This March marked three years since we published our first edition – February 2021. I thought that it would be a great opportunity to share my vision of the project, its recent highlights and challenges, where we are now and where we are going.

When I think about the Journal, the first thing I want to do is to thank everyone who takes part in its creation. I mention these people in each Preface and that is not just a formality – I really appreciate their contributions that bring diversity, brightness and quality to our project. This time, I want to write about some of these people in the context of the whole project.

First of all, I want to thank Matt Partridge and Ian Kime – our proofreading team, native speakers from the UK and US, respectively. Their work might be hard to notice, but believe me, there are always numerous edits they find in our texts. That is a tremendous amount of work. Ian also designs our covers and, with Matt, collaborates on our Path to 1-dan series aimed at kyu-level players. The idea is to dedicate a part of our content to less experienced players, I hope they like it!

Matt and Ian came to me in 2021 independently from one another with the same question: “how can I help your project?”. You can imagine how much it inspired me as a creator and project leader. They joined our proofreading team and very soon became the engine of the European Go Journal along with me, and remain so to this day. I ask for their advice before making any important decisions, and we constantly discuss the development of the project and all its news. They generate ideas and sometimes write their own tournament reports or contact people for an interview. I consider myself lucky that Matt and Ian found our project and I am happy that they are still motivated to continue supporting it.

I am also very thankful to all our incredible artists, especially Alizée Chabin and Camille Lévêque – since the beginning of the project, they have regularly contributed their wonderful artworks for our unique Art & Photography chapter, practically making its very existence possible. Recently you have also seen cover art made by Ukrainian artists currently living in Portugal – Vitaliia Kalmutska and Kat Artichoke. Just take a look at the cover of the magazine you are holding in your hands – have you seen anything like it before?

As for the Photography part of the above-mentioned chapter, I have been making photo collages from tournaments for some time already. I think it’s an interesting format for our readers, but I do miss another one – artistic photography. It’s hard to find talented photographers, but I hope we will occasionally publish more of it for you in the future.

We have two regular writers at the moment – Dai Junfu and Joan Lluís i Rabassó. Dai Junfu’s series Thirty-Six Stratagems is one of the favorite chapters of our readers. By the way, he recently published a book based on this series – you can find more information in the Art & Photography chapter of this magazine. We will continue publishing his series until its conclusion, and then, hopefully, something new written by Junfu!

As for Joan, he wrote such exciting articles as The History of Go in Spain, The Atomic Bomb Game and many others. In particular, in this magazine you will find his article dedicated to one of the most famous games in go history – the Ear-reddening Game – and Michal Martychowiec’s artistic project Reading History, which features this game. I am happy that Joan joined our writing team!

Recently our readers also had a chance to see a few articles written by Daniela Trinks, such as Korea Baduk Association Announces Top Ten Go Highlights of 2023 and Interview with EGC Runner-up Kim Daehwi 7d. You can find an interview with Daniela in this magazine; I hope she will continue writing her high-quality articles for us!

Unfortunately, I cannot mention everyone here who takes part in the creation of our content, but there are many more people who do so and I appreciate contribution of each of them. For example, in this edition you will also find commentary by Mateusz Surma 3p on the game he played against Andrii Kravets 1p in the final of the recent European Professional Championship; there is also a brief interview with Yang Yaoling 7d, the winner of the 51st Paris International Tournament. The European Go Journal is a jigsaw puzzle of small and large pieces that all come together in the end.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my brother Mykhailo for setting up and maintaining the website of the European Go Journal. It’s great to have our own place online where we can publish information about our project, show and sell past editions and be free from any limitations imposed by external platforms.

Our content is mostly dedicated to go in Europe, but I am also glad that we occasionally work on geographically diverse material; for example, in the June & July 2023 edition we published an interview with Andy Okun – ex-President of the American Go Association, and in September & October 2023 – an interview with Michael Chen 1p, the newly-certified American professional player; in the November & December 2023 edition, there was a report on the 45th Australian National Go Championships by Bob Watson.

Talking about geography, print copies of our Journal travel not only to Europe and America, but also to the other continents – for example to South Korea, South Africa and Australia. The current edition, for the first time in the history of our project, will be delivered to South America – we have one subscriber in Brazil!

According to our statistics, we have 353 subscribers at the moment, 132 of whom chose the Printed Edition variant, 139 signed up for the Digital Edition and 82 via the Go Club License. These are decent numbers, although I have to admit that we reached them around one and half years ago and since then have remained approximately at the same level. Our main means for promoting the Journal is posting on social media and go forums – mostly announcements of the future articles and links to the published editions.

Since last year, according to an agreement with the EGF, we have shared some of our content on the EGF website – for example, you can find there such articles as the Interview with Andrii Kravets 1p, European Champion and our longest article CEGO and EGF: A Decade of Cooperation. This cooperation is useful in publicizing our project, while also ensuring that the EGF website has some quality articles on important events and topics.

There is one more feature I would like to mention here: last year we created new tiers for subscription on our Patreon: the Digital Edition Gold Supporter and Printed Edition Gold Supporter. The idea is that the subscribers can pay slightly more than they would do for the regular subscription, while in return their names are listed on the last page on the Journal. We currently have eight subscribers who have subscribed at these tiers. I think it’s a cozy feature that allows our regular readers to feel a closer connection with the project and give special support. It also gives us the opportunity to thank them individually in every edition.

Let me share one more idea with you. What do you think about creating an annual European Go Yearbook? We could select the best material from the issues of the European Go Journal from January to December, compile it all in one book, write a separate Preface and make a special cover. Similarly, one day we could also compile all the articles of one of our series, let’s say Guess the Next Move, into a separate book.

I would say that the European Go Journal has matured both in diversity of content and in its quality; our project has taken its place in the European go scene. This place is perhaps not so vital as it would have been in the past century, when reading a journal would be one of the main means of studying and hearing recent news from the go world, but it has taken its place as an important feature of a developed European go community. The European Go Journal has a three-part value – informational, educational and aesthetic. Our audience are people who like to read about go or to sit down next to the board and replay a professional game delving into detailed commentary – maybe comparatively few people in the era of video content domination, but they are there and will always be. I believe that our readership can still gradually grow as we continue our consistent work.

My work on the Journal is an important part of my everyday life and means for supporting my family. Due to my family responsibilities, I cannot dedicate all my time to it – you might have noticed that in the past year or so we have often combined two months into one edition. Every time we do so is a pity for me, but I feel like I am doing my best. I believe that this is the only real challenge that I personally face in this project, and, since I write a major part of the content and coordinate all the work, for the whole project too: I need to maintain the balance between my family life, the Journal, the tournaments I participate in and many other responsibilities. I really like the idea of a monthly journal dedicated to the game of go and I will work hard to publish it monthly as often as is possible. By the way, I am very thankful to each and every one of our loyal readers for their patience in times when the Journal releases are less frequent than usual.

Considering the time I’ve had available for working on the Journal recently, I think I will publish a united May & June edition at the beginning of July, then go to the European Go Congress in Toulouse at the end of July and afterwards make a united July & August issue. That’s my tentative plan for the ending of a busy spring and summer.

As always, if you would like to send us your feedback or an article suggestion, it’s always welcome at contact@eurogojournal.com. I am happy to continue creating the European Go Journal for our readers, thank you for staying with us. Here’s to another successful year!