The Prague Go Tournament belongs among the most important weekend events in Europe, last year it was also the biggest one with 168 players. This year, it was held over3 days from 29 April – 1 May (just one week after Paris) in its traditional place, Hotel Duo, where we rent 2 large conference halls as we hoped for a similar number of participants to the previous year. Out of 174 pre-registered players 157 arrived from 22 countries, still quite nice. It was the first time that thePrague tournament was a 3 day event. With a relaxed schedule of only 2 rounds per day, many participants stayed in the Hotel Duo and had lot of time to eat, drink and chat with friends.


It was already the 51st term of Prague tournament and for the 15th time it was played as the Korean Ambassador´s Cup. This year the tournament subtitle changed to the „Old Hunter‘s Cup“ to promote the product of our main sponsor, the Palirna distillery, which celebrates 505 years of existence. Many thanks go to all the sponsors who contributed to the tournament budget and made it possible to offer prizes in total value of 10 000 €. Let me remark that all of our sponsors are go players or companies owned by go players, we are not able ( and don´t even try in recent years ) to get some support from the town or state.
One of the sponsors/go players Michal
  many enthusiastic kids played at this tournament

The tournament attracted a high number of top European players including three European professionals: former European Champion Pavol Lisý 2-pro from Slovakia, Ali Jabarin 2-pro from Israel, and Stanislaw Frejlak 1-pro from Poland. The tournament favorites also included Czech champion Lukáš Podpěra (7-dan), French and European champion Benjamin Drean-Guenaizia (7-dan), Kim Dohyup (KR, 7-dan), and Yang Yaoling (CH, 7-dan), all of whom are of professional strength. Additionally, we were delighted by the large number of children and youth players, some of whom are very strong.

                       Jan Prokop 6-dan

The first 2 rounds offered many interesting matches between top players and the 4 players with 2 wins after 2 rounds were Kim, Yang, Frejlak and Czech player Jan Prokop 6-dan, who surprised us by beating professionals Ali Jabarin and Pavol Lisy. Jan Prokop continued his great performance in the next rounds when he could win ( after a loss against Kim ) over Oh Lluis and Ben0. In the 6th round, Jan was matched against the only player without a loss, Yang Yaoling, and the game looked like another surprise win ( Antti Tormanen: clear lead ), however Yang won after an invasion and a difficult fight. Anyway, Jan was quite happy finishing on 3rd place after Yang and Kim.
All results: https://www.prague-go-tournament.cz

The organizers distributed many prizes not only to the top 10, but also to 50 more players ( 6, 5, 4 wins, best in their grade ), we gave away 60 books and some vouchers for Jena Go school to these winners.

The first two boards of all rounds were broadcast on the OGS and KGS, the third board used a self-recording electronic go board (thanks go to Hebsacker Verlag) and was transmitted to a Chinese server. A game featuring two European pro players Lisy and Frejlak attracted more than 21 thousand observers, currently a record number for any game played at European go tournaments. The games have been commented by pro players Tanguy le Calve, Andrii Kravets and Antti Tormanen (1-pro in Japan), see www.twitch.tv/europeangofederation/


Let me give thanks to the tea expert Tomas Bryl who served excellent tea to all participants during all 3 days free of charge, and to the team of organizers, let´s name at least Jaroslav Kotowski, Josef Moudrik and game recorder Michal Timko. The “eternal” referee Ales Cieply received a shinkaya goban donated by the Embassy of Korea for his already 25 years long work. the winner receiving a trophy  Referee Ales received a reward, chief organizer Vladimir on the left

Photos by Vit Brunner, see https://gallery.tasuki.org/2023/04-prague