Vorawat Charoensitthisathien Wins Thai Open
Hard on the heels of the Thailand 15-Dan Go League, the 17th Thailand Open Go Tournament was held on May 4-6 at the Nong Nooch Garden & Resort Hotel in Pattaya, a major Thai resort city. It was divided into four sections: high dan (3 dan and up, 32 contestants), low dan (1-2 dan, 36 contestants), high kyu (1-4 kyu, 24 contestants), and low kyu (5-8 kyu, 30 contestants). Each section was run as a separate Swiss system.
The high dan section was won by Vorawat Charoensitthisathien, the 5-dan Assumption University student who played on the Thai team at the 2010 Asian Games and will represent Thailand at the 2013 World Amateur Go Championship. Second place went to Nuttakrit Taechaamnuayvit, 4 dan, Thailand’s player at the 2013 World Student Oza. Choltit Rattanasetyut, 5 dan, who took 11th place in the 2011 World Amateur Go Championship, finished third despite beating Nuttakrit in round 2 (he lost to Vorawat in round 4). None of these three lost to anyone else. Last year’s winner Krit Jamkachornkiat encountered Vorawat in round 1 and Nuttakrit in round 5 and finished fourth.
The low dan section was won by Phumin Kongmaung, 2 dan, a student at the Chamnong Business Technological College. The high kyu section was won by Sirathep Chen, 1 kyu, an 11-year-old middle-school student at Assumption College in Bangkok. Emboldened by his victory, Sirathep went right on to take the Thai Go Association’s tough shodan qualification test and is now 1 dan. The low kyu section was won by Bunyapon Jaiaree, 6 kyu, a high school student at Assumption College in Samut Prakan.
More pictures and results (mostly in Thai) can be found here.