us and inspiration came from a similar experience in Asia. We implemented a video call via Skype with the recording of each player and their screen. It worked pretty well without any claim or suspicion of cheating. The commission we put in place, consisting of Antti Törmänen 1p, Yoon Young-sun 8p, and Zhao Balong 2p had nearly no work all along the championship.

During the final phase, we had to take into account an unexpected but happy event on Artem Kachanovskyi’s side with the birth of his second child. To avoid pronouncing a forfeit, all other players very kindly accepted to postpone the semi-final against Ali by one week.
Another potential issue during online games is the misclick that can happen with a very sensitive PC’s mouse. It happened once, and the other player accepted the request for undo. All along the Championship, we could feel the trust and respect between all players for each other which made it a real pleasure for me to organise such a competition.

Initially, we planned to have proctors for the top 4 players, but they mutually agreed that was not necessary as there is a high level of trust between them.

5. Please tell us about the crowdfunding campaign.
The most difficult part was to select the right crowdfunding platform (OkPal) and get our EGF bank account certified by them. Our EGF treasurer, Harry van der Kroegt will remember how many emails and exchanges were necessary. We established a system with Gold and Silver donors who would benefit from specific goodies and rewards: advertising, pictures with the EC winner, commentaries by EGF pros of the best 5 games, simultaneous games against an EGF pro, t-shirts, and copies of the 2016 EGF yearbook.
As the crowdfunding worked well (3,950€ for a target of 3,000€), we were able to secure enough funding for the commentaries of all games played during the final phase.

6. Did you enjoy observing the games?
Indeed, it was a unique opportunity for the first time to follow all games as they were not played all at the same time as in the live championship. Also, we benefitted from the kibitz of top players who were watching, and commented on the ongoing games on the OGS server.
The final games with the best of three were very spectacular to observe as we could feel the stakes were high for all finalists, and especially for Ilya Shishkin who was searching for his 7th European championship title, thus equaling his compatriot Alexander Dinerstein. Our EGF top players helped us to better follow the games and appreciate how powerful they are. We reached a peak of more than 500 observers on the OGS server which is a kind of record for such an EGF championship.
I would like to thank all those who supported this championship: the 32 players for their impressive games and the EGF pro team led by Ali Jabarin who organised the live Twitch commentaries (nearly 40 hours in total).

You can see the following links for more details:

European Championship 2020 webpage
EGF crowdfunding campaign
Interview with Ilya Shikshin, European Champion 2020

Report by Artem

Posted in IGF News Feed

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LATEST NEWS

  • European Online Go News
  • 5th Latin American Pandanet League Starts in January
  • European Women’s Go Championship 2020
  • Brazil Wins 4th Pandanet Go Latin American Team Championship
  • China Organises Online International Youth Go Tournament
  • Mexico Plays Friendly Online Match with Japanese Go Exchange Society SIIG
  • Dominican Republic Plays Online Team Match with Mexico
  • Second Corona Cup Finished
  • Third Season of European Professional Online Go League Starts
  • Interview on the Online European Go Championship Organisation

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