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The European Go Congress - An Overview of the first week
By Laura Avram | Articles | 31.07.2017 0:15| Views: 5350
The European Go Congress is for many European go players the year's highlight go event. A go congress typically consists of playing go for two weeks, watching go lessons, meeting new and old friends and visiting new places. Its location changes every year from Western to Eastern and from Northern to Southern Europe. This year's congress is taking place in Oberhof, Germany between the 21st of July and the 6th of August.
Group pic

Next year's congress is going to take place in Pisa. If you want to go and still haven't registered, keep in mind that the registration fee is discounted until the end of this year's congress.

Highlights of this year's go congress:

(1) Pandanet European Team Championship Final
The 7th Pandanet European Team Championship Finals took place at the beginning of the congress. As in the previous years, 4 teams qualified (out of a total of 36) to play in these finals. These teams represented the following countries: Russia (Ilya Shikshin, Alexander Dinerchtein, Grigory Fionin, Dmitrij Surin and Timur Sankin), Ukraine (Artem Kachanovskyj, Andrij Kravec, Dmytro Bogatskyy and Volodymyr Kokozei), Romania (Cristian Pop, Gheorghe Cornel Burzo, Dragos Bajenaru and Daniel Cioata) and Hungary (Pal Balogh, Csaba Mero, Dominik Bővíz and Peter Markó).
Alexander Dinerstein

Finals results:
1. Russia – 3 wins, 0 draws, 0 losses
2. Romania – 1 win, 1 draw, 1 loss
3. Hungary – 0 wins, 2 draws, 1 loss
4. Ukraine – 0 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses

Pandanet Team Championship Andrii Kravets vs Alexandre Dinerstein

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Pandanet Team Championship Cornel Burzo vs Csaba Mero

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Pandanet Team Championship Ilya Shikshin vs Artem Kachanovskiy

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The results and more information about the tournament can be found here.

(2) European Go Championship
Twenty four players competed in the European Go Championship. Among them were the EGF professionals: Pavol Lisy, Ali Jabarin, Ilya Shikshin, Artem Kachanovskyi, Mateusz Surma and Andrii Kravets. Famous names among the European go players like Cornel Burzo, Cristian Pop and Csaba Mero joined as well. Then, there was a big group of very young players: Oscar Vázquez, Dominik Boviz and Grigorij Fionin.
Mateusz Surma vs. Ali Jabarin

The list of the top 8 players was already quite exciting: Artem Kachanovskyi, Ali Jabarin, Ilya Shikshin, Mateusz Surma, Nikola Mitic, Cristian Pop, Dragos Bajenaru and Viktor Lin. Dragos Bajenaru was maybe the most surprising presence in the group, since during the last years he has been less active than the majority of the strong European players.

In the Quarter finals the results were the following:
- Artem Kachanovskyi beat Ali Jabarin
- Ilya Shikshin beat Cristian Pop
- Viktor Lin beat Nikola Mitic
- Mateusz Surma beat Drajos Bajenaru

European Championship Nicola Mitic vs Viktor Lin

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I spoke to Viktor right after his victory against Nikola and he mentioned that he found the pairings very lucky for him. In the first round he beat Lukáš Podpera, in the second round he beat Johannes Obenaus (who had just beaten Pavol Lisy, an opponent maybe slightly harder to defeat for Viktor), in the third round he beat Dusan Mitic and in the fourth round he beat Nikola Mitic (who had just beaten Andrii Kravets, the new EGF pro, and again, an opponent maybe slightly harder to defeat for Viktor). As he put it, he found himself lucky that his opponents got to defeat the European pros up to that round and he didn't need to play against them.

European Championship Mateusz Surma vs Viktor Lin

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However, the next round he got to face one of the EGF pros Mateusz Surma and he was defeated. The other game of the semifinals was played by Artem Kachanovskyi against Ilya Shikshin and the latter one won and after beating Mateusz Surma in the final, Ilya became the European champion for the 5th time.

