Paris Go Tournament
Between the 30th of March and the first of April, there opened the 41th
Paris Go Tournament which is the second biggest tournament in Europe next to
the European Go Congress.
Because it opened in a very central zone, about 220 players participated to enjoy the great delight of playing baduk (go), at the same time to enjoy Paris to the fullest, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. It is very well known for the city of arts, romance and love.
As the tournament place, Lycee Louis Le Grand, didn't have a very big room, the tournament opened in a 6 small rooms according to the level of players. Especially there was a room in which there were only two tables for top 4 players of each round, and the Euro Go TV transmitted live every two games of all rounds.
Even if it opened in France, so many players of other countries enjoyed their games such as from Germany, Rumania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria and Spain. It was authentic international baduk(go) tournament !
There participated also the actual European champion Hui Fan 2P and the third player Junfu Dai 8D. Furthermore Cristian Pop 6D and Cornel Burzo 6D the Rumanian best players, Ondrej Silt 7D the Czech champion and Pal Balogh 6D the Hungarian champion participated also. Literally, it was a real festival of European star players !
The atmosphere of the places of the tournament was very nice. It was very quiet inside and the buildings were very antique and beautiful. I thought this tournament was very good in all aspects except only two things. The first was that there wasn't any bar, restaurant nor automatic coffee machine inside the building, which was very inconvenient for the players.
The second was that between each round there were no posters about the current ranking of the tournament. There were only those of the results of the games of each round. We couldn't know who was leading the tournament, who was playing undefeated or how many players had lost just one game, etc.
Though there were two defects, I thought it was very well - organized tournament. There were more than 10 staffs, and all of them worked very hard.
Also, there were big prize moneys and very good relay system by Euro Go TV.
In addition, every rounds started on time, not delayed.
After 6 rounds of 3 days the champion was decided.
Junfu Dai 8D got the honorable championship, Lluis Oh 6D became the second player, Cristian Pop 6D the third, Hui Fan 2P the fourth and Ondrej Silt 7D got the fifth prize. The greatest extraordinary event of this tournament was that the actual champion Hui Fan 2P lost two games, by Junfu Dai 8D and by Lluis Oh 6D.
You can refer to the information of the tournament on the Web of
http://paris2013.jeudego.org/index.php?page=accueil&langue=en
, and the results on the Web of
http://paris2013.jeudego.org/index.php?page=resultats&langue=en
Everyone enjoyed and liked a lot this tournament, and we all are already expecting the next year's Paris Baduk (Go) Tournament .... ^^
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