Othello News April 2014
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CHUNG Jihoon 28 -36 OH Joung-Mok 21st Korea Othello Championship |
Joung-Mok Oh wins 21st Korea Othello ChampionshipLocation: Seoul, South Korea
Date: April 27th Tourney format: 5 rounds, 12 players Joung-Mok Oh won the tourmey with a perfect score of 5 wins Ranking of the top 3 after round 5:
제21회 전국 오델로 선수권대회 결과 |
Play against Takuji Kashiwabara at his 101st European Grand Prix tourney
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Still time to sign up for the Copenhagen EGP Open, May 3rd - 4th.
So far 14 participants from 7 countries..... DENMARK: Karsten Feldborg, Henrik Vallund, Palle Badsted, Jens Aagaard-Hansen SWEDEN: Benkt Steentoft, Robin Ragnarsson, Isabel Holmgren NORWAY: Tor Birger Skogen FRANCE: Marc Tastet, Takuji Kashiwabara ITALY: Francesco Marconi, Luigi Puzzo UNITED KINGDOM: Imre Leader GERMANY: Matthias Berg Tournament site: Aktivhuset Olsbækken, Olsbæk Strandvej 43, 2670 Greve, about 20 km south of Copenhagen. |
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link to FNGO website
birthday cake at a fun Othello party for Alessandro earlier this week
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Alessandro Di Mattei wins Ferrara Open and Italian Grand Prix 2014Location: Ferrara, Italy
Date: April 27th Tourney format: 7 rounds No surprise that Alessandro Di Mattei won this 4th stage of the Italian Othello Grand Prix. There is one more stage to go, Napels May 25th, but Alessandro is so far ahead of all the other players, he now is the 2014 Italian GP champion. As Italian GP winner, he is the first one to be selected on the Italian team for the WOC in Thailand. Runnerup at the Ferrara Open is Francesco Marconi and third place for Giuseppe Giarulli. 
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Takuji Kashiwabara played 100 European Grand Prix tourneys
Takuji Kashiwabara (FRA) is one of the major Othello players in Europe. He won the European Grand Prix Championship 7 times. The most recent EGP tourney in Rome was his 100th EGP tourney. Reason enough for Othello news to have an interview with him, before tourney number 101 in Copenhagen.
Takuji Kashiwabara at his 100th EGP tourney, Rome 2014
Takuji, when and how did you start to play Othello and when was your first EGP tourney?
I started playing othello as a child, which is nothing surprising for a Japanese. I started to play in competition in 1996 in France when I learned that there was such thing as a selection to French Championship in Lyon, a city which was just a little over an hour from my city by train. To my big surprise, I got qualified for the French Championship, and I think this qualification motivated me to play serious competitions.
My first EGP was Paris EGP in 1997, but of course, for me it was just another french tournament, although there were some international players. My first EGP outside France was Cambridge EGP in 1998.
You won the EGP 7 times. How many tourney victories and finals?
You can find the numbers in EGP statistic page (note: by Tom Schotte) of the wonderful website of Othello News...
What was your best Othello year so far and what was your sweetest victory?
Two difficult questions. The year when I made the most progress was indoubtedly 1999 : I won my first full-length tournament in France, my first international tournament, and got qualified for the World Championship for the first time (well at the time in France there were more players interested in playing at WOC than today, so it was not that easy). In terms of my overall performance over the year, it is really difficult to choose from 2001, 2002 and 2003. But if we are talking about my best performance in the WOC, it was 2005. In any case, that goes back too long time ago now.
The second question is also difficult to answer. There are number of victories of which I have been quite happy for different reasons. Basically you can be happy about your victory because you found a nice move that is not obvious, or because you trusted your intuition which turned out to be correct, or because you succeeded to plan really ahead, or because you learned something new (well this happens more often in games you lose than in games you win) during the game, or because you have had an occasion to apply a newly learned theory (or a theory that you knew for a long time but you hadn't had an occasion to apply up to then), or simply because the game had an important consequence, or maybe because the opponent was reputed to be strong. Now, I can find almost several games of which I am fond of in each category.
Let me mention a few of them:
Kashiwabara-Hidayat EGP Milano 2001 Match for the 3rd place
Kashiwabara-Kitajima WOC 2002 Playoff
Kashiwabara-Tamenori WOC 2005 Semi-final 2nd game
These three fit in more or less same category : I was in very difficult position, I had to think very hard to survive (actually during the game against Kitajima, somewhat I was optimistic), and when my opponents made the fatal error, I managed to stay calm and play the correct move in spite of the pressure I had. Well, you might be intrigued to see that I mention the pressure for a match for the 3rd place in an EGP tournament, but it happened to be the first game I played for a prize money...
