This year's final was played over the course of 4 days from the 30th of September until the 4th of October 2017. Taking part alongside the defending German Champion, Lukas Krämer 6d (Bonn) and Vice-Champion Zhang Yi 5d (Leipzig) 6 other players qualified from the preliminary tournament:

Jonas Welticke 6d (Bonn), Johannes Obenaus 6d (Berlin), Stefan Kaitschick 5d (Hamburg), Robert Jasiek 5d (Berlin) Christopher Kacwin 4d (Bonn) and Bernd Radmacher 4d (Meerbusch).



Robert Jasiek started like a man on fire and surprised all by winning his first two games against Zhang Yi and Jonas Welticke, after that it seemed as if he had lost all his energy and ended the tournament with five losses in a row.
After four rounds only Lukas Krämer and Johannes Obenaus were undefeated and were at this point the two persons that were tipped as the favorites to become German Champion.
Than came round five and Lukas Krämer lost against Jonas Welticke - in an extremly close game by time default - and Johannes Obenaus lost against Zhang Yi. With these results Jonas Welticke had put himself back into contention amongst the top group of favorites for the Title.
In the last round Jonas played against Johannes and a win would automatically make him champion as he had won his game against Lukas in round five, and also because Johannes had already lost twice.
In the end he beat Johannes in an exciting game and so he was able to crown himself German Champion for the first time in his career. He even ended the tournament as the only player with six points as Lukas Krämer managed to lose his last game against Zhang Yi and so the defending Champion became the new Vice-Champion as he was the only player with five points.

pl.	name	club	strength	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	points
1	Welticke, Jonas	Bonn	6 Dan	6+	7-	5+	8+	2+	3+	4+	6
2	Krämer, Lukas	Bonn	6 Dan	5+	8+	6+	7+	1-	4+	3-	5
3	Zhang, Yi	Leipzig	5 Dan	7-	5+	8+	6-	4+	1-	2+	4
4	Obenaus, Johannes	Berlin	6 Dan	8+	6+	7+	5+	3-	2-	1-	4
5	Kaitschick, Stefan	Hamburg	5 Dan	2-	3-	1-	4-	6+	8+	7+	3
6	Kacwin, Christoph	Bonn	4 Dan	1-	4-	2-	3+	5-	7+	8+	3
7	Jasiek, Robert	Berlin	5 Dan	3+	1+	4-	2-	8-	6-	5-	2
8	Radmacher, Bernd	Meerbusch	4 Dan	4-	2-	3-	1-	7+	5-	6-	1

Online commentaries life at KGS:

Here is the moment to thank Guo Juan 5p who was asked to review and comment on games via KGS.
Many German go-players participated in the commentaries she made online.

The Interview with Jonas..

After a short chat with Jonas in which I congratulated him on his first German go title, I asked him if he would let me interview him. You will be suprised to learn that he agreed :)

I send him a list with questions to prepare the interview and as a reply I got back a short story in which the questions were answered. My questions for Jonas Welticke:

• When were you born?
• When did you learn go?
• Who was your first teacher?
• And who is you teacher at this moment?
• When did you become shodan (2d, 3d, 4d, 5d and 6d)?
• What goals do you have in go?
• What do you study/work?
• Did you also win other tournaments?
• How do you study go (game analysis, books)?
• How did you prepare for the German Championship?
• Who is/are your favorite goplayer(s)?
• How and in what way did go change your life?
• Do you have other hobbies besides go?

The story..

I was born on the 27th of December 1995 in a very smal village in the east of Germany.

I learned go in November 2009 through the Anime series of Hikaru no go and I had an unused go board at home in some box which - by chance - my father had given me as a present for Christmas the year before. :)
My first teacher must have been Thomas Bruksch at the Sankt Augustin play evening, who taught me the foundations of go (Thank you very much Thomas). At the moment I do not have a teacher, accept maybe for the professionals whose game records (kifu) I can find on the internet to replay and study.

In 2010 I became shodan after playing for one year, then I had an extremely bleak spell where I dropped in rating a lot, but after a while I got stronger again very quickly and at the EGC in Bordeaux 2011 and in the months after the EGC I had a performance rating of 3 dan and at the end of 2011 after about 2.5 years of playing I became 4 dan. I got stronger steadily and after a little more than 3 years of playing my rating was a little over 5 dan, after which I had a bad period once more and dropped back to 3 dan level in rating. It was not until 2014 that I was able to play as a solid 5 dan.
In 2016 I reached 6 dan level, mainly thanks to the CEGO-Programm for which I had applied and so was able to study go for 6 month in China. Especially because of my time in China and AlphaGo's inspiration I managed to move higher up in the rankings to become 6 dan and I was able to reach the semi-finals of the pro-qualifications in Europe.

My main goal for go is to have a lot of fun playing and to always try to learn. Also I would like to become professional in 2019, but that would be the cherry on top, enjoying the game is my main priority.
I won a lot of smaller tournaments in Germany, but the biggest successes must have been the Kranich Tournament in 2012 and the Youth Championship.
Personally I count my result in this years EGC, the EGF pro-qualification and the Guangzhou Team Tournament 2015 as my biggest successes.

Most of the time that I study go, i review games of professionals, I love it to absorb myself in these games and to learn from them.
I prepared myself for the German Championship by analyzing games from previous Championships and by reviewing the 120 AlphaGo games, because AlphaGo offers a lot ideas that I like a lot and which I love to implement in my own games.
AlphGo is so to say my favorite goplayer. Otherwise I love the go-style of Ke Jie as well as the person he seems to be, a great personality who is very open minded, who reflects and is nice, just as Lee Sedol, Iyama Yuta and Shi Yue.
As a whole I prefer an aggressive and creative play-style.
Go immediately took a lot of my time and space, and I enjoyed filling them up with this extensive game.
I believe one can learn a lot of patience and reflection through this game if you are prepared to – a bad move does not become good just because you are convinced by it – we can be learn to let our ego stay in the background.
If this has happened with me is for others to decide, I certainly try convincing myself that it helped a little :)
In my free time (time I can fill all by myself so that it satisfies me), I study Philosophy and deal a lot with journalism and politics. I would love to change the world, as I am dissatisfied with the living situation of many many people and I do not wish to accept this.
My other hobbies are analyzing news, organizing political events and taking part in such events, furthermore I love discussions with people from all different kind of political alignments.
Also I love spend a lot of time to think about things to improve and shape the future and am starting to build structures that organize a better political together.
I meditate daily which makes me calmer and more focussed in my opinion – sometimes I even do it during my games to calm down. Furthermore I like to run, play basketball and write poems.
As in go I like to deal with past “failures” and trying to find out who I want to be and how I would like to act in harmony with my moral compass. This of course is a long way and I still treat people very unfairly sometimes and therefore it is good I am surrounded by many nice people that help me.

I hope for all people that we manage to be more respectful with one another and always accept each individual as a person with their own history, strengths and problems and as such try to touch him/her in a positive way, that would really make me happy!"

And here the games, that the new champion played: