On February 10-11th, three European players took part in the 24th World Students GO OZA Championship, played at the Nihon Ki-in (Japanese Go Association) in Tokyo.

Selected through the last European Student Go Championship (played in Durham, England), Adriana Podperova 2d from Czechia (4th at the ESGC), Ondrej Kralik 4d from Slovakia (ESGC winner) and Mihailo Jacimovic 3d from Serbia (3rd at the ESGC) went to Japan to fight for the world student title.

The tournament gathered 16 players:

From Asia (10):
China, Korea, Chinese Taipei and Japan each had one man and one woman representatives,
Singapore and Thailand one player,

From Europe (3):
Adriana, from Czechia, Ondrej from Slovakia and Mihailo from Serbia

From America (2):
Mexico, one player
USA, one player

From Oceania (1):
One player from Australia

The tournament counted 4 rounds played with 1h and 3*30sec of byo yomi.
Eventually, the Chinese player, Tang Zhenghe, big favourite, won the championship, followed by the Australian player, also a favourite, Jihan Wang, who in fact had to play the event online due to some problems to reach Japan.

Before the tournament even started, participants had a chance to get introduced to each other at a warm welcome party.

One thing to note in this event is that the rank of the players is not really displayed, so it is always a wonder how strong is your opponent. Adriana shares a funny story about this...

"I was defeated by one of the Japanese players in the first game, but his rank was not given. After the game, I did not feel that he was any super strong, so I told Ondrej, who played him in the next round, that he would definitely beat him, as he didn't play anything special. In the next minute we learned that he was 7-dan..."

Among the European players, unfortunately, the results were very so-so, which by itself is not much of a surprise considering the very strong level of most of the opponents (especially China, Chinese Taipei and Japan).

A game from Mihailo against one of the Japanese players.

One game from Ondrej against the Chinese Taipei player.


Sadly, in the last round, Adriana and Ondrej were paired together, which didn't help to improve the global European score...!

Eventually, Ondrej is ranked 10th with 2 victories, Mihailo is 13th and Adriana 14th.

It was a very nice experience nevertheless and we can only hope that this will be an additional motivation for the players to get stronger!

As for Adriana, she shares with us one last thought.

It was probably the last student championship for me, so I hope that someone else will take over the relay, because these world events have an incredible atmosphere and it is not so difficult to qualify!

Indeed, to qualify, you have to play and rank well in the European Student Go Championship, where usually there are not so many players (especially girls!).
The next European Student Championship is not announced yet, but it should be in the autumn season.

Well done to the players and the organisers for such a great event! And huge thanks to Adriana for the photos and updates!
For more information and kifu (in ugf format) - https://igooza.nikkei.co.jp/students/24th/index-we.htm