The 5th European Go Grand Slam Tournament, also called the Yike Cup, was held from the 25th - 28th April in Berlin, Germany. You can find all the details on the tournament webpage. 

For those who are not familiar with the Grand Slam, let me explain in a few words what it is. The Grand Slam is the most prestigious tournament in Europe with a prize for the winner of € 10,000. 12 selected players qualify to participate. All of the EGF professionals are automatically qualified. For the rest of the players there are several ways to join, including a qualification tournament.The  Grand Slam is the vital part of the European Grand Prix and the European Professional system.

The tournament is constructed as follows. The four EGF pros with the highest bonus points from the last year start playing directly in the quarter finalz. The other 8 players start a day earlier with the preliminary round. There 4 losers are eliminated from the tournament, while 4 winners face the 4 pros in the quarter final. Starting from the quarter final, it's the usual system to determine 8 places in 3 rounds. Victory in the quarter final means that in the next two games you fight for places 1-4, while defeat means that you can take only take a place from 5th to 8th.

This year the 4 pros to skip the preliminary round were:

• Ilya Shikshin 3p (Russia)
• Pavol Lisy 2p (Slovakia)
• Mateusz Surma 2p (Poland)
• me: Artem Kachanovskyi 2p (Ukraine)

The other 8 players were paired for the preliminary round through a lottery. The marked player in the pair is the winner:

• Oscar Vazquez 5d vs Lukas Podpera 7d
• Dusan Mitic 7d vs Alexandr Dinerchtein 3p
• Tanguy LeCalvé 6d vs Andrii Kravets 1p
• Nikola Mitic 7d vs Ali Jabarin 2p

As you can see, the preliminary round didn't bring us any surprises. In each match the player with the higher rating won their game.

For me the tournament started the next day. Right after I stepped into the chinese cultural center (tournament venue), I was shocked: a huge me looking at myself from the poster! My first impression was: "Horror", as I never saw myself so large before. But, I guess, for other players this can be inspiring.

The quarter final pairings were decided by the lottery:

• Ilya Shikshin 3p vs Lukas Podpera 7d
• Pavol Lisy 2p vs Andrii Kravets 1p
• Mateusz Surma 2p vs Alexander Dinarchtein 3p
• Artem Kachanovskyi 2p vs Ali Jabarin 2p

In my game against Ali I felt like I have a good position from the start. Later in the fight he overplayed and a big group of his died. After the game Ali told me that he felt like it was a good game for him. And really, I checked that game with the AI later, and it was good for Ali during almost all of the game. So I won luckily.

Andrii started very well in his game against Pavol. Even though later he let the position become complicated, Andrii managed to win.

Games of Mateusz and Ilya I didn't follow that much, both of them won.

The semi-finals were decided:

• Artem Kachanovskyi 2p vs Andrii Kravets 1p
• Ilya Shikshin 3p vs Mateusz Surma 2p

The rest of the players were going to play for the places 5-8.

It was a pity to play my country mate in the semi final. But at the same time one of us was going to enter the final, which was good news.

In the evening after the quarter finals we had a dinner open to all of the players, with chinese food. It is organized each Grand Slam on Friday evening. Of course all of the players appreciate it, as it feels great to eat well after a hard game.



In my game with Andrii I felt like I started the game well. All the game he was forced to invade and seek for life of his groups. In the end Andrii managed to survive with all of his groups, but he didn't have enough territory. It was a very exciting game, both of us were trying our best.
I didn't follow much the game of Ilya and Mateusz, but I am sure that one was exciting as well. It was Mateusz who won the game.

Let us take look in the past for a while. Here are the previous Grand Slam finals:

Year	Winner	Runner-up
2015	Ilya Shikshin	Mateusz Surma
2016	Ali Jabarin	Artem Kachanovskyi
2017	Artem Kachanovskyi	Alexander Dinerchtein
2018	Ilya Shikshin	Pavol Lisy

In the Grand Slam 2019 final game I played against Mateusz. From the start he made the game go the way that he seems to like: created two weak groups, invited me to attack. I felt like I attacked successfully. I had a nice moyo, and he invaded it, creating one more weak group. I attacked each of the weak groups one by one, but seems like I didn't find a good way to do that. After all of my attacks have failed, I had nothing to do but resign, as I simply had not enough territory.
In the game for the 3rd place Andrii played against Ilya. Andrii had a good position in the middlegame, but seems like he misread and died in his own territory. Ilya won.

Here are the final standings:

1. Mateusz Surma 2p (Poland)
2. Artem Kachanovskyi 2p (Ukraine)
3. Ilya Shikshin 3p (Russia)
4. Andrii Kravets 1p (Ukraine)
5. Ali Jabarin 2p (Israel)
6. Lukas Podpera 7d (Czechia)
7. Alexandr Dinerchtein 3p (Russia)
8. Pavol Lisy 2p (Slovakia)

That's it, this was the 5th Grand Slam. The next one we will have will be in spring 2020, unless our dreams will come true and we will start to have more than one Grand Slam per year.

All the game records that are not shown in this article can be found on the tournament webpage.

Find more photos in the photo album made by Misha Krylov.