Once again Eastern European players dominated the tough top-eight round robin in the Kido Cup, held in Hamburg, Germany August 26-28. Czechia’s Ondrej Silt survived the brutal seven rounds with only two losses to capture the the cup, and with it a first prize of 1000 euros. Romania’s Christian Pop and Cornel Burzo and Czechia’s Jan Simara and Jan Hora also turned in net-plus performances, winning four games while losing three. Last year’s winner Pal Balogh (Hungary) notched three wins to finish sixth, exactly where he finished in the recent World Amateur Go Championship. The two Dutch players, Merlijn Kuin and Gilles van Eeden, scored two wins apiece, and had the satisfaction of beating the two Romanians in the first round. Merlijn Kuin was also one of the two players to defeat Ondrej Silt; Jan Hora was the other. Full results are here.

The much larger main tournament drew over 200 participants, mostly from Germany, nearly 70 holding dan-level ranks. The winner, with a perfect 7-0 score, was Germany’s Benjamin Teuber (6d). Barbara Knauf (3d), another German player, won the prize for highest-placing woman (26th), and Poland’s Mateusz Surma (5d) took the youth prize by placing fourth, for the second year in a row. Results of the main tournament are here.

The Kido Cup is sponsored by Korea’s Kido Industrial Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motorcycle clothing, and is supported by the Korean professional and amateur baduk associations and Germany’s Omikron Data Quality GmbH.