CongressNews No. 4

Weekend Tournament

The traditional mid-congress tournament was a great success: 334 players attended the weekend tournament, many of them being at the Abano Congress only for this event. This kind of tournament seems to be a sort of highspeed highway in the middle of a trip through quiet hills: five rounds played in two days in between two weeks at the rhythm of a game (official, of course) every day. But the top players were the same, with the only (important) exception of the Main Tournament leader, Guo Juan, who didn't play. The final result was a triumph for Hyuk Lee, 6 Dan from Korea who made 100% (five wins). At the ozher placings we found three top Dan players from France (Miyakawa Wataru, Pierre Colmez and Jeff Seailles) and Rob Van Zeijst from the Netherlands. The time limit of one hour forces the players to play more quickly (you should remember that in the Main Tournament top players have two and a half hours for the game): we have seen many all-or-nothing games, and often an early and intricate chuban changes the game in a wild one, not so rarely both players ending in byo-yomi, in a final rush for the last liberty, or the last point.

The Weekend Tournament was a very well organized one. The first round began only one hour later than scheduled. You may think that the registration was a little bit misunderstood: the organizers asked the players only to mark their absence, but many thought the opposite ("if I don't mark my name I don't play). So, the first round was full of forfeits with Mr. Fernandez making a "monkey jump" to obtain that. At last 95% of players could play against somebody human, not only a started clock. Anyway, the rest of the tournament was very "Deutsch-style", with only, at most, five minutes delay in fixing the pairings. At the end there was a Prizegiving ceremony of the Weekend.

Only one question, as an annoying aji, is left: what's better: to fill the congress wall with sheets and sheets of dtailed information, or to give some acoustic warning, with only the basic details? What’s best for making sure every player is informed in order of “where, when, how” to play? Perhaps somebody may ask also “why?”, but these are too deep doubts. Please, give us and the next year’s organizers your opinion.

Rob van Zeijst and Vladimir Danek analysing.

Apart from the very top players there were a lot of other players who had very good results. Eight players managed to win all their games: Dariusz Targosz (1 Kyu), Gustav Fahl (2 Kyu), Rainer Ewert (3 Kyu), Mihail Milu (3 Kyu), Filip Szilagyi (4 Kyu), Sergiu Iugulescu (7 Kyu), Marius Danila (8 Kyu) and Benjamin Teuber (10 Kyu).

There was an enormous number of players with 4 wins: Gilles van Eeden (5 Dan), Radek Nechanicky (5 Dan), Takehiko Hayashi (5 Dan), Jannick Rasmussen (4 Dan), Minh Quy Nguyen (3 Dan), Anton Grzeschniok (3 Dan), Jesper Pedersen (3 Dan), Catalin Prescure (3 Dan), Julien Roubertie (3 Dan), Valentin Gheorgiu (2 Dan), Catalin Mutu (2 Dan), Friedhelm Meyer (2 Dan), Jian Lin Zhou (2 Dan), Olivier Besson (2 Dan), Dimas Cabre (2 Dan), Leonard Dragomir (2 Dan), Vincent Vrolijk (1 Dan), Willem Mallon (1 Dan), Arend van Oosten (1 Dan), Claudiu Hobeanu (1 Dan), Hans Cornelissen (1 Kyu), Andreas Mueller (1 Kyu), Rainer Schütze (2 Kyu), Bogdan Castaliu (3 Kyu), Vlad Popescu (3 Kyu), Volker Lanz (4 Kyu), Markus Kienappel (4 Kyu), Yurij Sheremetiev (5 Kyu), Ana-Maria Szilagyi (6 Kyu), Stefan Lobet (8 Kyu), Dominik Ryzko (9 Kyu), Carmen Castaliu (10 Kyu), Iulia Ungureanu (11 Kyu), Andrei Jerca (11 Kyu), Mariette Kraan (12 Kyu), Cosmin Popa (13 Kyu), Cosmin Popescu (14 Kyu), Miroslav Skoczek (15 Kyu), Vlad Grigorescu (15 Kyu), Cosmin Belcu (16 Kyu), Vlad Popa (17 Kyu), Leo Putkonen (17 Kyu), Alexandru Liscu (18 Kyu), Cristian Lia (19 Kyu), Neil Ings (20 Kyu), Enrico Tognoni (20 Kyu), Miguel Teles de Menezes (25 Kyu) and Ines Teles de Menezes (25 Kyu).

Congratulations!

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