A few simple rules ... limitless possibilities

Ireland put in a solid performance to finish off the season in the European Team Championship. With a 4-0 defeat over Kazakhstan, we surged up the table to 4th place, just 1 rung lower than last year.
Thomas Shanahan made his international debut with a 100 point win, overshadowing a classic win by rip-off from John Gibson.

The Galway Go Club is pleased to announce the FOURTH GALWAY GO TOURNAMENT at the Bridge Club St Mary’s Road Galway City on 8-9 June 2013.
This is a 5 round McMahon tournament with 50min time limit, 20sec per move overtime (3 times) and 6.5 Komi. Tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided. Everyone is welcome! Loads of prizes!
For full details click here.

This year, the Belfast Open will take place on the 26th and 27th of October, in Belfast Boat Club
See the webpage for full details.

Also, don’t forget about the upcoming Galway event.

The Galway Go club will host a Go tournament the weekend of June 8th-9th. More details to follow shortly.

As the season of the European Team Championship draws to an end, Ireland find themselves mid table once again. This time we coasted to a draw against Bulgaria, fixing ourselves in 6th place in Division C. However, with the final match up-coming, against bottom of the table Kazakhstan, we have a chance to move up a few places.

It is with great sadness that we report that Mark died last Monday, April 1st from cancer.

A 4kyu player, he was very active on KGS and participated in the inter-provincial matches representing Leinster, and Ireland in the European Team Championship.

Our thoughts are with his family at this time.

Yesterday, in the last remaining game of the Top 8 league, Noel Mitchell secured a win against Claas Roever to force a play-off for second and third place and, more importantly, the opportunity to challenge Roman Pszonka for the Championship. After a break for food, Noel and Claas moved straight into the play-off game. Noel was again victorious by a mid-game resignation. The dates for the first two Championship will be announced in the near future.

Those who were lucky enough to be able to attend Ireland’s premier event, the Confucius Cup, may like to see if they can spot themselves in the report published by the Sun Emerald – see here

Ireland finally returned to winning ways tonight, eventually taking Cyprus down after a tense struggle. After Gavin got a bit carried away on board 1, we found ourselves on the wrong side of 1-0. Gradually though, helped by a series of rip-offs, we ploughed our way, Gibson-like, to a 3-1 victory.

The 2013 Irish Go Congress occurred over the weekend with 38 players attending in sunny Dublin. Csaba Mero, 6d Hungary, won the main tournament, The 2nd Confucius Cup, for the second time with a perfect 5/5 score. In second place was Zebin Du, 4d China, and third was Antoine Fenech, 5d France.

Roger Daniel, 6k UK, and Mikulas Kubita, 15k Czech Republic, won all five of their games, while Thomas Shanahan won four.

The Friday evening Rapid tournament was won by Yuanbo Zhang, 4d China, with five straight wins, while Roman Pszonka, 3d Poland, came second with four.

Full results of the 2nd Confucius Cup are available here and the Rapid here.

Lets start with some positive news! The first ladder game of the year was played this Monday, in Dublin’s venue of choice, Larry Murphy’s. Marek Gutowski won against Arthur Cater, thereby moving himself up to 6th place, and inside the Korea Points positions.

By contrast, the Irish team were failing dismally in the international arena. Gavin Rooney, so far undefeated in the team competition, finally lost a game in our match with Turkey. The rest of the team, sadly used to him leading by example, followed suit, and a difficult result of 0-4 followed. Hopefully next time, the match strategy will have been explained more carefully by the coach.

Finally, just in case you missed it, the Irish Go Congress is this weekend. Don’t miss out on this important event, we’ve already had many strong players from Europe register to play.