Foreign Tournament Report

We were drawn against Belgium in our first match of the new season of the Pandanet Go European Team Championship B League. We won the match 3-1.

Chris Bryant said: My game went pretty smoothly - played unorthodox fuseki to make my opponent uncomfortable and built up a massive centre. Made a couple of silly reading mistakes but kept enough to win by 1.5.

Des Cann wrote: Not happy with my game. Played a bit vague in the early middle game and soon found myself forced to defend where I was attacking. Never recovered.

Daniel Hu wrote: My opponent played some solid joseki. I didn’t bother to invade. Then a few more of that most basic 4-4 joseki. He entered my side, but I just made good shape and didn’t bother to attack, and he built up his side. I was behind before the endgame, which already started at move 89, but he let me get the largest move (115) and I repeatedly gained those 1-2 points as he got into byo-yomi early. I won by 4.5 and still had 5 minutes left.

The 60th European Go Congress ran from 23rd July to 6th August in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was held at the Hotel Azimut, a couple of kilometres south of the historic centre of the city. 456 players took part in round one, including seven Europeans with pro status and six players from Britain.

Winner of the Main Tournament was Kim Young-Sam 7d. It was a very narrow result as four players had 8 points by the end of round 10. Ilya Shikshin 1p was second place with merely 1 SOS point fewer than Kim. Third was Chan Yitien 7d with the same SOS as Ilya, but 2 fewer SODOS points. A very close and exciting finish!

Ilya Shikshin had earlier in the fortnight become the European Champion by beating Israel's Ali Jabarin 1p in the championship final. Ali was also fourth in the Open. Kim Young-Sam also won the Weekend Tournament and the Pair Go with Manja Marz.

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The top four teams of the A-League of the Pandanet Go European Team Championship came together to play the over-the-board finals at the European Go Congress in St Petersburg, Russia, on Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd July.

The first round saw a win for Russia against France (3-1) and Ukraine beating Romania (4-0). Round two saw a win for Russia over Romania (3-1) and a draw for France and Ukraine. The final round featured the crucial match between Russia and Ukraine. This ended in Ukraine's favour (3-1) to give them the title for the first time. It looked like Romania-France would be a draw, but the clock that had caused a loss on time was found on appeal to be faulty thus France won it (3-1).

So 1st Ukraine (5 points), 2nd Russia (4 points), 3rd France (3 points) and 4th Romania (0 points).

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Andrew Simons (4d) ended in 21st place of 56 for the UK at the 37th World Amateur Go Championship, held in Wuxi, China, from 5th - 8th June.

In the first round he lost to Csaba Mero (6d) of Hungary, then beat Supravat Pal (1k) of India. Jet-lag and a malfunctioning alarm clock meant he overslept and forfeited his third game against Santiago Espinosa-Uribe (4d) of Colombia, but he then beat Gabriel Hissao Makio (1d) of Brazil. Next he lost to Jürgen Suntinger (3d) of Austria before beating John Gibson (5k) of Ireland (who finished on 2 wins, beating India and the Chinese ghost), Leon Rios (1d) of Peru and Emil Garcia (5d) of Mexico.

Congratulations to the BGA team who managed a draw against a strong Polish team to keep fifth place, out of twelve, in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship B-League.

Bruno Poltronieri played board one and had to play the European pro Mateusz Surma.

Bruno writes: I lost. I felt the opening went fairly well. I generally managed to lead it towards the kind of game I am comfortable with. Unfortunately I let my nerves get the better of me and spent far too much time quite early on. I entered byoyomi around the time Surma started to attack a lone stone I had on the top side (which I probably should have defended earlier anyway). At that point I made several bad decisions and ended up dead fairly quickly.

Alex Kent on board two played Stanislaw Frejlak (4d).

Alex writes: Alas, I lost my game.

The British team moved up to a creditable fifth position in the B-League by scoring their fourth win of the season. The time it was against Switzerland.

In a late change Andrew Simons played John Walch (3d) on board 1. Andrew writes:

In my game against John Walch we both played slowly and carefully (I got into overtime before move 100 and him not long after), but he made a mistake right at the end which allowed me to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat. I avoided a book opening by ignoring his 4-4 approach to approach his 3-4, we had some reasonable josekis. When I pressed his 3-4 he attached and I didn't hane as he had the ladder. He backed out of playing a complicated variation in that corner and stymied my lower side ambitions so I approach the top right, which was maybe bad direction (instead defend left side) as the side was open.

Congratulations to the British Go Association team who beat Italy by three games to one in the online Pandanet Go European Teams. With just two matches to play, their new sixth position (just behind Italy on third board score tie-break) is enough to keep them in the B-League for next season.

Bruno Poltronieri wrote about his win by resignation against Alessandro Pace:

Not a great game from me, but I somehow managed to pull off a win by a couple of points (if we ignore the part where he accidentally let me live in his territory while we were fighting the last 1 point ko...). My main mistake of the game was not living under his shimari before it was too late, which left him with a pretty huge territory. I was quite certain I was behind at that point, so I reduced as deeply as I could.

AlphaGo completed the Google DeepMind Challenge Match with a fourth win to Lee Sedol's one.

In a very close fifth game, AlphaGo threatened to get a very large middle that Lee Sedol had to reduce in order to win. After playing a defensive move that also attacked, AlphaGo looked like getting enough, and, despite Lee Sedol's best efforts, AlphaGo was a couple of points ahead with the komi. With just the smallest yose left, Lee Sedol resigned.

At the closing ceremony, thanks were said and plaudits given to both sides. The million dollar prize will go to various charities.

Some more detailed commentary and pictures were available on the GoGameGuru website.

Detailed game records and notes about the match can be seen here.

AlphaGo created a big central area, which Lee Sedol cleverly found a way to take apart to make the game 4 of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match close. AlphaGo played some strange moves when it thought it was behind, seemingly to test Lee. However these lost the machine some points and, despite being in overtime, Lee played very accurately and eventually at about 08:45 GMT AlphaGo resigned. Human and South Korean pride have thus risen!

Some more detailed commentary and pictures were available on the GoGameGuru website.

Live streaming of the event will continue again for the final match in the 5-game series, on Tuesday at 4am GMT.

Detailed game records and updates about the match can be seen here.

AlphaGo played very strongly in a desperate ko fight by Lee Sedol to take AlphaGo's big territory and thus win the third game of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match.

This means AlphaGo won the match with two games left to play.

Charities will benefit from the $1,000,000 prize.

Some more detailed commentary and pictures were available on the GoGameGuru website.

Detailed game records and updates about the match can be seen here.