Jan Simara Surprise Winner at Euro Championship: Jan Simara 6D was the surprise winner of this year’s European Championship title when he won the deciding game against Ilya Shikshin (click here for the game) at the recent European Go Congress. Simara lives in Zlin in the Czech Republic and just finished university, where he majored in teaching IT. He learned go in chess camp when he was 14 – he’d been playing chess since the age of six — and about two years later quit chess and started to play go. “I studied seriously only once about six years ago for an year when I was about 1-dan,” Simara said, “Mostly reading the Shusaku book Invincible. otherwise I sometimes replay top pro games and do tsumego when I’m in a train going to a tournament.” In an interview with EuroGoTV, Simara’s advice for new players was “Play mainly for joy, never be stressed about results.” Click here for pairings and game records. Final standings for the 2012 European Championship: 1st: Jan Simara; 2nd: Ilya Shikshin; 3rd: Pavol Lisy; 4th: Thomas Debarre; 5th: Ondrej Silt; 6th: Antti Tormanen; 7th: Mateusz Surma; 8th: Gheorghe Cornel Burzo.
– Alain Cano, special European correspondent for the E-Journal; photo by Olivier Dulac
The Red Dress Tesuji: A very stylish and hip 60-second video promoting the upcoming European Women’s Go 
Championship has been released. The Women’s Go Championship and a side tournament are being organized as part of the 2012 European Go Cup Brno, which is being held September 7-9 in Brno, South Moravia in the Czech Republic.
U.S. Women’s Tournament Crosstab: Tournament Director Lisa Scott has just sent in the crosstab for the recent Women’s Tournament at the U.S. Open, which was won by Kelsey Dyer 1D.
