Paris International Go Tournament

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(”Reporting” from a café at Copenhagen Airport, with my phone. Misspellings are likely to occur.)

Today I am leaving for Paris to participate in the title tournament. Usually I only play one go-tournament a year, and for the last few years that one tournament has been the European go congress. However, with this years congress being played in Turkey, in August, and me being a sensitive creature with a low tolerance for heat, I decided toso Paris instead, in the spring (just saying). This also gives me an opportunity to stack up on sardines and chocolate, as such are my vices.

I am not able to embed the link to the tournament on my phone, so here it is: https://tournoi-de-paris.jeudego.org

The schedule will be intense, and I doubt I will post any games during the tournament, but I will share some impressions. If you are one of the handful of people reading this, then wish me good luck.

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The best go and chess channels on Youtube

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There are so many channels on Youtube dealing with chess, and I believe most chess players are better informed than I am about which channels are the best. I would like to just recommend my favourites:

Silicon Road, with Matthew Sadler, is the only chess channel I have ever watched with some consistency.

Killer Chess Training, run by Jacob Aagaard and Kallia Kleisarchaki, is a very serious channel, although it is mostly a channel for advertizing the courses that you can sign up for. I am a bit partial here, since I have worked for them.

Here is a video from one of my courses (the first of 6, or 8, I believe).

Go:

Go Game Series is simply the best channel that Youtube has ever seen, for more ambitious players. Jianqiu Chen, who runs the channel, is an excellent teacher, and he goes far deeper than any of the other channels.

Go Magic is mostly aimed at kyu players, but they also have some podcasts and other material.

Michael Redmond is the only Westerner to ever have reach 9P, and his channel is obviously top notch.

Dwyrin is a good channel for beginners and lower kyu-players.

 

European Pro Championship

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The “Tsinghua Weiqi Foundation Cup European Pro Championship” was won by Andrii Kravets 3p, and in the last round he played a game that I found very instructive. I was travelling by train between Stockholm and Malmö, and my headphones had discharged, so when I streamed the European Go Federation’s stream on Twitch, I did it with no sound, so as not to disturb my co-passengers. When I logged in, the game had already reached move 66 (see the game below) and I started out by counting how many safe points both sides had. It seemed that Black was leading by some margin, on points. Then I looked at the whole-board situation, and I realized that Black had two (perhaps even three) weak groups, and that White was in the process of separating and attacking them.

I have been working on my own game quite a lot in the autumn, and it has shown in my games. Still, these situations, when my opponents take lots of “safe” points, and then proceed to invade, are what I find most hard to deal with in games with shorter time. I still lack the right feeling for where to play, and from what direction to push my opponent’s stones. Watching and analyzing games like the one below is the way forward, for me:

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Swedish Team Championship 2025-2026

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Playing on a team is one of the greatest joys of being a chess player, and playing badly for a team kills most of that joy. This season my club, Växjö Chess Club, was relegated from the Swedish first division, and I wish I had been able to do more to stop it from happening. It will be part of my “why” when I try to up my game in the coming year; to be able to do better next season.

There were lots of interesting games played in the last three rounds, and I often found myself thinking that a certain position would be a good starting point for explaining some aspect of chess. When analysing the game below, I was reminded of how difficult chess is, and how important it is to have enough time left at critical moments:

Chess is hard. I would not like to have it otherwise.