I started playing othello as a child, which is nothing surprising for a Japanese. I started to play in competition in 1996 in France when I learned that there was such thing as a selection to French Championship in Lyon, a city which was just a little over an hour from my city by train. To my big surprise, I got qualified for the French Championship, and I think this qualification motivated me to play serious competitions.
My first EGP was Paris EGP in 1997, but of course, for me it was just another french tournament, although there were some international players. My first EGP outside France was Cambridge EGP in 1998.
You won the EGP 7 times. How many tourney victories and finals?
You can find the numbers in EGP statistic page (note: by Tom Schotte) of the wonderful website of Othello News...
What was your best Othello year so far and what was your sweetest victory?
Two difficult questions. The year when I made the most progress was indoubtedly 1999 : I won my first full-length tournament in France, my first international tournament, and got qualified for the World Championship for the first time (well at the time in France there were more players interested in playing at WOC than today, so it was not that easy). In terms of my overall performance over the year, it is really difficult to choose from 2001, 2002 and 2003. But if we are talking about my best performance in the WOC, it was 2005. In any case, that goes back too long time ago now.
The second question is also difficult to answer. There are number of victories of which I have been quite happy for different reasons. Basically you can be happy about your victory because you found a nice move that is not obvious, or because you trusted your intuition which turned out to be correct, or because you succeeded to plan really ahead, or because you learned something new (well this happens more often in games you lose than in games you win) during the game, or because you have had an occasion to apply a newly learned theory (or a theory that you knew for a long time but you hadn't had an occasion to apply up to then), or simply because the game had an important consequence, or maybe because the opponent was reputed to be strong. Now, I can find almost several games of which I am fond of in each category.
Let me mention a few of them:
Kashiwabara-Hidayat EGP Milano 2001 Match for the 3rd place
Kashiwabara-Kitajima WOC 2002 Playoff
Kashiwabara-Tamenori WOC 2005 Semi-final 2nd game
These three fit in more or less same category : I was in very difficult position, I had to think very hard to survive (actually during the game against Kitajima, somewhat I was optimistic), and when my opponents made the fatal error, I managed to stay calm and play the correct move in spite of the pressure I had. Well, you might be intrigued to see that I mention the pressure for a match for the 3rd place in an EGP tournament, but it happened to be the first game I played for a prize money...
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KASHIWABARA Takuji 33 - 31 KATAJIMA Hideki WOC 2002 Amsterdam, playoff final 4 |
KASHIWABARA Takuji 34 - 30 TAMENORI Hideshi WOC 2005 Reykjavik, semi-final game 2 |
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MARCONI Francesco 19 - 45 KASHIWABARA Takuji EGP Rome 2005 |
Here is one game involving "nice move" At the move 34, although other moves don't look very promising, 34 g2 is not so obvious move to play, especially because of the north edge: White gains one tempo in the north-east region, but Black then is likely to end up playing B1. The point is that in most variations, because of the wedging in h2, White will have another potential tempo in south-east region. Which is why the best move 35 for Black is e8 ?! |
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Here is one in which "I learned something" The points are 34 e1 (well, this was the second time I played the move, but the continuation was different) together with 40 g2. If you only consider the north-east corner, 34 e1 will look like an extremely bad move. By flipping f2, White gives a tempo in g1 to Black, and by flipping g3, White throws away his own tempo in h2. But if you look all over the board, you see that h2 is not a tempo for white anyway, because of the stoner g7->h3, which is extremely difficult avoid. Furthermore, if Black takes back the edge, White then will have a quiet move in c6, and, the best part of the story is that g1 is not really a tempo, in a long term, for Black, because White will have a tempo at g2 in a near future. Of course, another question is whether one should play 40 g2 or 40 h7, since the north edge is quite attractive, and White will have more liberty to play around the corner a1 than Black around the corner h8. It has turned out that g2 is much better than h7, and in many cases in this kind of position g2 would be better. By the way, this game also happens to fall into another category, that is this is a part of the first best of three match ever I won. |
PENLOUP Dominique 23 - 41 KASHIWABARA Takuji EGP Brussels 1998 |
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KASHIWABARA Takuji 34 - 30 FELDBORG Karsten EGP Copenhagen 2001 |
Here is the one with a plan which went well, but... The plan I made, when I played 39 e8 was : after e8 g8 g7 a3 b2 h7 h5 h4 (up to this point, White has practically no choice) White will have to cut the diagonal playing either h2 or g1, and then play b7 for the parity. Since Black takes the corner a8, White will have to play h8 losing the local parity in south-east. So there are lines like the line played in the actual game, or starting with g1h1 instead of h2h1, and in any case Black wins. After the tournament I was proud of what I played, but later, when I analyzed the game, I realized that I had it all wrong ! White could have played 50 g1 first of all (this still keeps the parity because 51 b8 then would flip g3). Furthermore, White didn't have to play h8 at all, for example 50 b7 followed by a8h6(!)h8b8 was a win for White. To make the matters even worse, in the line of the game, White could have still played 52g1 b8 a1 a2 b1 to recover the parity (Black would have no access to B7). Now, I don't know what to think of this game, aside from the fact that I was lucky... |
Takuji Kashiwabara, EGP Champion 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2011, 2012 and 2013
Is there 1 particular player in Europe that you learned a lot from?
