Jan Simara Surprise Winner at Euro Championship
2012-09-04
Jan Simara 6D was the surprise winner of this year's European Championship title when he won the deciding game against Ilya Shikshin (click here for the game) at the recent European Go Congress. Simara lives in Zlin in the Czech Republic and just finished university, where he majored in teaching IT. He learned go in chess camp when he was 14 – he'd been playing chess since the age of six — and about two years later quit chess and started to play go. "I studied seriously only once about six years ago for an year when I was about 1-dan," Simara said, "Mostly reading the Shusaku book Invincible. otherwise I sometimes replay top pro games and do tsumego when I'm in a train going to a tournament." In an interview with EuroGoTV, Simara's advice for new players was "Play mainly for joy, never be stressed about results."Click here for pairings and game records. Final standings for the 2012 European Championship: 1st: Jan Simara; 2nd: Ilya Shikshin; 3rd: Pavol Lisy; 4th: Thomas Debarre; 5th: Ondrej Silt; 6th: Antti Tormanen; 7th: Mateusz Surma; 8th: Gheorghe Cornel Burzo.
- Alain Cano, special European correspondent for the E-Journal; photo by Olivier Dulac
- American Go E-journal
- Alain Cano, special European correspondent for the E-Journal; photo by Olivier Dulac
- American Go E-journal
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