European Go Journal: New Project Begins

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on by


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

European Youth Go Team Championship 2020/21

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on by

European Youth Go Team Championship (EYGTC) is an annual online Go competition. European countries are represented by teams consisting of youth players. Each round teams have to line up five players of different age categories:

  • one player U20
  • two players U16
  • two players U12


This year there have been four rounds. The team of Russia remained undefeated, thus winning EYGTC for the 6th time.

Last year the winner was the team of Germany, which was the only time when the team of Russia didn’t win the competition.

For more details please see the EYGTC 2020/21 webpage.

Report by Artem

European Professional Online Go League: Third Season Finished

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on by

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


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.

 

Download SGF

 


Report by Artem

European Grand Prix Finale 2020

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on by

This year European Grand Prix Finale took place on the Online Go Server from January 8 till 31. Top 16 European players were fighting for the title of the Grand Prix Winner. The competition is a culmination of the Grand Prix – a series of tournaments held during the year 2020.

The group stage didn’t bring any surprise, with the favourites getting first or second places to qualify for the knock-out stage.

This year, as the competition was held online, all the knock-out matches had best-of-three format.
In the final, Ilya Shikshin 3p (Russia) defeated Artem Kachanovskyi 2p (Ukraine) with a score of 2:0.
Here are the top four places of the tournament:

  1. Ilya Shikshin 3p (Russia)
  2. Artem Kachanovskyi 2p (Ukraine)
  3. Pavol Lisy 2p (Slovakia
  4. Stanislaw Frejlak 7d (Poland)


For more details, please see the Grand Prix Finale 2021 webpage.

Below you can see the game records of the final match between Ilya and Artem.

 

Download SGF

 


 

Download SGF

 

Report by Artem

European Online Go News

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on by

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

5th Latin American Pandanet League Starts in January

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on by

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.

Report by Emil García

European Women’s Go Championship 2020

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on by

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

Brazil Wins 4th Pandanet Go Latin American Team Championship

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on by

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

China Organises Online International Youth Go Tournament

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on by

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

Mexico Plays Friendly Online Match with Japanese Go Exchange Society SIIG

Website of The International Go Federation Posted on by


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