World Amateur Championship 1984

British Go Journal No. 62. July 1984. Page 4.

Matthew Macfadyen

This year's tournament, held in Tokyo in April, was run for the first time on the Swiss system. Western players may find this unremarkable, but it was quite a radical step for the Japanese, whose tournaments are run almost exclusively on some sort of knockout basis.

Since it was hard to explain to the press what was going on, the draw was in fact fixed to force the Japanese and Chinese players to meet in the last round, thereby providing a focus for publicity. This ploy turned out to be a bit of a waste of time, however, since the Chinese player, Wang Qun, had the tournament sewn up by the end of the sixth (and penultimate) round.

Down among the rabbits, the system was widely acclaimed for producing a much more equitable draw than in previous years. In my own case, for example, I was able to recover from losing my first game to Kan from Hong Kong to finish in a respectable (very respectable - Ed.) fifth place.

None of the representatives from the strong Eastern countries lost to the rest of the world. But European champion Janusz Kraszek killed a big group of Wang's stones, and they might well have stayed dead had he not been in byoyomi. Ronald Schlemper also had good chances against the Korean, Yoo.

Sooner or later the West will start to produce a real challenge.

In between games, those who finished early enough had their games analysed by the resident 9 Dans, Sakai Takeshi, Honda Kunihasa, and the ever-present Otake Hideo, whose genuine enthusiasm for amateur Go and the people who play it has added enormously to the value of the Amateur Go Championships since their inception.

Final positions in the tournament were as follows:
Wang (China) 7/7; Yoo (Korea) 6/7; Hirata (Japan), Schlemper (NL), Macfadyen (UK), Colmez (France) 5/7; Suc (Yugoslavia), Kan (Hong Kong), Kraszek (Poland), Hansen (DK), Budig (W. Ger.), Beck (Austria), Shin (USA), Kiskos (Hungary), An (Australia) 4/7; Lee (CAN), Olsson (Sweden), Danelc (Czechoslovakia), Tan (Singapore), de la Banda (Spain), Paatero (RN), Tan (Philippines), Bassarsky (Argentina) 3/7; Nicolet (Switzerland), Jones (NZ), Sasaki (Brazil), Burlini (Italy), Quintero (Mexico), Chairasmisak (Thailand) 2/7; Roll-Lund (Norway) 0/7.
Players with the same number of points were split on tie-breaks to obtain the above order.)

Two games from the tournament: Macfadyen v. Budig and Hirata v. Macfadyen.