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In an incredible night for Europe, Manja Marz 4d from Germany won the SENKO CUP World Go Women's Championship in Tokyo, Japan! Congratulations!!!!
Olesia Malko 4d and Nyoshi Cao 3d unfortunately lost in the first round, but let's see what happened, because that was extremly chaotic.
As a reminder, this was a direct knock-out tournament, played with time settings of 30 sec per move and 10 periods of 1 minute in a NHK style, a special time settings in which the first running period is always 30sec, followed by 1min.
Now that everything is crystal clear (obviously), let's check the games as if you didn't sleep last night and watched them live.
The round 1
Manja Marz 4d vs Qing Yong 4d
Olesia Malko 4d vs Amy Song 5d
Nyoshi Cao 3d vs Quynh Anh Ha 6d
Seowoo Wang 5d vs Pinyada Sornarra 4d
In the first round, Manja Marz 4d from Germany tried a complicated joseki in the very beginning and a crucial mistake from her opponent, Qing Yong 4d from Malaysia, gave her a strong lead.
It only increased up to the end, as Qing was trying hard to come back. Victory for Manja!
On the next board, Olesia Malko 4d from Ukraine was facing Amy Song 5d from Australia, who had previously won the SENKO CUP a few years back.
Amy took the lead in the early stage of the game, and suddenly a fight burst onto the board, with Amy falling into the big trap of Olesia...
Unexpectedly, Amy's stones started to be dying, and dying in bigger and bigger quantities, till the giant dragon was even dead in gote a couple of times.
In a last dash attempt, Amy tried to get some compensation on the top side, and somehow, Olesia... lost by timeout despite her massive lead.
A very sad ending, but for the least, Olesia showed how much she improved and how strong she can play. With no doubt, this will just be remembered as a funny story in the future, when Olesia will be back and winning the SENKO CUP another time :)
On the 3rd European board, Nyoshi Cao 3d from France was facing the countless-times-winner of the SENKO CUP among amateurs, Quynh Anh Ha 6d from Vietnam. Hope was very thin, as Quynh Anh has a reputation of being nearly invincible in this tournament.
But Nyoshi played very well and was head to head with Quynh Anh for a long time, until she had a big hallucination of "hey I know that go puzzle, it shall be tesuji here!" and it actually wasn't and she lost a full corner.
The disaster gave Quynh Anh a lead that would convince most of the watching French pom-pom-players to finally go to bed, but in a 'what the hell happened' turn of events, Nyoshi made a dream comeback by finding life in the corner of the cemetery, and took a decent lead of 0.5.
Unfortunately, yose can be improved even when you are 9p, so Nyoshi made a one point mistake and eventually lost by 0.5.
Well done for this game, because it was really a tough one!
On the last board, the American representative Seowoo Wang 5d had a close game with Pinyada Sornarra 4d from Thailand, until Pinyada managed to take a definitive and clear advantage.
The semifinals
Here we are, 5 AM in Europe and 1 PM in Japan. The semifinals start.
Manja Marz 4d - Amy Song 5d
Quynh Anh Ha 6d - Pinyada Sornarra 4d
In that new round, perhaps still under the emotions of the first game, Amy Song had a tough time against Manja. Pitiless in creative and complex fights, Manja wins powerfully.
In the other semifinal, perhaps Quynh Anh had also not fully recovered from her stressful game with Nyoshi, and story kind of repeated itself. Quynh Anh was leading most of the game, but Pinyada came back, little by little, and a final banal 1 point mistake in the tiny last yose moves cost the game to Quynh Anh, who lost by 0.5. Oups, the favourite is out!
Pinyada played very sharp.
The Final
So, the final is now decided! Manja Marz 4d will play with Pinyada Sornarra 4d.
The game is again a very chaotic one, with Pinyada starting strongly and being far ahead. But Manja doesn't let go of any chance to come back. Pinyada plays some slack moves on the top right, her lead shrinks. Then, she decides to set-up a living group on the left side, Manja updates the group status to "dead group" and in a geyser of bloody splashes get rids of Pinyada, who resigns.
Manja is the new SENKO CUP Champion among amateurs!!! Congratulations!!!! It means that next year she will be invited to play in the Pro SENKO CUP, with the world best women. Isn't that exciting?!!
Thanks to the players for the friendly spirit and updates and thanks to Alexander Kiel for the many great photos!
