As with every year, for me the start of the Kido Cup comes a few days earlier, when the guests from all over Europe start to visit Hotel Tony Claasen. This year a total of 12 guest for 4 nights were my present for the 10th Kido Cup. Amongst them Artem Kachanovskyi 1p, the eventual winner of the Kido Cup Top8 event. With so many guests I was prepared for a lot of activies, not enough sleep, and a lot of fun.

As with every year Friday evening is the start of the Kido Cup. A lot of players from Hamburg get together to prepare the playing site for the tournament, which this year also included the German Youth Championship.

Saturday morning, and again a lot of activities are needed to prepare the start of this year's tournament. There is a record breaking 261 participants starting in the 10th Kido Cup - 211 in the main tournament and TOP8, and then 50 more competing in the German Youth Championship.



Due to some heavy traffic jams, a lot of players, guests, and a part of the organising team were late, so both the opening and first round were delayed by one hour. The delay had no influence on the warm welcome provided for all the guests and most of all for Lee Chang-ho 9p (who was able to visit us due to the thankful support of FREITHEIT.COM) and Mr. Park. A lot of cheering and clapping was made to welcome them in Hamburg for the KIDO-Cup. And as in every year our special thanks should go out to Mrs. Yoon Young Sun 8p, who was always available when a translator was needed for Korean to English or German. She also commented many games and did analyzises for any who asked her. She is also the main reason the Kidocup is organized in Hamburg and one of the main members in our KidoCup Organisationteam.

A nice side effect was on Saturday evening when the party started without any delay. For players finishing early in the tournament, or those just visiting the tournament, the start, with free drinks for all, was very peaceful and not crowded at all this time. This changed as more and more came over after their game, and some even played football on the small court available in the school courtyard.



I was able to conduct a short interview with all the professionals during the KIDO-Cup, I asked the same four questions to each of them:

1. Which victory (tournament or game) do you remember (the one which left the greatest impression) the best?
2. Who is/was your toughest opponent?
3. Which of your games would you describe as your masterpiece?
4. Which (ancient) go player would you like to meet or play against?


Lee Chang-ho, born on July the 29th, 1975. He leard go from his grandfather at the age of six. At the age of 8 he became a pupil of the legendary Cho Hun-hyun 9p (one of the most succesfull players of all time). He started to win national tournaments in the late 1980s, his first international title came in 1992, and since 2009 he has won a record (only three more players have 2 or more international titels) of 17 international Go titles. The total number of tournaments he has won is approximately 115.

1. Matches against Rin Kaiho 9p
2. Yoda Norimoto 9p
3. -
4. Go Seigen 9p

Kim Young Sam 9p, born in 1974, became Professional in 1993 and was promoted to 9p in 2011.
He is the trainer of the Team of Korean Baduk League, which won the league in 2017.

1. In the first Nong-Shim international Team Tournament against Ruh Si-Huh
2. Lee Sedol 9p
3. The game against Ruh Si-Huh (see answer 1)
4. Woo Ching-Wien or Fujisawa Shuko.



Yoon Young Sun 8p, born in 1977, she became professional in 1992, winning the female Kuksu Title from 1994 to 1996 and again in 1998. She became Women's World Champion in 2002. Now she is teaching Go in Hamburg and is seen at many Tournaments analysing games and teaching go.

1. Korean Female Kuksu Cup against Rui Naiwei 9p
2. Myself
3. -
4. Go Seigen

Ha Ho Jung 4p, born in 1980, she became professional in 1992 and in 2014 she was promoted to 4p.
At this moment she works as an adjunct professor of foreign languages at an university in Korea.

1. SG pair tournament, with my husband against Choi Chul-han and Kim Yun-young.
2. Myself
3. The game played in the SG pair tournament (see answer 1)
4. Woo Ching-Wien

Kim Hyeo-Jung 3p, born in 1981, she became professional in 1996. she is the 31st president of the Korean Professional Players.

1. The final game in a chinese pair tournament with Cho Hun-Hyun.
2. Alpha Go
3. The game played in 1.
4. Cho Chi-Hoon, Takemiya Masaki and Woo Ching-Wien.Us

TOP8:

The first day of the TOP8 gave us a perfect score however you chose to look at the results.
4 players ended this day with 2 wins and 4 players started the tournament with 2 losses.

