Last weekend, our teacher Manja Marz 4d participated in European Women’s Go Championship in Strasbourg, France. This year, Chinese-Austrian Li Ting 1p also participated for the first time and she was considered to be a big favorite because even though her last official tournament was 4 years ago, she is a professional player, who possesses an impressive 2656 rating.
Manja played against French Ngoc-Trang Cao 2d (also known as “Nyoshi”) in the first round. Nyoshi is also well-known to several JIGS students, as she was also a JIGS teacher. Unfortunately, Manja lost the first round and you can find the game here. After that, Manja shared Goban with Romanian Laura Avram 2d, who lost to Li Ting 1p only by 1,5 points in the 1st round. Manja got her first win of the tournament against Laura. In Saturday’s last round, Manja met with Czech Dita Vášová 1d, who was also in the top group sitting on 1 point from the 1st round, where she surprised everyone with a win over German Barbara Knauf 3d in the 1st round. Manja managed to convincingly get her 2nd win in the tournament.
Sunday morning, Manja was drawn to the 1st board, where she challenged the so-far unbeaten Li Ting. The game looked promising as it fitted Manja’s style, but at move 82, she made a slight mistake, which Li Ting was able to capitalize on throughout the rest of the game. You can find the game here. In the last round, Manja was paired down to French Kang Hwayeon 3k. Manja was controlling the game and got her 3rd point, which bring her overall to 5th place.
We were also happy to see some familiar faces like Virzhinia Shalneva, who also has been a part of JIGS and she came to visit the tournament on Sunday.
🥇 Li Ting 1p 🇦🇹 became the European Women’s Champion for the year 2023
🥈 Ariane Ougier 4d 🇫🇷
🥉 Cao Ngoc-Trang 2d 🇫🇷
4️⃣ Knauf Barbara 3d 🇩🇪
5️⃣ Manja Marz 4d 🇩🇪
You can find the full results here. You can find photos here and here and here.
