The 60th European Go Congress kicked off last weekend in Russia. The games of the main tournament (which combines the Open European Championship with the strong Koreans/Chinese and the European Championship) are broadcast on KGS on account egc, egc2 ... egc6. I thought I'd post some interesting games here.

In the first open division there was a very cute tesuji involving a ladder from Chan Yi Tien 7d of Taiwan (winner of 2014 WAGC). What happens if white captures the marked move?

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

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Full game showing how Chan set up this tesuji by resisting a peep:


Stanislaw Frejlak 6d of Poland did his usual complicated fighting again Ali Jabarin 1p:

Cute is an understatement in my opinion. F4 was a really beautiful move. Something I'd never find if I was the one playing.

I'm a little confused they actually counted the first game, though. At this level you should be able to see such a difference in points beforehand.

Indeed. Marvellous.

In the open division Lee Kibong (who some may recall from KGS or the IBA) beat Kim Youngsam, which I didn't expect.



Also another nice game from Ali to beat Artem:



And Mateusz beat Ilya:

Pretty clever way of handling the center of the board in my opinion. It's the creativity that's required for these little intricacies that make invading large moyos such a daunting task for players.

Has a thread every been created and dedicated to such moyo invading/reducing creativity? If someone could link me to it, I'd appreciate it.

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In today's special match Zen, one of the top Go AIs behind AlphaGo, beat Cho Hyeyeon 9p with 2 stones handicap. Last month it beat Takemiya Yoko 6p on 2 stones, but a few days ago lost to Zhou Junxun 9p on 2 stones (but won on 3). So this is the first time it's beaten a mid-strength (on goratings.org) pro on 2h.

My pick of today's games: first a 1.5 point win for Mateusz Surma 1p over Lee Kibong 7d with a just big enough central territory.


Lots of fighting from Stanislaw Frejlak 6d wasn't enough to beat Pavol Lisy 1p:


Jonas Welticke 6d did his typical wacky centre-based opening but Lukas Podpera 7d prevailed:


Dusan Mitic 6d seemed to misjudge some aji left in the top side trading but still managed to make a decent game of it against Artem Kachanovskyi 1p

It was quarter finals of the European Championship today. Probably the most eagerly anticipated match was Ali Jabarin vs Pavol Lisy, in a repeat of their Samsung cup world group final. Ali seemed to be in control for most of the game, but a locally dead with bad aji 3-3 invasion of a 4-4 plus knight's move became a ko near the end. Pavol ignored Ali's threat to live, and Ali's threat lost a semeai, but from having to capture the dead stones Ali still managed to win by 2.5!


Mateusz Surma comfortably beat Grigorij Fionin in a game of big territories plus a nice tactical capture.


Ilya beat Artem with his trademark fighting:


Lukas Podpera beat Cristian Pop:


So the semi-finals are Mateusz vs Ilya (rematch of round 3) and Ali vs Lukas.

Are you at the congress, uber? Or comfortably watching and posting from your couch?

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Not there; at work, watching on KGS (only in my lunch break )

Although daal already posted that Ilya won, I thought I would post the semi-final and final games here for completeness:

First off Ali beat Lukas pretty convincingly in a game dominated by the fight spreading out from the top left joseki. Lukas allowed his corner to die in exchange for a moyo, but his cutting stones also suffered as he protected the moyo and Ali skillfully dismantled it.


Ilya got his revenge against Mateusz in the game that mattered. The opening seemed ok for Mateusz but rather than jumping out with his weak group he played b16 for corner profit and "take a friend running with you", but Ilya then wrapped around him and the game seemed good for Ilya from then on.


In the final Ali, who was in great form, was perhaps the favourite against 3-time champion Ilya, but Ilya made a trademark aggressive cut with move 52 f6, and Ali misplayed the fight (g6 cut should f8 turn) and secured his bottom group but sacrificing 3 stones for a big left side for Ilya was too much, who then calmly held his advantage to the end. This is Ilya's 4th European Championship win (adding to 2007, 2010 and 2011 titles), congratulations to him! Although I feel Ali might now be stronger than Ilya (when measured in performance against others), this showed Ilya's fighting power is still something to be reckoned with and it requires a great deal of concentration and consistency not to slip up against him. I suspect Ali will win in the next few years though...


Lukas Podpera 7d did well to beat Mateusz Surma 1p for 3rd place.

It used to be that the top European players always lost to the top Korean/Chinese visitors at the EGC, but this is no longer the case. Yesterday Ali narrowly beat Lee Kibong 7d(who spent ages counting and answered the left side ko threat instead of capturing the centre stones, was that a mistake?), and today Ilya beat Kim Youngsam 7d (who he'd lost to 2 times previously). Edit: and continuing the trend Pavol beat Wu Lurui 7d.

Thanks for the updates, Uberdude. It's great to see the progress the European players are making!

Pavol didn't manage to beat Kim Youngsam, but Ilya beat Chan Yi Tien (WAGC winner) by 2.5 in a dramatic game that sets him on a good course to win the open tournament as well as the closed European championship. Chan seemingly blundered when Ilya lived in sente on the top side and then proceeded to create a large central moyo. I thought Ilya had lost it when Chan managed to nicely combine several bits of bad aji in the moyo to not only reduce it but capture some surrounding stones, but Ilya eeked out a narrow win:


Mateusz beat Lee Hyuk 7d, a strong Korean player living in Russia who hasn't played in a few years but used to top the European rating list and won the European Open in 1997, 1998 and 2000.

Ilya homed in on the open championship title with another win against Ali, a repeat of the European championship final at the weekend:


Youngsam beat Mateusz:


Another nice game from Chan to beat Lee Kibong and keep snapping at Ilya's heels as the only 2 players on 8 wins out of 9.