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 :]