Ireland Narrowly Lose Promotion Play-Off

As they finished second in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship C-League, to get promotion Ireland had to beat the B-League's ninth placed team, Sweden.

Board one was played early on Sunday 14th May and Karl Irwin lost to Sweden's Charlie Åkerblom by resignation. The other four boards played on the Tuesday, 16th May, and Philippe Renaut beat Martin Li, also by resignation, to make the match one all. Matei Garcia's game ended when Tiger Hillarp lost on time in a complicated game with huge territories and dead groups, but James Hutchison struggled against Robin Nilsson, eventually resigning. This meant it was all down to the last game between Ian Davis and Anton Silfver. This was a very close and long game, but unfortunately an error in the small yose saw Ian lose a point and the game by half a point.

Game Records

In each of the other two play-offs again the higher team dominated: Israel beat Italy and Greece beat Bulgaria. The top teams that were promoted were Spain from D to C (replacing Slovenia), Croatia C to B (replacing Lithuania), Serbia B to A (replacing Germany). The top four teams of the A-League were Russia, France, Czechia and Ukraine.