A Grand Slam tournament is the top level tournament in the European Go Federation’s Grand Prix, and the only level for which special pre-qualification conditions exist. The first such of 2017 took place in Berlin, starting on the 28th of April, and running for 4 days, the event saw 12 of the strongest European players battle it out for a 10,000 euro prize. The winner of the event was Artem Kachanovskyi (1p) who comes from Ukraine, he beat the Russian player Alexander Dinerchtein (3p) in the final by a margin of 5.5 points. Amusingly, before the event Alexander stated that Artem was the only opponent he felt he would be unable to defeat. Slovakia’s Pavol Lisy (1p) won the play-off for third place, defeating Ilya Shikshin (1p). You can see the full results here.
At the same time, a team tournament was running – the China Cup Berlin. This event was won by deceptively titled “Losers without Borders” (Dominik Boviz (6d), Thomas Debarre (6d), Nikola Mitic (6d)), a team made up of players who were knocked out of the Grand Slam on day 1. They finished ahead of second place “Team Berlin” (Johannes Obenaus(6d), Kim Seongjin(8d), Xu Yin(6d), Zhang Yi(5d)), and third place “The Dudes” (Cristian Pop(7d), Catalin Taranu(5p), Cornel Burzo(6d)). Full reports of both events are available here and here. There will be a second Grand Slam event in Warsaw this year.
