Welcome to our website. The Irish Go Association is the official organisation for promotion of the ancient oriental game of Go in Ireland. We are members of the European Go Federation and the International Go Federation, and organise numerous club and tournament events throughout the year. The IGA promotes awareness of the game including teaching sessions and providing public infomation. Please read further here for details of member benefits and our activities.
Weekly Meetings (last update 26 January 2020)
Cork — Alternate Tuesdays 20:30, in St Fin Barre’s Cathedral Hall, alternate Sundays 20:30 in Mr. Bradley’s (check in advance to confirm)
Galway — Tuesday 20:00, in the Black Gate
Dublin — Wednesday, 19:00 in Toners
Online — Thursday, 20:00-22:00 on Discord
James beat Alex this morning to win the back-door bracket in the Top 8, advancing to face Matei in the Championship.
In a game marked by complex middle game fighting, James’s thicker position brought him into the endgame with a significant lead on territory that Alex could not overcome in yose. James won by 11.5 points.
This means that the 2020 Championship will see a rerun of the 2019 match-up, in which Matei shrugged off a first game loss to win the series 2–1. The date for the first game in the 2020 Championship will be announced shortly.
This year the Top8 was a very successful tournament. Attracting more than 16 candidates, it had to go through an unusual process of qualification games.
The quality of the tournament was achieved thanks to some great organisation, or should I say a great organizer; the one and only Eoghan Barry.
The pool phase for qualifications was made of two rounds and finally 8 finalists were able to meet on the 25th and 26th of January for a crazy week-end of intense fights.
The level was quite high with many dan players and, as can be seen by Eoghan’s post, there was quite a number of upsets with the dan players being mostly eliminated from the final. The level of the games was really high and the fights very fierce!
Luckily everybody could relax after the first day of crazy games by…. playing go again! That’s the go player’s way you know. A 6 people rengo started in Toner’s, where many group were killed in a very dirty way.
Finally the tree of the double elimination tournament got nearly filled up
Leaving Matei already qualified and Alex and James left to fight for the play-off.
Congrats to them, congrats to our organizer and slainte!
The 2020 AGM will be held after the Irish Open prizegiving ceremony on Sunday 1st March in the playing hall.
IGA members are invited to submit motions for discussion. Please send to Carol at secretary@irish-go.org
The Top 8 tournament took place this weekend at the Ballsbridge Hotel in Dublin.
Philippe Renaut, Kevin Farrell, Alex Delogu and Chris Rafferty advanced from the qualifying rounds to join the four top finishers from last year, Matei Garcia, James Hutchinson, Roman Pszonka and Michael Thai.
For the first time, the tournament followed a double elimination format rather than the traditional round robin. This was generally agreed to be a success and we will follow the same format in future years.
Defending champion Matei was undefeated this weekend, winning against Chris, Philippe and Alex to clinch his place in the 2020 championship. Following a first round defeat to Alex, James managed three wins in succession to close out the losers’ bracket, defeating Kevin, Philippe and Michael along the way.
James must now play Alex for the other place in the championship. The match is tentatively scheduled for February 15th, at 2pm on KGS.
The finishing positions so far determined are:
4th Michael Thai
5th Philippe Renaut
6th Roman Pszonka
7th Kevin Farrell
8th Chris Rafferty
Matei Garcia emerged triumphant in the final game of the Championship series against James Hutchinson, taking his first Irish title.
Playing as white, Matei established the larger moyo in the opening and used James’s invasion to solidify his gains. When Matei countered with his own invasion, James needed to kill to balance the game but was unable to prevent the invading stones from gaining life, and eventually resigned the game.
Matei will defend his newly-won title in the Top 8 at the end of January.
Ireland remain top of Division C in the Pandanet Go European Team Championships, after drawing last night’s match against second-placed Slovakia. Philippe was the sacrificial lamb, losing on board 1 against Pavol Lisy 2p, but on the lower boards James and Kevin secured solid wins to force a draw.
The next match will take place in the new year, on January 28th, against Slovenia,
Matei Garcia won the second game in the 2019 National Championship series, beating James Hutchinson by 6.5pts and forcing a third game to settle the title. The final game is provisionally scheduled for December 14th.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are more than pleased to announce that the Irish go Congress will be back once again in 2020, hopefully even bigger and better than last time!.
To commemorate that 2020 is a leap year, what better date to have the Congress on than the 29th of February?, so save the date for such a momentous occasion!!
Please visit the 2020 Irish Go Congress page for more information or click here to get to the registration form!
James won the first game against Matei in the 2019 Championship series on KGS yesterday.
The second match is provisionally scheduled for 3pm, Saturday November 16th in the Ireland room on KGS.
The dust has barely settled on Philippe’s victory in the 2019 championship, but I’m going to open entries for the 2020 Correspondence Championship anyway.
In a possibly foolhardy attempt at innovation, I’m going to hold the 2020 tournament on OGS, partly because it’s easy to set tournaments up there, partly because it has a handy system of conditional moves that speeds correspondence games up a little.
As usual, the format will be a round-robin. In the event that I get a lot of entries (10+) I will break them up into divisions by EGF rating. Time limits will be Fischer time of 14 days + 1 day per move.
The championship is open to anyone who is Irish, has ever lived in Ireland, is married or otherwise related to someone Irish, or has any connection to Irish go, however tenuous.
No cheating, obv. Anyone caught using an AI will be ejected from the tournament and roundly mocked.
To enter the tournament, email Eoghan Barry by December 15th with your OGS username. I’ll set up the tournament over the holidays and games will start on January 1st.