Looking forward… February
2021 Correspondence Championship
Entries are open until Sunday 7th. The tournament will begin on Monday 15th.
2021 Top 8
Rounds 2-5 will be played on wednesdays this month, with the championship games scheduled across the first three wednesdays in March.
Tournoi de l’OGGRE (Online Go GREnoble)
Club de Grenoble invites Irish players to join their free online tournament the first weekend in February. (Scroll down the page for details in English.)
BGA Online Congress 2021
The British Go Association’s first Online Go Congress is now open to all until Thursday 18th. Beginning on Saturday 20th, there will be multiple side-tournaments, plus two pro lectures by Mateusz Surma.
IGA Membership
Philippe would like to remind people that annual membership fees are now due, and that for the first time it will be possible to pay the annual sub this year using PayPal:
Hey dear Go Players. Bad news for you, you have absolutely no more excuses to NOT pay your membership as Niall has implemented PayPal payment on the website, all modern and all, isn’t that cool ?
If you love Irish go and want to help making it grow, please don’t forget your membership, it is nearly a gift, as the membership is for now 10€ (yes for the whole year!). Next year we will try to have some of these special events for members only so don’t forget to renew or take the membership if you are new to the IGA!
Click on this link and make your move to make sure we have ample budget to organize more of all the fun and exciting go events that you like!
Weekly Meetings
The IGA encourages people to play online while all local meetups are suspended.
Online – Wednesday 20:00 on Discord, with games played on OGS/IGS/KGS
Galway – visit their club on OGS
If you have not already joined the IGA Discord server, you can do so using this link – https://discord.com/invite/4vSnhjd
11th PGETC
A 2-2 draw against South Africa in round 3 keeps Ireland in second position overall. Interestingly, 2 of the other 3 matches also resulted in draws, with the only decisive outcome being Lithuania beating Greece 4-0.
Round 4 is scheduled for the 23rd and will see Ireland facing Slovakia.
Looking back… January
Top 8
First qualifier round results
Second qualifier round results
Round 1 took place on the 27th – see the main tournament page for results.
Ici, c’est Paris!
Another epic Irish vs French Club battle, this time against Paris-Aligre.
On the continent…
EGF SGM
There has apparently been a Special General Meeting (however that works) of the EGF on Jan 21st. While there are no details as to the outcome, of particular note on the agenda was item 7c3 – Allow tournament submissions to the EGD with higher class. Also listed is the perennial discussion of EGF membership fees.
Euro Pro OGL 3
The European Professional Online Go League Season 3 started on December 5th. One best-of-three match is played each saturday and sunday. More detail is available on the EGF site.
EGF Academy
Founded to train promising European youths, the academy is looking for additional supporters
Tenuki
The fairest of them all…
Komi that is
OGS Rating Adjustments
OGS are revising their rating system in an effort to fix some bugs and move it closer to the EGF/AGA ratings. After the proposed upcoming changes to the EGF system, the comparison may be something like this:
Red curve is from the new OGS conversion formula
Blue curve is from the new EGF conversion formula (to be implemented soon)
GoKibitz
Move-by-move conversations about go games
SmartGo
I thought I had posted this previously but seems not – SmartGo for Mac is currently free, pending work on a new version at some point in the future.