Am I correct in assuming this is still taking place?
I notice no website updates since September 2018.

I'd presume so, there's been an EGC every year since the 50s, and when the one planned for Turkey was cancelled it happened in Germany instead. Much more likely no one has updated the website for a while than it's not going to happen.

Many thanks. I also assume it`s going ahead but several months with no updated web page is a little strange considering it`s such an important event for European players.

Admittedly it was in October, but I had a chance to talk to the guys and gals from the Belgian Go Federation during the Brussels Tournament and judging by the looks of it, the preparations were in full swing. Some promotion would certainly be nice, but I'm sure that if something was preventing them from going all the way with it, we'd know by now.

The Facebook page was updated on January 1st.

That`s reassuring. Many thanks for the replies.

There seem to be 3 Asian Pros this year participating in the European Open Championship:

Sun Tengyu, 7p #73 (3380) https://www.goratings.org/en/players/967.html
Jia Gangly, 2p #606 (2987) https://www.goratings.org/en/players/1447.html
Zhang Taiyu 1p, unknown rank. I couldn't find him in goratings.org. I could only find that he's, born 1998 in Gansu, Hangzhou Qiyuan. See this old topic: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14424&view=previous

It will be interested to see if the Koreans manage to defeat the Chinese Pros like they did last year.

The European Go Congress 2019 in Bruxelles / Belgium was a bit
different than the previous congresses:

1) On the second Wednesday, the congress venue was closed!

The major reason was congress budget and avoiding paying for the venue
buildings at that day. So the participants had to pay for their
accommodation on that day but could not play go at the congress venue.
Every participant payed a congress fee, from which in particular the
venue must be payed. If nevertheless money was short, the Belgium Go
Federation or the European Go Federation ought to have paid for the
venue on the second Wednesday! At the very least for the smaller of
the two buildings of the venue. It is totally unacceptable that a
congress venue is completely closed during a European go congress.
This is the fault of the congress organisers, the Belgium Go
Federation and the European Go Federation.

2) There were too few side tournaments.

The Belgium congress organisers could not organise every common side
tournament. Therefore, at least three of them had German tournament
directors: I ran the 13x13, Klaus Petri the children tournament and,
IIRC, Marc-Oliver Rieger the YinYang tournament. However, the very
popular lightning tournament was missing this year - for the first
time since at least 1993 (my first congress)! What a shame! This is
the mistake of those Belgium congress organisers stopping organisation
before the congress and every participant, who might have organised
the lightning. I provided some technical help for any would be
tournament director of the lightning but could not also organise it
myself because organising the 13x13 and giving two lectures during the
congress was just about as much as I could do with 2.5 weeks of
preparation time since confirmation by the congress organisers. There
would have been enough rooms. At least, the congress organisers were
very helpful towards the extra volunteers and lecturers.

3) Compared to 2018, the numbers of participants dropped much.

The major reason is, of course: Bruxelles is expensive.

4) There was the strongest participant ever.

Presumably, Sun Tengyu 7p CN was the strongest congress player ever.
Needless to say, he played 10:0 in the European Open Championship, 9:0
in the rapid but did not participate in the weekend tournament. In the
13x13 (played with 10' SD), he (like every pro in side tournaments)
played as 8d and made it to the quarter finals, losing to its
tournament winner Yoon Namgi 7d KR. (The congress webpage states the
2nd place Tang Hao Liu 6d KR but misses the 3rd place Kim Doh Yup 7d
KR of the 13x13.)

5) French ranks are more unpredictable than ever.

Yann Flambard 1d FR played 9 1/2 : 1/2 (default tie in round 2, why?)
in the main tournament, ending at place 9 of the European Open
Championship amidst the 6d and 7d players but with a SOS of 2d - 4d
players. He beat three 4d, two 5d (each 4:1 from CN, of which one beat
me by 1.5 points in round 10) and one 6d (Lukas Krämer) players and
tied against a 4d. So his appropriate rank is at least 5d, IMO.

6) Local transport?

It is a tourist trap! Does one need a special extra card?! The day
ticket (no special card needed despite contrary information) is not
valid in city trains despite contrary map information (I was lucky
with the conductor not issuing a fine) but must be validated again on
each access of a vehicle, even if validating machines are hidden at
innocent places!

7) The supermarket was open on Sundays!

I enjoyed the Congress, and I think the organisers did a good job overall.
Being able to receive your pairings by smart phone was a really nice feature. It saved a lot of time for everyone, and made the start of each round much cleaner than it would otherwise have been.
I think one of the organisers being able to speak fluent Chinese was very well received.
The venue was clean and comfortable, although I suppose 3 flights of stairs was a beast for some older participants when the temperature hit 40.

