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July 18th, 2005

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Victor Chow wins SA Candidates’ tournament

This weekend saw an interesting Candidates’ tournament, with a number of upsets. None of them involved Victor (6d) though, as he won his 3 Sunday matches to claim victory.

Reinhardt (4k) and Bernard (4k) shone on the first day, with Reinhardt beating Leander (2k) and Sipho (2k), and Bernard beating Bob (2k) and Leander. As a result, the 2 of them joined Andrew (1k) as the Western Cape representatives on the second day. Despite his loss to Bernard, Bob also qualfied for the second day.

On the second day, Bob performed well to claim victory against Tristen (1k). Together with a forfeit win against Welile who arrived late for the tournament, this put Bob into the Contenders’ tournament. Reinhardt managed a surprise win over Paul, but couldn’t progress to the Contenders’: he met Victor in the second round, and was finally ousted by Welile in the final round.

The Western Cape’s greatest hope for another finalist in the Contenders’, Andrew, lost to Victor in the first round, and was then eliminated when he lost to Paul (1d) in the second round. With one win each, Paul played Tristen for the last available spot in the Contenders’ tournament, but Paul claimed that.

The 4 new finalists for the SA Contenders’ are thus Victor Chow, Paul Edwards, Bob Gale, and Welile Gogotshe. Special congratulations to Bob (2k) who will be the only kyu-level player in the Contenders’ tournament. These finalists join the top 4 players from the 2004 Contenders’ tournament: Ben Gale (3d), Konrad Scheffler (1d), Cheng Lai (2d), and Julius Paulu (1d).

For full results and some game records, click here.

Posted by Steve in Game records, Tournaments

2 Comments »

This entry was posted on Monday, July 18th, 2005 at 10:52 am and is filed under Game records, Tournaments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “Victor Chow wins SA Candidates’ tournament”

  1. konrad says:

    Spare a thought for Andrew, who must be wondering if there’s a conspiracy against him. Last year he qualified for the second day of the Candidates, only to have to play Cheng Lai 2d in the first round and ending up knocked out by two of the players who eventually formed part of a three-way tie for first place in the SA Closed. Meanwhile, others (like myself) qualified on an easier draw. Well, tough luck – someone will always get the short straw as far as the draw is concerned.

    This year, Andrew qualified for the Candidates in 4th spot, which one would think would seed him through to the second day. But no, vagaries of the system meant that the notoriously unreliable SAGA ranks took precedence over actual tournament results when it came to the actual seeding, and by a few index points Andrew got bumped down to 5th seed, into the group that had to qualify on the first day. Which he did in fine style, beating Lloyd, Reinhardt and Bernard. Unfortunately for him, it was the wrong day for this performance: on the next day, simply beating two of these opponents (Reinhardt and Bernard) was enough for Welile to become a “Contender”. (Not that I want to put down Welile’s performance – he did exactly what was required, and he cannot be blamed if the draw didn’t give him a chance to shine against the top seeds.) But Andrew, still on 5th seed, had a repeat of last year facing the top seed in round 1. Which given Victor’s strength compared to the rest of the field is best seen as receiving a zero point bye in exchange for getting to play a teaching game. That left him in a must-win situation against Paul (1 dan, many-time Contender, on form, and who really won his first round except forgot about the clock and lost on time), which seemed to be going exactly as planned, but a simple slip-up just when he had him on the hook meant good night, thank you for trying, and better luck next year…

    July 18th, 2005 at 1:09 pm
  2. Tristen says:

    These tournaments are brutal, and people get tough draws. I sympathise. Even Reinhardt, who played really well, ‘deserved’ a better place. Likewise with Andrew, he probably played better go than me on the day (had to, I imagine), but because of last year’s results I ended one place higher than him, which is rough. Andrew did have tough draw, and bad luck.

    It is a bit bizarre that, for the past two years, I have yet to play against Andrew, this being despite the fact that we have been the only 1-kyu players in both tournaments. Maybe on the internet tournament.

    Bob played well on Sunday against me, had bad luck to be drawn against Victor, and good luck to play against a non-existant Welile (Welile missed the first round on Sunday, giving Bob an automatic win).

    July 18th, 2005 at 3:04 pm

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