European Championship Ilya Shikshin vs Artem Kachanovskyi

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European Championship Mateusz Surma vs Ilya Shikshin

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Prize giving of the European Championship 2017

Final results:
1. Ilya Shikshin
2. Mateusz Surma
3. Artem Kachanovskyj
4. Viktor Lin
Ilya Shikshin, European Champion 2017

For full results and the games click here.

(3) The Weekend Tournament
One somewhat go legend was present at the weekend tournament: Lee Kibong. He was defeated by Lisy Pavol and Youngsam Kim. However, I found his game against Youngsam Kim quite fascinating.

Final results:

1. Kim YoungSam
2. Lisy Pavol
3. Kravets Andrii
Left: Youngsam Kim

For full results and the games click here.

Weekend Tournament Youngsam Kim vs Lee Kibong

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(4) Open European Championship [tournament in progress]

Over 700 players from Europe and other continents are competing in the Open European Championship. Last year's champion, Youngsam Kim 7d from Korea, is also playing, but he faces a tough competition: players like Zhang Tao 5p and Li Xiaoxi 2p together with the strongest European players won't make it easy for him to defend his title. All rounds of the European Championship (apart from the final and the semifinals) are included in the Open European Championship and so the participants at the former one have a chance to win the last one as well.

For the results so far and more information click here.

(4) Rapid [tournament in progress]
The Rapid tournament is taking place during both weeks. A few professional players joined the tournament as well.The results so far can be found here.
One of the younger participants

(5) Rengo
For those who don't know, Rengo is a special type of go: a team is made out of 3 players who play alternatively on the same board. This particular rengo tournament had some special rules: full handicap was used, but there was more than that.
- If a team consisted of three players of three different nationalities, then they'd get an extra handicap,
- The team who had a larger rank difference between the players received an extra handicap,
- The team who had the largest age difference between the youngest and the oldest team member got an extra handicap.

I had the chance to join the Rengo championship with an awesome team: Youngsam Kim (7d) and Soren Ohlenbusch (4d). Being the weakest of the team always brings some extra pressure, but having a lovely team changes things fundamentally. Thirty minutes main time and 20 sec*3 times makes the players more alert and the games more entertaining.

Maybe our most interesting game was against a Russian team made out of 3 young boys, two of them were likely under 10 and one was around 14. Their ranks were 1d, 17k and 18k. We had to give them 17 handicap. How do you even place 17 handicap stones on the board?!? While staring at a board full of black stones, the feeling of hopelessness overwhelmed us. The expression of every person who came to watch the game in the very beginning was quite priceless: they saw the board and for a moment couldn't figure out what was happening. However, little by little we started to build our own territories and capture some of their stones and in the end we had a very clear lead.

After beating the three Russian boys, our team, together with 3 more teams, had 4 wins after the 4th round. So the 5th round was decisive. The two winning teams from the first two boards were called SAT and KLT. They had to play a 6th round to decide the winner of the tournament.

For full results click here.
(observation: don't forget to admire the creative names of the names also because you will never know who were the players of the teams)

(6) Lightning
The top 3 places were occupied by:
1. Kim Youngsam 7d
2. Hao Wu 2p
3. Kim Di Hyup 7d
Playing room

(7) Ladies Tournament
The ladies tournament had, unusually, only 3 rounds, which I found surprising.

Li Xiaoxi Cho, 2p, decided to join the tournament as well. She and Cho Eunjin 6d from South Korea were the two top players from the top group with 2 wins and they had to play one more game to decide the winner, while Ouyang Yizhuo 5d finished on the 3rd place. The other players who finished with 3/3 wins were: Kim Young Soon 2d from Korea, Vadova Dita 3k from the Czech Republic, Kullik Bettina 11k from Germany, Razumova Anna 14k from Ukraine, Pezzoli Laura 15k from the Netherlands, Khabibullina Diana 16k from Russia, Burzo Diana 18k from Romania and Medak Jasna 20k from Croatia.

The full results can be found here.
A different version of go

(8) Miscellaneous
A few more tournament and events took place: e.g., 9x9, Phantom Rengo, CrazyGo.

In the first week a movie about go called “The Surrounding Game” recently released could be watched. The directors of the film, Will Lockhart and Cole Pruit, were also present at the congress during the first week. Before that they were on a tour in North America and in Europe to promote their movie.

