The 2015 Irish Confucius Cup took place over the weekend of February 6th-8th in Dublin’s historic Gresham Hotel. This was the first year that the Confucius Cup hosted a Chinese Chess tournament in addition to the Go. A record 75 players from 16 countries participated comprising of 58 playing Go and 17 playing Chinese Chess. In addition to the amateur players a Beijing delegation of top professional Go and Chinese Chess attended to review games, play simultaneous games, and award dan certificates.

  The weekend’s opening Go game between Matthew Macfadyen 6d and Fan Hui 7d quickly escalated into a sprawling fight and Matthew was in the lead until slipping up in the end game to lose by 2.5 points. Similarly the top board on round 3 of the Chinese Chess between Chen Li and Lin Chenhao went the full distance with Li claiming a hard fought victory. Chi-Min Oh 7d defeated last year’s winner Fan Hui in the second round only to lose to Young-Sam Kim in the 3rd. Chris Rafferty 3k Go player explained his loss in round 3 as ‘I surrounded a group about the size of a small horse. And then it got out’.

  The simultaneous games with the professionals on Saturday evening were nothing short of spectacular. Huang Yizhong 7 dan pro calmly defeated his seven Go challengers, while Jiang Chuan the Chinese Chess world champion, played ‘blindfolded’ against six of the tournament’s top chess players, claiming victory on five boards and drawing one.

  Sunday saw Huang Chunlong come from 2nd place to win the Chinese Chess with a score of 4.5 while Young-Sam Kim claimed victory in Go with a perfect score of 5 wins. Sunday also saw the welcome participation of four young Go players from Galway.

  The weekend’s events concluded with simultaneous professional reviews of the top Go and Chinese Chess boards from their respective tournaments.

  A very special thank you of course must be made to the Confucius Institute for Ireland for their tremendous support. We are also grateful to ICBC International Leasing, Huawei, Asia Market, and Ka Shing for their sponsorship.

Final Results (Click Link)
Go	Chinese Chess

 

Awards Summary

Silly Prizes

Best Spectator – Marek Kubita

Nicest Glasses – Daqun Wang

Most Scandinavian Player – Juho Pannanen

Nicest Shoes – Matthew Macfadyen

Dan Certificate Awards presented by Hua Xueming 7p

5 Dan – Mathius Terwey

4 Dan – Zoltan Fodi

4 Dan – Roman Pszonka

3 Dan – Philippe Renaut

3 Dan – Ngoc-Trang Cao

3 Dan – Joanne Leung

2 Dan – Hui Zhang

2 Dan – James Hutchinson

2 Dan – Juho Pennanen

1 Dan – Claas Roever

Friday Rapid Go Winners

1st Place – Chi-Min Oh

2nd Place – Kirsty Healey

Youth Awards

Ji Zihe

Hubert Matuszewski

Krystian Gabzdyl

Alexandre Renaut

Morgan O’Callaghan

Janas Jaroslaw

4 Wins or More

Mikulas Kubita

Hui Zhang

Geoffrey Crespino

Marius Groza

Alex Delogu

Alejandro Domingo

Marcus Phelan

2015 Irish Confucius Cup Main Event

Go Chinese Chess 1st place Young-Sam Kim Huang Chunlong 2nd place Chi-Min Oh Lin Chenhao 3rd place Cristian Pop Chen Fazo 4th place Fan Hui Zhang Guohan 5th place Matthew Macfadyen Alain Dekker

 

The game record from the top board from all five rounds of the 2015 Confucius Cup Go games are downloadable here:

Round 1: Matthew Macfadyen vs Fan Hui [Download]
Round 2: Chi-Min Oh vs Fan Hui [Download]
Round 3: Chi-Min Oh vs Young-Sam Kim (reviewed by Huang Yizhong 7p and Hua Xueming 7p)[Download]
Round 4: Young-Sam Kim vs Fan Hui [Download]
Round 5: Chi-Min Oh vs Cristian Pop [Download]

The game record from the top board of the final round of the 2015 Confucius Cup Chinese Chess game is downloadable here:
Round 5: Chunlong Huang vs Chen Li [Download]

Photos (Tibi Gociu, Rory Wales)

More of Rory’s photos and videos here.