The French Team Championships took place October 24-25 in Lans-en Vercors, near Grenoble, France. Would the defending champions, Grenoble 1,
maintain their title by defeating the 13 challengers? Grenoble 1 had added Motoki Noguchi — who was unavailable last year — to their squad as a replacement for Denis Karadaban, who is studying in Korea. Logically they were in an excellent position to keep their title, their mean rank of 6 dan being three ranks above their nearest rivals. We note however, the increase in the number of teams with a mean rank of 2 to 3 dan, presented serious challengers for the podium places in Rennes, Lyon, Jussieu, Grenoble 2 and 3.
The first round passed without surprise for the strongest teams. In the closest matches Lyon bested La Rochelle and Toulouse beat Antony. In the second round, the surprises began. Suddenly, Grenoble 1 lost on boards 3 and 4, Toru Imamura-Cornuejols (4d) and Simon Billouet (4d) lost respectively to Louis Meckes (1d) and Robin Chauvin (1k), so Lyon grabbed a draw. Similarly between Toulouse 1 and Rennes 1, Benjamin Papazoglou (5d) lost to Li Haohan (3d) and Fabien Masson (1d) to Xavier Bonnefond (1k). Thus the top 2 seeds, the
reigning champions and vice champions, got off to a rotten start. It was Grenoble 2 who took the lead in as they disposed of Jussieu – would they manage to upstage their club mates Grenoble 1?
On Sunday morning, Grenoble 1 regained their form with a 4-0 whitewash Toulouse 1. Rennes 1 overcame the obstacle of Jussieu with a 3-1 victory. Once again Lyon grabbed a draw, but this time with Grenoble 2. Before the last round then, the battle for the title was unclear: three teams had 5 points (Rennes 1, Grenoble 1 and 2), and none had played the other. Would we see a tie? The draw for the final round set Grenoble 1 against Grenoble 2 and Rennes 1 against Grenoble 3. Rennes 1 won 3-1 (Thibaud Naegele dropping a point against Chen Longteng) while Grenoble 1 also won 3-1 (Toru dropping the point to Xiao Chunyang).
Grenoble 1 and Rennes 1 were then tied for first place with 7 points; but the title stays with Grenoble 1 though, because they had 1 extra board win (13 to Rennes’s 12). Picking up third spot were the brave team from Lyon. Full results can be seen for
team and
individual games.
T
magazine reported earlier this week.
“Facebook is using similar technology to recognize a promising Go move—to visually understand whether it will be successful, kind of like a human would,” writes Cade Metz. “Researchers are feeding images of Go moves into a deep learning neural network so that it can learn what a successful move looks like,” as opposed to using brute computing power to analyze the many possible outcomes of every possible move.
AGA’s YouTube Channel Takes Off
Saturday November 7, 2015
If you missed Myungwan Kim 9P’s livestream commentaries earlier this week on the two semi-final Samsung Cup games between Lee Sedol and
Ke Jie, you can now watch them at your leisure on the AGA’s YouTube Channel. With nearly 2,000 subscribers, the channel has really taken off this year, broadcasting live from the US Go Congress, the Chang Qi Cup and the Cotsen Open, attracting thousands of viewers who either watched live or later at their convenience. The channel has also become the place to find go players on YouTube, from gamer Dwyrin — whose videos have been viewed more than 5 million times — to Haylee (professional Hajin Lee), Nick Sibicky, Shawn Ray, Andrew Jackson and more, each of whom have been developing their own styles and attracting fans and subscribers. “I love your extremely positive personality!” one viewer told Haylee. “It makes your videos really enjoyable. Thank you for these amazing videos.”