Sunday was exhausting for the players in the TOP8 group. Not only did they play three games, but in the evening they participated in a master class session with Lee Chang-ho 9p and Kim Young-sam 9p. For Artem Kachanovskyi 1p this day ended very well, as he was the only player with 5 wins.



Monday morning and Artem started to make the TOP8 close again by losing in the 6th round against Lukas Podpera 7d.
In the end Artem was able to win the TOP8 by beating Cristian Pop in the last round.
The second place was shared between Pavol, Ilya and Mateusz , as there was no way to separate them.

This year all four games were shown live on KGS and OGS, as well as on YouTube. For this we have to thank the group of scribes, but most of all Mieke Narjes and Sebastian Berg for preparing all the hardware and software, and their time in the back office to make sure that everyting functioned as planned.

The final results of the KIDO-Cup TOP8 can be found here.

After the tournament had finished, I was able to ask the winner, Artem Kachanovskyi 1p, if he could answer the same questions as our star guests from Korea:

1. There were many wins which made an intense impression, for example winning three games in a row in a Japanese tournament Sankei-Cup, including a 0.5 victory against a 9p.

2. Usually in Europe the most tough opponent is Ilya Shikshin 2p

3. To be honest I would not call any of my games a Masterpiece. But from my recent games, I like the way I played against Pavol Lisy 2p in the last round of the VADO-Cup in Vatra Dornei. I was able to take an early lead in the game and then I was able to keep the game simple until the end, which is usually very hard to do.

4. I reviewed many games of Shusaku and Go Seigen. Maybe Go Seigen is not that ancient. I still would like to meet both and play a game against them.

KIDO-Cup Main tournament:

In the main tournament 203 players from over 15 nationalities participated. One of them could have played in the German Youth Championship, but she decided that playing in the main tournament was better for her.
Also we can say that the TOP8 group is now so strong that some players who were able to start in this group last year, or the year before, are no longer strong enough to qualify for the TOP8.
In the same time, this means that the main tournament had not only gotten bigger in terms of numbers, but also it is a lot stronger at the top compared to last year.
In the end Kim Young-Sam 8d was able to prevail in all his games and win the 10th edition of the KIDO-Cups main tournament.
Rob van Zeijst, three times European champion and the current Dutch champion, only lost to Kim Young-Sam.
Best German player Benjamin Teuber - the master of finishing second in the German championship - finished third this time.
The best female player in this year's main event was Manja Marz 3d from Jena.


Results of the KIDO-Cup Main tournament can be found here.

Omikron Pair Go Tournament:

This year's PairGo Event, sponsored by Omikron, started with 32 pairs.
In the end Chafiq Banta 4d and Barbara Knauf 3d won in the final against Li Shizhao 7k and Lo Kang-I 19k.

KIDO-Cup lightning tournament:

This side event saw 48 players fighting for a prize in the end. Chafiq Bantla 4d won, second place was for Manja Marz 4d, and Michal Timko 2d won third place in this event.

German Youth Championship:

One of the prizes in the German Youth Tournament was for the group of players with the longest way to travel to this tournament, in combination with their won games. The group from Hamburg won this special Prize.
Furthermore on Sunday afternoon all the children could take part in an event called "Meet the Pro", where they had some lectures, played simultaneous games, and were able ask questions to all the professionals.


Results for the German Youth Championship can be found here.


All in all, I can say this year's event for me was busy but a lot of fun, meeting once more some friends (who were not only from Korea).
Once more I would personally like to thank Mr. Park from Kido Industrial CO. Ltd, of course for his sponsorship, but more than that, for being a go-friend and for him loving go parties just as much as I do. And we need to thank also Steffi Hebsacker and Tobias Berben for 10 years as main organizers of the KidoCup.

Also many thanks should go to Omikron for sponsoring the pairgo tournament for so many years now.
And last but not least our thanks should go to FREIHEIT.COM for making this year's event extra special as they invited Lee Chang-ho to visit us.

And special thanks should go to the team without whom the transmision on KGS, OGS, Twitch and YouTube would not have been possible:

The Scribes



And after three days we final were ready to go home... See you all and maybe a lot more next year.