American Go E-Journal » Europe

Chong Han Edges Out Kay & Wong in British Open: Chong Han 5d (Loughborough) won the April 8-10 British Open, the British Go Congress’ main tournament, beating out Andrew Kay and Vanessa Wong on a SOS tie break. The Swindon Go Club hosted this year’s Congress in the historic town of Malmesbury, and many players took advantage of the early summer weather to visit the Abbey and Abbey House Gardens. Andrew Kay did not go away empty-handed, having won the Friday Evening British Lightning tournament. Additional prizes were awarded to the four players in the Congress’ two “perfect games” resulting in jigo. Click here for full results and here for the original report.

Second Matthew Wins Arundel: Matthew won Arundel again this year. Matthew Cocke 5d (Epsom) was the best of the 26 players in the March 27 UK tournament, taking the first previously won by Matthew Macfadyen. Winning all three games were Michael Webster 1k (London) and Adan Mordcovich 5k (Wanstead). All those on two wins received prizes including runner-up Francis Roads 3d (Wansted). After the event many players went on to enjoy the evening of a sunny day in the Black Rabbit. Click here for full results.
– reported by Tony Atkins

Ilya Shikshin 7d (l) swept the 8^th annual Japanese Council Cup, held March 25-27 in St Petersburg, Russia. Mitsubishi was the tournament’s main sponsor, providing a rich prize purse as well as covering travel and hotel expenses for the top players. This year the top 16 players in the Cup competed in a new A section while the rest of the field — nearly 80 players up to 3d – comprised the B group. As expected, Alex Dinerchtein 3P and Ilya Shikshin 7d wound up battling for the first place; while Shikshin is a bit higher on

the European rating list, Dinerchtein has better numbers in the Russian ratings and has a favorable score in their head-to-head matches. The two – who both teach online in the KGS Insei League — dominate the current Russian tournament scene, winning half the recent major titles. Shikshin won the showdown (see game record at right) with Dinerchtein at the Japanese Council Cup, sweeping the tournament 6-0, while Dinerchtein took second place. In third was Svetlana Shikshina 7d, who’s not been as active in tournaments recently, occupied with her 4-year-old son Slava. Oleg Mezhov 6d was fourth and Andrej Kashaev 5d fifth. Finns took three of the top five places in the B group, with Samuel Ritakallio 3d from Finland – a former student of Dinerchtein’s – in first place and Pekka Lajunen 2d in second, Dmitrij Kirakosjan 2d of Russia in third, Reino Karttunen 1d (Finland) in fourth and Sergej Vinokurov 1d (Russia) in fifth. “I have the feeling that Finnish 3-dans are able to fight on even with our local 5-dan players,” Dinerchtein tells the E-Journal.

Click here for full results in both the A Group and B Group. For top-board game records, check JPNConsul account on KGS.

This was the deciding game between Shikshin and Dinerchtein for 1^st place. “Notice that it was possible to kill Black’s group by playing W 74 at L2,” says Dinerchtein. “After the game Ilya was not able to show me any geta on the right, which I was afraid of, and said that ‘I was very lucky here.’”

Mazhar Warraich of Aston was the overall winner at the May 20 British Youth Go Championships in Oxfordshire, England. Warraich topped a field of 24 competitors aged 7-18, with strengths from 2 dan to 30 kyu. Thanks to Pelican Books and author Chris Bradford, the main prize winners received copies of “The Ring of Water” and as the result of a collection, together with the proceeds from the event, £150 was sent to the Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal. Click here for full results.
– Jon Diamond

David Ward 3d won his local tournament, the Cambridge Trigantius, without having to share the title as he did in 2000. Thirty six players took part in the March 12 event at St Columba’s Church in the center of Cambridge, England. Other players winning all three games were Michael Charles 1k (St Albans), Brook Roberts 4k (Cambridge) and Jan Poslusny 6k (Prague). The 13×13 was won by Juan Leonardo Martínez-Hurtado 15k (Cambridge) and the animal puzzles were solved by Patrick Batty (South London). Nine novices, including four complete beginners, attended the parallel novices’ event. No prize was awarded, because the tournament turned into another teaching session instead, but special commendations must go to Jack Chen, Sam Austin and Mark Slatter for their progress during the day.
– Jon Diamond

Nurman Aylanc 1k (r) swept the Friendship Go Tournament in Nicosia, Cyprus with perfect score. Dimitris Regginos 1d was second, and Argyris Fellas 2k third in the event, held March 19-20 at the Parnassos Strovolou Club House with a field of 9. Before the start of the first round on Saturday, one minute of silence was observed, in memory of the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
– report/photo by Nicholas Roussos

The 2011 Irish Go Congress proved to be one of the biggest on record, with a total of 62 players in attendance. As with all Pandanet Tour events, it was truly a multinational event, clocking up a total of 11 different countries in play. At the top was one of Europe’s rising stars, Antti Törmänen 6d, who tied for first place with local hero Wei Wang 6d on 4 wins from 5. In joint third were Ondrej Silt 6d (l) and Pavol Lisy 5d on 3 wins. Full results. The Rapid tournament on Friday night was won by Irish President Ian Davis (at left rear, recording), in a noble effort to save the local economy. Click here for photos.
photo: Ondrej Silt 6d (l) play’s Finland’s Juri Kuronen 5d as Ian Davis records the game. photo by Tiberiu Gociu

The just-concluded 2011 Russian Pair Go Championships featured the strongest field ever, reports Alexandr Dinerchtein 3P, who also participated. “For the first time in history Svetlana Shikshina 3P (front left), took part, paired with her brother Ilya Shikshin 7D (back left) and it was quite obvious from the start that it would be too hard for other pairs to fight with the Shikshins team” and the siblings indeed swept the tournament 5-0. Dmitriy Surin 6d and Natalya Kovaleva 5d, the strongest Russian and European pair for many years straight, shared second place with Artem Dugin 5d and Aigul Nureeva 3d, from Kazan, both pairs scoring 4-1. “I like Pair Go very much,” Dinerchtein (back right) tells the E-Journal. He started playing at the Pair Go tournament in the European Go Congress in “1999 or 2000. At that time my partner was Julia Solomatina 1d from Moscow. We did quite well and even beat Saijo Masataka sensei and his 1k partner in even game.” He and Elvina Kalsberg 4d took second place in last year’s European Pair Go Championship and in this year’s Russian Pair Go Championships he partnered with Daria Koshkina (front right), a 3k from Yaroslavl who’s one of his students in Korean style Insei League on

KGS. “In the third round we played against the Shikshin-Shikshina team (see game record). To everyone’s surprise we were leading at some point in the middlegame, proving that Pair Go is enormously different from the normal game. I noticed that even the two siblings had very different plans and it was quite hard for them to understand and follow each other. Check Black moves 51-53, for example when Ilya invaded and Svetlana played on the other side of the board.” Dinerchtein says playing in the Pair Go tournament “was very exciting and I will surely take part in Pair Go tournaments again. Try it too, if you haven’t played Pair Go before. It’s fun!”

OXFORD TOURNAMENT: On February 12, after a two year gap, the Oxford Tournament returned, on the same day as the Cheshire, and attracted 51 players. Andrew Simons beat three London players to win the event. Others winning three games were Sue Paterson 4k, Brook Roberts 6k, Peter Harold-Barry 6k, Richard Wheeldon 9k, Julia Woewodskaya 9k, and Kieran Smith 24k.
CHESHIRE TOURNAMENT: Also on February 12, the Cheshire tournament was rather small this year, thanks to a clash with the Manchester football derby and other factors, but much enjoyed by those who attended. In the top group Alex Rix (3D London) was the winner, beating Tony Atkins (2D Reading) in the final. In the Handicap Section, the winner, with a 4-1 record, was Matt Marsh (7k Sheffield). Going 3-2 were Brian and Kathleen Timmins (9k/14k Shrewsbury) and Reg Sayer (13k Stafford). 14 players took part.
EDINBURGH CHRISTMAS TOURNAMENT: The postponed Edinburgh Christmas Open, which was held February 5, saw a slightly reduced turnout at 33 players.  Having earlier been presented with the 2010 Scottish Championship trophy, David Lee (2D Dundee) also triumphed on the day. Runners up with 3-1 records were Andrew Kay (4D Durham) and Matthew Scott (2D Newcastle). Also receiving prizes for 3 wins were Jenny Radcliffe (4k Durham), Eevi Korhonen (7k Tampere), Rob Payne (9k Edinburgh), Andrew Bate (10k Durham), and William Grayson (12k Edinburgh), who was 3/3 as a ghost.  The Scottish championship 2011 semi-finals were decided to be David Lee v Martha McGill and Piotr Wisthal v Glynn Forsythe.
MAIDENHEAD: On January 22,  Andrew Simons 3D from Cambridge won the tie-break that separated the top players at the 56-player Maidenhead-Hitachi Tournament. Second was Tom Brand 3D from Reading and third was Nick Krempel 3D from London. Winning all three games were David Ward 2D, Baron Allday 1k, David Hall 8k, Pat Ridley 11k, and Jan Poslusny 9k from Prague. The DAGG team from Cambridge won the team prize, but nobody won the 13×13 prize.
BRITISH CHAMPIONSHIP:  On Sunday January 16, Matthew Macfadyen beat Vanessa Wong in the fourth game of the 2010 British Championship match. This put Matthew 3-1 ahead in the 5-game match. Matthew is therefore the 2010 British Champion.
LONDON OPEN: The London Open was again sponsored by Pandanet and WintonCapital Management and was held at the International Student House in London December 28-31,but attendance was a little down this year, no doubt due to the extremely cold weather and snow-related travel difficulties that immediately preceded Christmas. Luckily this had disappeared by the time the London Open started and 99 players turned up to play in this, by now traditional 4 day event, finishing on New Year’s Eve. Wang Wei 6D, who had just moved from Cork to London (but is originally from China) was thought to be the favourite for the Open being the previous year’s runner up. Indeed after four rounds only Wang Wei and Antti Tormanen 6D from Oulu in Finland were unbeaten at the top – they played in round 5; Antti won after an epic battle. Annti then won his last two games to be unbeaten and take first place. Wei Wang also won the rest of his games to end with 6 wins and take second place. Guo Juan from Amsterdam was the resident professional, providing game commentaries and lectures throughout the time, but not playing in the Open. However, she played in the Pair Go Tournament and won, partnered by Ian Davis from Belfast. Guo has also kindly provided €100 sponsorship for this year’s London Open on her audio site. Certificates are given to 5 young deserving players, each worth 20 audio lectures. The Lightning was won by Jukka Jylanki (9k Finland), who beat Andrew Kay (4D UK) in the final. The prizes were presented by Emma Watkins from Winton, with thanks extended to all those involved, especially Geoff Kaniuk and Jenny Radcliffe as main organisers, ably supported by chief referee Nick Wedd, Tony Atkins and many others. In parallel with the London Open was the Man-Machine Challenge, sponsored by the British Go Association, which ended in a comprehensive 4-0 victory for the Man – John Tromp, 2D, who went away $1000 richer courtesy of Darren Cook, who was using Many Faces of Go on his laptop. John said that he wasn’t going to repeat his bet, as he expected to probably lose in a couple of years time if the computer was going to continue improving at the current rate. He felt that the result didn’t reflect the closeness of the games. The final Go event was a casual Rengo event after the tournament proper had been closed, and before the New Year party, which was won by Frenchmen Arnaud Knippel and Michael White; they attribute their success to brand new hats worn throughout! This was Geoff Kaniuk’s last year as London Open Tournament Director, after many years of extraordinarily dedicated service and hard work. Congratulations to him on his retirement.
– as reported in the February of the British Go Association newsletter; E-Journal article edited by Jake Edge