European Knockout (quarterfinals)

   The games from the Knockout quarter-finals also count for the Main tournament; those who win can proceed to the semi-finals (and those who lose go back to the Main tournament).

    Youngsam Kim (from Korea) continues playing in the Main Tournament. Today he won his game against Dmitriy Surin (Russia), so he is still in first place (with eight straight wins).

    Meanwhile, there were many exciting games between the best Europeans at the Congress:

    Catalin Taranu played very well against Cornel Burzo (Cornel tried to go for a big moyo, but he was outplayed and lost the game);

    Dusan Mitic (Serbia) was paired up with Alexander Dinerchtein today. In the end, Alexander's better understanding of shape granted him a win;

    The game between Ondrej Silt and Artem Kachanovskyi was also interesting. Artem captured a dragon in the centre and his opponent eventually resigned (after a six hour long game!).

    Ilya Shikshin faced Thomas Debarre on board 1, and as expected it was a very complicated game for both (the fighting started very soon, with W16, but it seems that Ilya got more serious after B45.) Thomas has improved a lot in the past few years, but I think that Ilya is still stronger at fighting (as this game shows...). The B111-117 furikawari (exchange) was interesting for Black, but it wasn't enough to shake White's lead. Thomas Debarre resigned at move 196 (he was 10+ points behind).

    (Ilya is often arriving late at his games, and today he was looking very tired. I hope that he is getting enough sleep!)

 

   Note: The AGA E-Journal is doing a live coverage of the 2011 US Open on KGS (this year's US Go Congress is in Santa Barbara, CA; it has already started four days ago). You don't want to miss it J