Website of The International Go Federation

Expectations for the 8th Mexican Internet Go Tournament got surpassed as 84 players from over ten countries registered for the event. Out of these players, 54 are Mexican and the other 30 from Latin American countries.

The six-round MacMahon tournament takes place over a six-week period, in which each round is played in OGS on Sundays at 19:00 GMT-3. Participants have a chance to settle another date and time for the match with their opponents by mutual agreement. A WhatsApp group was created for this purpose, and is also being used to give announcements about the event such as pairings and standings.

An interesting feature of this tournament is that points will be given out to the first five places in each of the top three MacMahon groups made for the pairing. Players can later exchange these points for the chance to represent Mexico in the WAGC or the KPMC. ‘Normally points would be given only to the top 5 players of the whole tournament, but we devised this system to bring in as many people as possible. We know you are still at home so you are welcome to play go with us!’ Pablo Tapia from the Mexican Go Association reports to IGF.

So far five rounds have been played, and the sixth and final round is taking place on October 4. You can check the pairings behind this link. You can also view the current standings from this table.

Report by Emil García

European Professional Online Go League has two stages: round robin and playoffs. After the round-robin stage, the second and third best-rated participants play a semi-final match to determine who meets the winner of the round-robin stage in the final.

In the second season, the final order of the top three players after the first stage was the following:

1. Ryan Li 1p (Canada)
2. Pavol Lisy 2p (Slovakia)
3. Ilya Shikshin 3p (Russia)

Same as in the first season of the league, the semi-final was played between Ilya and Pavol. The match was played on September 5. This time, opposite to the previous season, Ilya won with a score of 2:0.

The final took place on September 6. Similarly to the previous season, it was played as a best-of-five match. Ryan won the match 3:1, becoming the champion of the second season of the European Professional Online Go League.

For more details please see the webpage of the league.

Below you can see the last game of the final match between Ryan and Ilya.

Report by Artem

The second season of the European Professional Online Go League started on June 20.

More than half of the season is already behind. On August 9, the two undefeated participants played a match: Ilya Shikshin 3p (Russia) v. Ryan Li 1p (Canada). Ryan is a guest player in the League.

The winner was Ryan with a score of 2:0. You can view the record of the second game below.

After the round-robin stage is finished, the 3rd and the 2nd best-rated players will play a match to determine who will play against the winner in the Grand Final.

In the second season, several new features were introduced in the League, such as a YouTube channel and a Facebook page. See the official webpage of the League for more details.

Report by Artem

It’s no secret to anyone that Latin America is one of the regions where the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the worst. Under these circumstances, the main way go enthusiasm has kept up is through online team matches. 

So far three university team matches have been played. The first one was played on June 6 between the Ecuadorian ‘Universidad de las Américas’ (UDLA) University Go Club and Mexico’s ‘Taller de Go UNAM’. 

The second match was on June 27 between the Ecuadorian UDLA Club and ‘Universidad de Chile’ Engineer Faculty Go Club. This was a four-board match in which Ecuador took the victory with a 3-1 score.

The third match was between Mexico’s Taller de Go UNAM and ‘Universidad de Chile’ Engineer Faculty Go Club. On this occasion the match was played on eight boards, resulting in a 5-3 victory for the Chilean team.

‘The idea came around after the Mexican Internet Go Quarantine Tournament, which was played from April 13 to May 10, when Diego Albuja from Ecuador approached me with the idea of a University Team Match’, Dante Hernández from Mexico’s ‘Taller de Go UNAM’ reports to IGF. 

‘University players are enthusiastic about these matches, so we hope to keep running them in the near future’, Dante Hernández adds.

Besides these university team matches, national team matches have also taken place, such as a Colombia–Cuba match on five boards and a Venezuela-Chile match on seven boards, both played on July 19. Also, a nine-board ‘Encuentro Patagónico‘ match took place between Chile and Argentina on July 4.

At the start of the pandemic around March, optimistic thoughts pervaded the Latin American scene regarding the celebration of the 4th Latin American Go Congress. This was considering its late date in mid-October; but at this moment, as Latin America is one of the parts of the world most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s quite clear that the event cannot be held this year.

‘It’s unclear that for mid-October we will have conditions that allow us to have big gatherings such as a Congress requires, besides, people should be starting to plan their trips as of now and that seems quite difficult to do with the ongoing situation’, Santiago Laplagne, president of Argentina Go Association declared to the Ibero American Go Federation.

Considering this, the Argentinian Go Association along with the Ibero American Go Federation have decided to postpone the Congress until 2021 with Buenos Aires as the venue.

‘Possibly we could organise some online activities around the Congress’s original dates, but this is still to be discussed’, Santiago Laplagne adds.