I'd appreciate help with a couple of names of European amateurs in a game I have from the 2nd European Team Championships in 1988 in Ceske Budejovice.

Which Grossmann would be representing East Berlin?

Who, with a name something like Zhetkov, was representing Kazan?

Hello JohnB,

I posted your question on the DGoB site forum (http://www.dgob.de/yabbse/index.php?topic=4291.0)

Regards,
Tommie

_________________
Greetings,
Tommie

3dan EGF (AGA no 13477) || Tommie on KGS: 'June'|| DGS: 'Zhi Laohu' 纸老虎 = 'paper tiger' || Senseis : http://senseis.xmp.net/?tderz ||
ENFP (MBTI) - 'Find your own style within the Fundamentals of Go! '

According to http://kamyszyn.go.art.pl/wagc one Ivan Detkov (6d) represented the Soviet Union at the WAGC in 1986 and represented Russia in 1994. Also, one Igor Detkov (6d) represented the Soviet Union in 1990.

Ivan Detkov is also mentioned by Alexandre Dinerchtein as living in Kazan around that time: http://breakfast.go4go.net/?About_me

Ivan Detkov is also a regular at the Russian Championship, according to http://kamyszyn.go.art.pl/champions/ru
So perhaps Igor Detkov is a mistake in the WAGC results, and should be Ivan?

Thank you, sleuths. Detkov for Zhetkov does look plausible, but Japanese does have a De- sound. Also, he appears elsewhere as A. Zhetkov, so the Ivan/Igor bit doesn't seem to fit.

Edit: I just realised that I was thinking only of the Japanese transcribing the name from a written record. If they wrote it from only hearing it, Detkov (i.e. sounding like Dyetkov) would fit. Still unsure about the A though.

From your last comment it seems that you're looking at names transliterated in katakana... running "Ivan" through GTranslate I get イワン, which is good for the Russian pronunciation, but if you heard me say Ivan you might spell it アイワン, right?

It was given as "A." plus katakana. I too thought of the English version of Ivan but ruled it out on the grounds that the chap himself would have been unlikely to pronounce it that way, and I can't imagine there are too many Japanese who would know enough about this to attempt a change.

I can add that this chap also played in the 1985 Rossiya Championship against an A. Popov. I don't have the full version of A there either.

The full tables of the 1985 Russian Championship can be found at:
http://rusgolib.iponweb.net/ChR/1985.html (two preliminary groups of 8, then two final groups of 8 based on the preliminary results)

From my reading of the Cyrillic, it seems Detkov is the only name that is close to Zhetkov.

There are no fewer than three Popovs in the tournament, two of whom have a first name starting with A, an Aleksey and an Aleksandr. They played in different groups in the preliminary and the final, so any player in the tournament has played a game against at least one of them.

There used to be a page on history of Go in the DDR at tenuki.de, but the original is not currently available. Fortunately, but the wayback machine has it archived:
http://web.archive.org/web/200212030503 ... de/go-ddr/

This page lists one Matthias Großmann, 4 dan in 1990, 3 dan in 1982, multiple time winner of the DDR championship.

The "e" in Detkov is most likely pronounced "ye", hence the transliteration would be Dyetkov, which could easily be tranferred to Japanese as Zhetkov.