The Galway Go Club is pleased to announce the fifth Galway Go Tournament, in the Bridge Club, St Mary’s Road, Galway on the 17th and 18th of May 2014. This is a 5 round Swiss tournament with 50 min main time and 20 sec per move overtime (3 times) and 6.5 komi. Tea, coffee and biscuits provided. Registration €18 (€12 for students/unwaged).

For further details and preliminary registration, please contact Kevin Doherty at kevindoherty1984@gmail.com 

See flyer: GalwayGoTournament2014

The first stage of the Irish Championship came to a close last night. Defending champion Noel Mitchell beat Roman Pszonka in the last game of the Top 8 league. It was not enough however, to grant him a place in the final. Roman and James Hutchinson will compete for the Irish title in a repeat of the 2012 match, whilst Noel takes 3rd spot. Tiberiu Gociu and Thomas Shanahan have a tiebreak match to play to see who takes 4th place.

Oh happy days! Tonight Ireland faced the might of Croatia in their league match on IGS. The team stuck to the strategy that they had agreed upon before the game, despite the fierce resistance from the opposing team. The result was a flawless victory – a 4-0 belting. Ireland are now top of the league, in 6th place.

The European Go Federation signed an agreement with a chinese organisation called CEGO to eventually create a professional system. The first qualification tournaments for this system will take place later this year in europe. In the meantime, members might be interested to watch the training games of some of the top european players on KGS. You can find details here.

The Irish team were full of the joys of spring, as they totally dominated the Spanish team in a 2-2 draw on IGS last night. In what was a marathon match, with all 4 games entering overtime, and with multiple disconnections to boot, the squad never looked troubled. Ireland once again are proudly holding onto 8th position in the league.

Photos taken by Tibi are viewable here.

The game records of the top board from all five rounds are viewable here.

Last night saw round 7 of the European Team Championships take place. This time we were drawn against Iceland, who put up some condsiderable resistance during the games. Nevertheless, we ended with a perfect 4-0 result. Next time we will be facing Spain, who are currently in 4th position, in a match that offers us some prospects of moving up towards the top of the league table.

The 2014 Irish Go Congress occurred over the weekend with 44 players attending in a surprisingly sunny Dublin. Celebrating 25 years of Go in Ireland, the main tournament, the 3rd Confucius Cup, was well represented with a strong field of players.

Fan Hui, 2p France, won with a perfect 5/5 score. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places all had three wins with the order decided with SOS, resulting in Csaba, 6d Hungary in second place, Antoine Fenech, 5d France, third, and Ondrej Silt, 6d Czech Republic, fourth. Kim Ouweleen, 4d The Netherlands, completed the top five results with 2 wins. As an interesting piece of trivia, Prof Liming Wang (Director of the UCD Confucius Institute) played in both this Confucius Cup and the first Irish Open in 1989.

Winning four games were Julia Bohle, 19k Austria, Josefa Kubitova, 8k Czech Republic, and Gabriel Aussibal, 1k, France.

The Rapid tournament was won by Karol Janyst, 2k Poland, with 5 wins, followed by Marek Gutkowski, 7k Poland, who edged out 4 other players also on 4 wins.

Full results of the 3rd Confucius Cup are available here.

Standings from round 4 of the 2014 Confucius Cup can be viewed here.

Standings from round 3 of the 2014 Confucius Cup can be viewed here.