American Go E-Journal

Hong Seul-ki (left) 7D swept the recent Hamburg Tengen, played in the Hamburg suburb of Rahlstedt November 8-9. Hong was 5-0 in the A group at the 26th annual Tengen, ahead of Michael Budahn 3D (both of Berlin) and Floris Barthel 4D (from Utrecht in the Netherlands). Only local Lukas Scholz 5k was also undefeated. Micha Eggen 6k won B-group 7-0; about fifty players participated in each group. In the C group, 14 youngsters played, with young Fréderic Claasen 17k winning, while his even younger sister Alina 24k finished at 3-3. Fréderic Claasen first laid claim to fame at the 2008 European Go Congress in Sweden, where he did well in both the kids championships and as the partner of Yoon Young-sun 5P in Pair Go, where they reached the final knock-out stage. In last week’s report on the German Pair Championships in St. Augustin, we neglected to mention that almost one hundred people played in the open tourney there. In the top group no one was without a loss: Matthias Terwey (4-1), Tobias Berben (3-2) and Hai Lin (2-2 and a jigo) – all 4D – took top places, while Malte Weiss (5-0) and Christina Amhof (4-1) were 1k’s who are likely to win their way into the dan rankings. Up-and-coming youngsters to watch are Jonas Sorgalla 9k, Nils Brakmann 20k and Lena Knauer 25k all won their five games in the main tourney; Knauer is not only perhaps the youngest winner, but is also from Cologne, which will host the European Championships in 2012.
– reported by Peter Dijkema, European EJ correspondent