First Irish Joint Go and Chinese Chess Event

For the first time the Irish Go Congress, that features the Confucius Cup (Irish Open) and Irish Rapid Play, also featured a Chinese Chess Tournament. As well as the players, there were Chinese guests from the Go and Chinese Chess organisations including 7p Go professionals Hua Xueming and Huang Yizhong. The venue this time was the historic Gresham Hotel in the centre of Dublin.

The Friday night Irish Rapid was won by Oh Chi-Min (7d Durham) and the runner up was Kirsty Healey (2k Leamington).

The main Go event, the Confucius Cup, was keenly contested between the four 7d players at the top. The number of players was boosted to an excellent 58 on the last day, by a party of youngsters from Galway joining in. In addition there were 17 Chinese Chess players, including the winner Huang Chunlong.

In the end, the winner was unbeaten and was Korean player Kim Young-Sam. Second on four wins was Oh Chi-Min. Romania's Cristian Pop took third and Fan Hui from France was fourth. The UK's Matthew Macfadyen also won three games, to take the fifth place.

Others winning four games were Hui Zhang (1d China), Geoffrey Crespino (3k France), Marius Groza (4k Romania), Alex Delogu (6k Dublin), Alejandro Domingo (8k Spain), Marcus Phelan (10k Dublin) and Mikulas Kubita (12k Czechia).

Results    Irish Go Association report with photos