Fourty four players from six countries (Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and Serbia) participated in the Moyo Open Tournament, which was held in Pardubice, the Czech Republic, during 13th - 15th of July 2018, as a part of Chess and Games Festival. Not only was the tournament included in the Bonus Point Tour, but it was also a last chance to improve your rating before the European Championship (EC) in Pisa, thus gaining a better position in the initial chart of the EC pairing.

By far the strongest player in the tournament was Pavol Lisy, 2p from Slovakia who fulfilled his quest and won the tournament without losing any game. Thanks to that, he improved his rating by almost 8 points and overtook Artem Kachanovskyi to reach the 2nd position of the list of players for the European Championship by 0.145 points.Besides playing the tournament, Pavol ran also a teaching program for participants. There was a very interesting lesson on Friday evening whose topic was 'New joseki concepts invented by AI'. On Saturday evening, we could meet him during a traditional social evening at the swimming pool, out in the open air sitting with a group of players and commenting go games.

The strongest players in the tournament, besides Pavol, were three players with a rank of 7 dan. Namely, the brothers Nikola and Dusan Mitic from Serbia who belong to the strongest European amateur players, and Lukas Podpera who won the Czech Championship just a week before this tournament. Nevertheless, all of them were surprisingly overcame by another Czech go player, Ondrej Kruml, 5 dan. He lost to Pavol in the first round, but then he won four games in a row defeating Nikola in the third round and Lukas in the fourth round. Although he lost in the last round to Dusan, it was enough for him to finish in 2nd place in the overall rankings. Ondrej will also participate in the EC in Pisa and we will see if he keeps his 'good shape' there and can continue his outstanding performance. Although Ondrej's rating was not improved enough to gain him a better position on the list of players for Pisa, his second place secured him a place in the Grand Prix Final Tournament which will he held next year in January. Third place went to Nikola and fourth place to Dusan. All these players won four games out of six. A group of players with three wins was headed by Lukas in fifth place. Full tournament results can be found here.

We could see many interesting games during the tournament, nevertheless, one of them really deserves to be mentioned. As written above, Ondrej defeated Lukas in the fourth round. One curiousity was, that it was a win by the narrowest margin of 0,5 point and, just one week before at the Czech Championship, Ondrej lost to Lukas also by 0,5 point. So it was a nice revenge. The other remarkable thing happened during a final stage of the game. The time limit for a game was 60 minutes basic time and 3x30 sec. byoyomi. The game was finished in a fierce byoyomi festival when both players were left with a last period of byoyomi. At some point, when the game was almost finished, Ondrej pressed the clock wrongly and his time exceeded. Nevertheless, Lukas insisted on giving Ondrej an additional extra 30 seconds and finishing the game normally. And then he lost by 0,5 points. Even though Lukas finished fifth in the tournament at the end, he deserves the highest credit for his fair play.

The first two boards in the tournament were broadcast on KGS with nicks MoyoCZ1 and MoyoCZ2.
At the end, many thanks must go to the Chess and Games Festival organisers for their support and for giving us room for this tournament.
At last but not least, we would like to pay tribute to the Moyo holding company (https://www.moyo.cz/en/about-us) without whose sponsorship this tournament would have been impossible.

Written by Jana Hricova