As always the Tournament started for me on Friday afternoon, when we started to transform the school into a playingsite for the Kido Cup. As always we got help from a large group of players from Hamburg, and some early arrivals from outside of Hamburg.

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Kido Industrial Co., Ltd. we were again able to have a tournament in the Korean style. A top group, a main tournament with special category prizes for women and youth players, and a fun tournament for players under 12 years of age, and again we managed to get over 200 (to be exact 207) players to visit us and play go.

This year I planned to have a quiet weekend at my own house, with just a few guests invited.
Artem Kachanovskyi, the winner from last year asked me if he could stay again in my appartment.
After I agreed a big surprise suddenly happened, and I ended up instead with 15 people at my appartment.
Artem had invited JIGS as well and so I ended up with 4 players from the TOP 8 group and more or less the entire class of JIGS students.
I did not regret a minute of it until after the tournament when all energy somehow left me, and I ended up sleeping for almost a complete day after the moment the last guest had left.
Next year, all can come again when my battery has been recharged.

Saturday after the opening ceremony, as in every year all players could get a hot and very delicious Korean meal, this was followed by a super party with free drinks for all participants...

Kido Cup Childrens Tournament:

On Sunday, a childrens tournament with 18 players was organized by Stefan Budig and me.
We also had some professional help from Yoon Young Sun 8p 

Kido Cup The TOP 8:

In the first round no upsets were recorded, in the second round the first upset was seen when Andrii Kravets lost against Rémi Campagnie.
Rémi managed a second upset in round 3, when he also beat the second Professional Artem Kachanovskyi and so placed himself in a good position to win this year's Kido Cup Top 8. I was there at the end of the game, and saw the disappointment in the eyes of of Artem.


In round 4 Arndrii Kravets lost again, this time agains Stanislaw Frejlak. At the end of day 2 Artem and Rémi were leading the group with 4 points each. And so only on the last day would it be decided who would win the tournament. For Rémi the odds were a little better as Artem was to play the 2 strongest opponents in the field.
Looking at the players during the games, I saw that all were giving everything to win their games. I saw a lot of intensity and even more hunger to win, with loads of concentration.

In the end Artem was able to defend his title by winning both his games, wheras Rémi lost both his games.

Results KidoCup TOP 8.

The main tournament:

In the main tournament, where I always played as Joker (ghost), this year I was supposed to do some other thing. And as always, life turns out differently than as expected. I played in round one and two of the main tournament, winning both my games. Sunday almost gave us a big surprise when Kim Young-Sam made a mistake reading out a shicho (ladder) and almost lost a game.


With 181 participants in the main tournament the Kido Cup is the biggest weekend Tournament in Europe after the EGC. What I liked best was that this year many (more than last year) female players attended the tournament.
This year's prize for the best female player was won by Barbara Knauf 3d and the best youth player in the tournament was Emre Cinar 1d.

The winner of the main tournament is Kim Young-Sam, winning all his games as expected.

The results of the KidoCup Maintournament.

The Omikron Rengo Tournament:

In this year's rengo tournament 44 teams participated and again a lot of young players entered the tournament. With a nice 20 minutes and sudden death, the tournament was for me a good way to play some nice games with my young partner Arwen Pittner 14 kyu who played surprisingly strongly for her level.

The results of the Omikron Rengotournament.


At the prizegiving most players were as in every year still present, then as always there was a lottery where some nice and big prizes could be won by all the participants who had preregistered...

Also we have to thank all the professionals, who were so kind to be available all weekend for Simultaneous games and analysis of games.

And after the prizegiving, some were working to wrap all the tournament material and change the playing site back into a school, and others were.....