Gift from Korea

Hello, the year is ending so it's good time to remind what happened this year on the Polish Go Scene :-) But before I will do this I want to show you my new fan with signature of On Sojin 4p from Korea. On the photos there are also 3 other fans, two of them belong to Kamil Chweydana 4-Dan and another to Jan Lubos 3-Dan.

All fans are in Poland thanks to Tomasz Zimnoch who is now in Korea. Happy New Year Tomasz! OK, time to remind Polish Go in 2007:

January

A few tournaments but the most important was the first big promotion (Mariusz Pabich 1-kyu to 2-Dan) decided by the Polish Ranking Committee. This was the first sign that Polish players improve very fast and our system is on a good way to get proper rankings, so help from the Polish Ranking Committee is urgent.

February

Nothing special except "Bursztynowy" Go Tournament in Gdańsk.

March

This time there were two important tournaments. Polish Academics Championship was won by Mariusz Pabich 2d in Kedzierzyn Kozle. Another important tournament was Qualification to the Young Masters League. Unfortunately some people decided not to play in the league and the last place with ticket was 6th :(.

April

Nothing special

May

Young Masters League in Bielsko Biała. The winner was Kamil Chwedyna 3-Dan.

June

XXX Warsaw Go Tournament wasn't successful but of course it was one the biggest tournaments in 2007. This time the winner was Cho SeokBin 7-Dan.

July/August

Summer Go Camp is every year the biggest event on the Polish Go Scene and the great place to for everyone to relax. Next year it will be even greater :]

September

Qualification to Polish Championship. The winners: Radosław Jachym 4-dan; Mateusz Surma 3-dan; Marek Kamiński 3-dan; Jan Lubos 3-dan.

October

Polish Ranking Committee made a next big move to help Polish Ranking System. Promoted were: Ewa Moś (1-kyu to 2-Dan); Andrzej Zyzak (2-Dan to 4-Dan); Radosław Jachym (2-Dan to 4-Dan).

November

Polish Championship. Unfortunately Marek Kaminski didn't play because of some problems. The most funny things is that the tournament date was changed for Jan Lubos but no one asked Marek what he thought about the new date :( His replacement Kamil Chwedyna 3-Dan showed great result by winning the Polish Championship.

December

Kamil Chwedyna was promoted to 4-Dan. Polish Oza Tournament in Lodz (winner: Habu Koichiro 4-Dan)

Next Year?

I think the next year Polish go will be even greater :-)

Qualifying Tournament to Oza

15-16 December in Lodz the last Polish Go tournament in this year was played. 37 players participated in the tournament. The Dan group was very big (11 Dan players) compared to the total number of players, so the tournament was very exciting.

This tournament was a qualification to European Oza, so everyone wanted to win, but only Habu Koichiro showed great Go by beating all opponents. Unfortunately Habu Koichiro can't play in European Oza because of some problems, very pity to Poland that the best Polish player can't participate in one of the biggest European tournaments :( Replacement for Habu Koichiru will be Michał Bażyński 4d who was second in the tournament.

Big surprise was Kamil Chwedyna losing (too!) many games. People say he is tired after Polish Championship but losing to 1-kyu two times straight is shameful for the Polish Champion. I hope that next year Kamil will show us better result. Other players showed normal result. After Tournament some people were promoted (according to the Polish Promotion List):

• Mateusz Mieszkowski 2-Dan


• Sebastian Pawlaczek 1-Dan


• Mateusz Chojnacki 1-kyu


• Malgorzata Biniecka 9-kyu


• Mateusz Strzecha 12-kyu

4th Bytom's Go Tournament

Last weekend, 8-9 December 4th Go Tournament took place in Bytom. 39 players participated in the Tournament . Bytom's go Club was represented by 10 people:

• Ewa Moś 2-Dan
• Krzysztof Bożek 2-Dan
• Tomasz Ślązok 1-Dan
• Jakub Majnusz 2-kyu
• Michał Kołodziejczyk 4-kyu
• Grzegorz Nowak 6-kyu
• Patryk Pacana 6-kyu
• Wojciech Skrabania 6-kyu
• Piotr Zychowicz 7-kyu
• Tomasz Kulon 14-kyu

Ewa Moś was playing from 2 round and lost her first game to Jarosław Kopek 1-Dan. In the 3rd round I played with Jarosław and I think he is good in lightning games. After opening I had a good result but in middlegame I played many stupid moves because I wanted to finish game very quickly. I'm very stupid :(

But in next rounds Ewa showed beautiful go and beat Kamil Chwedyna 4-Dan (Polish Champion '07) by killing his huge group in the center. Ewa is a very good fighter and if I face her in a next tournament I will play very solid go because I don't have so much faith in my tsumego.