My constructive criticisms all flow in the one direction:
It is annoying to find that the tournament venue is closed on Wednesday when 'you've paid for that day'.
Most of the big side tournaments were in the first week. That seems to have been as a result of the European Championship being in the first week.
Is the European Go Congress going to move to being a weekend to weekend event (9 days) instead of a 2 week event (14 days)? This seems to be the direction we're headed in. An inevitable consequence of the pressures of modern life.

/edit - oh! I forgot about the clocks. Probably this is already a known issue, but the byo-yomi setting for the clocks we used is really bad. Instead of displaying 30 seconds 3 times, it displayed 1:30 1 time. There is no beep to tell you that the second period disappeared. There are beeps to tell you that you are about to enter byo-yomi and when you have 10 seconds left. Whoever bought these clocks should receive a good and thorough spanking.

_________________
North Lecale

He didn't play against Lukas. This is the list of his opponents:

Wei Minyue, 1D
Huang Haisen, 4D
Finn Jensen, 1D
Joachim Beggerow, 3D
Philippe Cance, 1D
Yin Zihang, 5D
Herman Hiddema, 4D
Klaus Petri, 4D
Bo Luan, 5D
Andreas Goetzfried, 4D

During week 1, the main tournament started on time. During week 2, most printed pairings appeared 0 to 13 minutes delayed where I was waiting for them. Electronic information came out circa a quarter of an hour earlier. It is helpful for those wishing to use it but not those (like me) without electronic device at the congress or not willing to accept the local WLAN security risks. The two buildings and several floors had the consequence in one round that, although I was the first to read a particular printed pairing, I came to my board 3 minutes AFTER my clock was started so had to contact the referee for resetting the clock.

In general, PRINTED pairings should be out clearly BEFORE the start of a round (at least 15 minutes earlier, better much earlier). However, priority was given to electronic pairing distribution, creating a disadvantage for those needing the printed pairings.

I like to be at my board early but this year I had to arrive after most of my opponents because they had the time advantage of being informed earlier.

I do not know about all side tournaments, but I did start the 13x13 on time and pairings were out ca. 20 ~ 30 minutes before the tournament stages:)

I wanted to hold the 13x13 during the second week but, due to the second Wednesday being closed, the congress organisers scheduled it for the first Wednesday, which had no other activity except for the remaining EC players.



No, basically it is the opposite direction. What used to be 15 day congresses has been extended by 2 initial days for the Pandanet pairgo finals (which I do not attend). This year's second Wednesday is the exception.

Thanks for the correction. The tiny font let me read 28 but, after enlarging, it shows 211 in round 6.

I can say that the building choice was just a bad idea. I have played all of my games in the inner space far from any window and it was very hot there even when it was a rain outside. And going up and down to the 3-rd floor number of times a day is a hard task for 80 y.o guys.

The EGF now has a Congress Advisor whose job it is to aid people to run the Congress each year. Maybe she can help persuade somebody to run the congress. There is a chance that for 2021 it could be in Romania. If the event is shortened to 9 or 10 days, perhaps interest will pick up again from potential organisation teams.

If you booked really far in advance, Brussels was not very expensive. In general, if you avoided the tourist traps, I think everything was fine there. Of course, with Paris as my point of reference, perhaps I would say that.

_________________
North Lecale

Re cost, EGC is about half the price of US Go Congress and twice as long!

Unfortunately not everyone is able to plan a long time in advance. I only booked 2 weeks before, using a link provided by the EGC website. I paid 80€/night for two nights in a hotel room with two twin beds (since I was there just for the weekend). The hotel wasn't so good, since the air conditioner was very noisy and inefficient, so we opened the window instead but the avenue was very busy all night long.

My accomodation choice was certainly not optimal, but I can understand that some people might have been deterred by the cost, especially those who live in eastern european countries.

Otherwise I think the organization of the weekend tournament was good. Rounds started approximately on time, in any case less than half an hour late, and as other people mentioned, receiving pairings by email was convenient.

My game against Yann, in case anyone is interested:



I felt this player was around my level. Both players have their good and bad moments in this game, and both were in the lead at some point.

Seems to me his pairing was a bit weird because of the half point due to the tie in round 2. From round 6, he's very likely to meet players who only entered in the second week, because they also have half a point (both Chinese 5d he met were new entrants in the second week), and if there is no such player at his level, then if the group above him is even he'll get paired down to the group below and meet the player with the lowest SOS there (who is probably the weakest player there). E.g. after round 9, he's 13th, so there are 12 players with more points. Because of that he got paired down against player 27 in the standings at that point.

In the end, perhaps he had relatively weak opponents for someone who got 9th place, but it is still a very impressive result for him.

Herman, did you chat to Yann, do you know if he recently studied in Asia or something to get stronger?

@Uberdude: No, I didn't really talk to him besides the usual pleasantries before the game and a short discussion about afterwards