The Annual Go Meeting took place as well. If you are interested about their decisions regarding things like tournaments and such, you can check the Minutes of the meeting.

Other less go related events, like a Biathlon, a board games night, as well as a Russian night. One of the games that I played during the board games night was Dixit. Our game was partly go themed: “What do you feel like when you run away with your weak stones“, “A type of atari”, etc. Then Oberhof came into discussion. Among the cards chosen (which I moslty don't remember anymore), I chose the following card and surprise! everybody (wrongly) voted for it. The participants of the congress will easily under stand why.


Tomorrow the Open European Championship together with other important events will follow, so if you have time, connect to KGS and watch the live broadcast of the first boards of the tournament (names of accounts: dgob1, dgob2, dgob3, dgob4).
The effect a good go teacher has on people

All the pictures that appear in this article were taken by Mikhail Krylov.
The European Go Congress - An Overview of the first week
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Calendar

DateCoCityEvent
27.05.2023
28.05.2023
HU Budapest Hungarian Grand Prix
27.05.2023
29.05.2023
GB London 4th Not The London Open
17.06.2023
18.06.2023
PL Wiselka Porfirion Cup Tournanent 2023
17.06.2023
18.06.2023
NL Utrecht Toernooi van Utrecht
01.07.2023
02.07.2023
RO Bucharest Dream Primer Cup
06.07.2023
09.07.2023
LT Slabada, Moletai district Lithuanian Summer Go Camp
15.07.2023
16.07.2023
CZ Pardubice Pardubice - Radek Nechanicky MemorialC
22.07.2023
23.07.2023
TR Istanbul 3rd Bogazici Tournament
22.07.2023
05.08.2023
DE Leipzig 65th European Go Congress
23.07.2023
30.07.2023
DE Leipzig European ChampionshipA
06.08.2023
13.08.2023
ES Sepúlveda Spanish Go Camp
16.08.2023
18.08.2023
SE Leksand Pair Go Championship
16.08.2023
20.08.2023
SE Leksand Swedish Summer Camp
19.08.2023
20.08.2023
SE Leksand Leksand OpenC
19.08.2023
26.08.2023
HR Zaostrog 5th Summer SEYGO Festival
22.08.2023
28.08.2023
NL Groesbeek Dutch summer go camp
24.08.2023
25.08.2023
HR Zaostrog Zaostrog Open
09.09.2023
09.09.2023
GB Edinburgh, Scotland Edinburgh Open 2023
09.09.2023
10.09.2023
PL Wrocław V Wrocław Open 2023
15.09.2023
16.09.2023
RO Timisoara - Temeschwar European Student Go Championship
16.09.2023
17.09.2023
RO Timisoara - Temeschwar Walter Schmidt Memorial
23.09.2023
24.09.2023
IE Dublin Confucius Cup DublinC
29.09.2023
01.10.2023
RO Vatra dornei Japanese Ambassador's Go Cup
30.09.2023
01.10.2023
TR Istanbul 22nd International Istanbul Go Tournament
07.10.2023
08.10.2023
AT Vienna Vienna International
14.10.2023
15.10.2023
PL Warsaw 3rd "China Town" Weiqi Cup
19.10.2023
22.10.2023
CZ Prague Grand Slam 2023GS
21.10.2023
22.10.2023
RS Belgrade 45th Belgrade Open
28.10.2023
29.10.2023
DE Mannheim 25. Mannheim AjiC
03.11.2023
05.11.2023
SK Trenčianske Teplice Championships for seniors OPEN Slovakia 2023
18.11.2023
19.11.2023
RS Niš Niš Open 2023C
28.12.2023
31.12.2023
GB London 49th London Open Go Congress
28.12.2023
31.12.2023
GB London Grand Prix Final 2023
30.03.2024
01.04.2024
FR Paris 51st Paris International TournamentB
18.05.2024
20.05.2024
DE Hamburg KidoCup/Affensprung

See also the full EGF Calendar and the EGF World Calendar.

You can submit your event by filling this form

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