Very good performance showed Grzegorz Nowak 6-kyu nad Tomasz Kulon 14-kyu. Tomorrow Tomasz will be promoted to 12-kyu, but for Grzegorz to be promoted he needs to play another good tournament. Of course I'm very happy to hear that after the tournament Michał Kołodziejczyk was promoted to 3-kyu.

I said many things about Bytom's Go Club but the most outstanding person in the last weekend tournament was a little boy: Mateusz Surma 3-Dan, who beat everyone and won the tournament with an excellent score 5-0. His game with current Polish Champion was very close, but in the end Mateusz won by half moku. I am looking forward to see his go this weekend in the Polish Oza Tournament. If Mateusz is able to win Polish Oza he may be promoted to 4 or 5-Dan.

For me the tournament was very good. I learnt many things about organizing Go tournaments and - what is most important - a pleasure of playing go is back with me. Now I feel that I can play good go again.

Tournament Result
Gallery:
Tomasz Ślązok Piccasa
Tengen.pl

Thanks for people who came to Bytom last week and see you next year.

Polish Championship 2007

2 weeks ago, on 22-24 November I was a referee at the Polish Championship 2007. Polish Championship is played as a 8 people league. 4 people are from the previous year (places 1-4: Leszek Sołdan 5-Dan (at the picture with Kamil Chwedyna, Leszek is on the left side); Michał Bażyński 4-Dan; Krzysztof Giedrojć 4-Dan; Paweł Celejewski 3-Dan) and 4 people emerged from a preliminary tournament.

The players who joined the League this year were: Radosław Jachym 4-dan who won a preliminary tournament a month earlier with all wins; Mateusz Surma 3-Dan, the youngest Dan player in Poland who likes to play go-go san-san fuseki; Jan Lubos 3-Dan - a great Polish go teacher, and Marek Kamiński 3-Dan - but he couldn't play in this tournament :( Unfortunately his replacement was abroad so we needed another replacement. The lucky guy was Kamil Chwedyna 3-Dan. Kamil played at the Polish Championship last year, so it wasn't his first time in a big tournament.

All people thought that Radosław would show good result, but unfortunately he missed autoatari in late yose or played several dubious moves in chuban and lost several games. Radosław lost 6 games from seven but at least beat the previous year's champion Leszek Sołdan 5-Dan by killing his group in the centre.

The biggest surprise was Kamil Chwedyna who beat all other players and finished with a great record of 7/7. In several games Kamil was behind but in yose his oponents made some mistakes and Kamil exploited that very well.

Results: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dccpq5gz_18c8zj6c

Congratulations for the new Polish Champion Kamil Chwedyna.

The most important for me is a big change: for several years there was almost no young player at the Polish Leage, but now there are two young masters: Kamil Chwedyna 3-Dan (few days ago he was promoted to 4-Dan) and Paweł Celejewski 3-Dan. I believe that next year as much as 6 young Polish masters will participate at the Polish Championship :]

New tournament series at Bytom

Hi, I'm Tomasz Ślązok and want to tell you that next weekend Bytom will hold a new Go tournament series.

When I founded a Bytom Go Club there were only 6 people who were interested in Go. Because of many life issues in past few years, the member list was very short. There were some days when nobody was present in the club.

Fortunately now in our club we have 20 members and some go equipment, so we took a decision to organise a good tournament, but it is not that simple :] there are many obstructions.

First problem was a go equipment for more than 20 people. Fortunately in Śląsk all around there are many go clubs which are very friendly and gave us a hand. I want to thank you all, especially the Krakow group.

Next issue was webpage and advertisement. For this Piotr Zychowicz is responsibile and I think he is doing very well.

Today I finished a tournament agenda and decided that I will be a referee for this tournament. 2 weeks ago I was a referee in Polish Go Championship and I learnt a lot there.

Bytom Go Tournament
8-9 December
Address: ul. Powstańców Warszawskich 12, 41-902 Bytom

More at http://www.4turniej.go.pl/