Dear friends,

Let me remind you that our new product – the European Go Yearbook 2024 – is still available for purchase. The EGC in Warsaw is coming soon and I will bring a limited number of copies with me. To reserve yourself a copy, order the Yearbook on our website with the “Pick-up at EGC” option. By the way, this time I will be one of the exhibitors at the EGC, displaying the past editions of the European Go Journal and the Yearbook. I will dedicate a separate announcement to that a little later.

We recently published the March & April edition of the European Go Journal. One of the reasons we released it so late is that the Yearbook took more effort than I expected. Nevertheless, I don’t regret our hard work – I think the Yearbook is a great product and I hope we can make it next year, too!

The drawing on the cover of the March & April edition is made by Kat Artichoke, an artist that should be familiar to our long-term readers. This cover looks especially impressive when unfolded.

I thought that the Preface of this edition perfectly introduces its highlights. You can read an excerpt from it below.

...As usual, you can learn more about the cover art in the Art & Photography chapter. You will also find stunning drawings by Virgile Pestel and Julieta Zayas, as well as a collage of photographs from the recent European Youth Championship.

For the first time, we publish an article in the War and Go – Report from Ukraine series not written by me. Sang Werner 1k from Berlin travelled in Ukraine this spring and shared with us his impressions from this exciting journey.

Stanisław Frejlak 2p and Tanguy Le Calvé 1p participated in the 1st Beihai Xinyi Cup – a new top-level international professional tournament. Stanisław wrote an article dedicated to his trip to this competition and commented on his game against one of the strongest professional players in the world, Tu Xiaoyu 9p. Stanisław had a good chance to win at some point of this game, I strongly recommend you to replay it on a real board while reading the commentary!

Mateusz Surma 3p spent more than four months in Southeast Asia and visited numerous go academies in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong. In this journal you will find a detailed interview with him dedicated to this trip with a few additional questions, for instance about Mateusz’s Polgote project.

One of our proofreaders Ian Polak-Kime made a brief interview with a prominent young Spanish player, Isaac Ripoll, who reached 1-dan in the EGD in a little more than one year after he learned the rules.

Daniela Trinks, a Vice-President of the International Society of Go Studies (ISGS), wrote an update on the recent initiatives of the ISGS: the Go Promotion Awards, Journal of Go Studies and International Conference on Go Studies which will be held at the EGC in Warsaw. Please note that the deadline for the Go Promotion Awards is the 1st of July.

Joan Lluís i Rabassó sent in another philosophical essay – Go: More than a Game. In this article, Joan looks at go as a way of producing psychological value and meaning in community.

Two new and exciting series start with this edition. One of them is written by Dai Junfu 8d, an author familiar to our readers for his Thirty-Six Stratagems series that finished in the previous issue. Junfu starts a series dedicated to ko fights. As in the previous series, he illustrates useful principles with examples from real games. I am sure that this kind of learning material is interesting for players of any level.

The other new series is written by a new author, Li Ang – a Chinese 3-dan professional player, a famous teacher, an author of more than 30 books and a collector of go culture and art pieces. The Treasure Go Collection series published in our magazine is Li Ang’s first publication in English. He will show us valuable pieces from his collection, write about famous and legendary players with which they are associated and comment on outstanding fragments from their games. In the first chapter, Ang shows us a go board inscribed by Sakata Eio – a legendary Japanese professional player nicknamed “The Razor”. You will also find a brief biography of Sakata.

By the way, Li Ang is organizing a three-day intensive training camp in Serbia in the first half of July. Take a look and join if you have an opportunity: egc-camp.liang.in.rs

Besides the above-mentioned articles, this edition includes our routine chapters such as the European News, World News, Guess the Next Move, etc. If you missed the March & April edition, I strongly recommend you buy it on our website!

The print copies of this edition are on the way to the subscribers. I feel tempted to show you the postal stamps that were used for postage.

Isn’t the artwork stunning? This series of postal stamps is dedicated to the Carol of the Bells – a popular Christmas carol that perhaps all of you have heard. This music was written by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych in 1916 based on a Ukrainian New Year’s song called “Shchedryk”.

Let’s get back to the Journal. We plan to publish the next edition, May & June, before the EGC. It will include plenty of interesting material too, let me share some of our plans.

Many exciting events happened on the European and international go scenes, such as the Prague Tournament, the European Pair Go Championship in Bistrita, Romania and the World Amateur Go Championship in Vancouver, Canada. As usual, we will report on each of them.

The European team participated in the Chinese C League in June. The best individual result among the European players was demonstrated by Tanguy Le Calvé 1p, who managed to win three games out of seven. You will find a brief interview with him in the May & June edition.

For this edition, we interviewed Dmytro Yatsenko 5d – the President of the Ukrainian Go Federation and a player with more than 40 years of experience. We talked about his path in go, the history of go in Ukraine and how Russia’s war against Ukraine has affected it.

Li Ang 3p continues his Treasure Go Collection series. In the previous chapter he wrote about Sakata Eio 9p and showed a go board inscribed by him. This time Ang comments on a fragment of one of Sakata’s legendary games.

Dai Junfu 8d continues his series dedicated to ko fights as well. In this edition, Junfu shows us an example from the game he played against Zhang Yanqi 6d in the 2009 Levallois Tournament.

Eric Poelmann 1k has written a review of two books: Improving at Go by Jonathan Prevost and The Go Player’s Guide to Tsumego by Keiichi Tsukamoto.

There will be plenty of other interesting material. To receive future issues of the European Go Journal automatically, subscribe on our Patreon. If you choose one of the Gold Supporter tiers, your name will be printed on the last page of the Journal as a special thanks to our most dedicated supporters!