I played against Manu Caspard at the first round of my first French Championship! After the game we left the room, took a board and he commented my moves, without the transcript sheet ! Several years later I learned that in Japan almost any good player can produce the transcript without the board, but at the time this impressed me a lot. Anyhow, he won the French Championship that year. The year I started in European Grand Prix (outside France), he was the winner of European Grand Prix, winning all four tournaments in which he took part. So you see, he was an othellistic hero for me. I replayed many times his games, thinking over possible variations and refutations etc.
Is there 1 particular player in Europe that you find hard to beat?
If I keep playing like I did in Cambridge and Rome this year, lots of players will be hard to beat for me :( More seriously I think currently I am having a huge loss streak against Michele Borassi.
Is there 1 particular city that you like to go to for EGP?
Difficult question. I usually like Prague and Copenhagen as the tournaments there are very well organised, Cambridge because I love the city, Paris because it is easy to go (I used to like Milan, Torino, Genova and Bruxelles for the same reason but there is no longer EGP tournament in these cities). Of course, I shouldn't forget Gouda, Hoorn, Amstelveen, Krakow, Gdansk, Stockholm...
Last year there were only 5 players that took part in 4 or more of the 2013 EGP tourneys. That is not a very solid base for such a prestigeous titIe as European Othello Champion. Is there a future for the European Grand Prix? What can be done to attract more players?
Well, I am aware what I say is not very diplomatic, but in my opinion there are simply too many tournaments in places that are far away. There are now tournaments in Athens and Moscow. When I started, there were 5 tournaments with best 3 results that counted, which was very reasonable. I think it would be better to reduce the number of tournaments, but not by letting each country organize one tournament once in three years instead of once in two years. One thing we could do, is to distinguish "central" countries and "peripheral" countries and each country in the central zone organize a tournament once in two years whereas others do, for example, once in four years.
I am sure you are eager to win the 2014 EGP too. How many hours do you spend studying Othello?
Not a lot this year. The results in the last two tournaments reflect this...
For the Othello rookies, is there a fast way to on the board succes?
Depending on what you call "fast". By dedicating ten hours a day to Othello, one will probably make seventy times as much progress as by spending an hour each week for Othello. Can we call it a fast progress?
Your best result at the WOC is a third place in 2005, Isn't it about time that the 7x European champion also takes the World title?
As I said before, at the moment I can't spend enough time for Othello this year, so I certainly will not win the World title.
Thank you very much Takuji for the interview and good luck!!!
Interview by Trees van Seggelen, April 2014
I played against Manu Caspard at the first round of my first French Championship! After the game we left the room, took a board and he commented my moves, without the transcript sheet ! Several years later I learned that in Japan almost any good player can produce the transcript without the board, but at the time this impressed me a lot. Anyhow, he won the French Championship that year. The year I started in European Grand Prix (outside France), he was the winner of European Grand Prix, winning all four tournaments in which he took part. So you see, he was an othellistic hero for me. I replayed many times his games, thinking over possible variations and refutations etc.
Is there 1 particular player in Europe that you find hard to beat?
If I keep playing like I did in Cambridge and Rome this year, lots of players will be hard to beat for me :( More seriously I think currently I am having a huge loss streak against Michele Borassi.
Is there 1 particular city that you like to go to for EGP?
Difficult question. I usually like Prague and Copenhagen as the tournaments there are very well organised, Cambridge because I love the city, Paris because it is easy to go (I used to like Milan, Torino, Genova and Bruxelles for the same reason but there is no longer EGP tournament in these cities). Of course, I shouldn't forget Gouda, Hoorn, Amstelveen, Krakow, Gdansk, Stockholm...
Last year there were only 5 players that took part in 4 or more of the 2013 EGP tourneys. That is not a very solid base for such a prestigeous titIe as European Othello Champion. Is there a future for the European Grand Prix? What can be done to attract more players?
Well, I am aware what I say is not very diplomatic, but in my opinion there are simply too many tournaments in places that are far away. There are now tournaments in Athens and Moscow. When I started, there were 5 tournaments with best 3 results that counted, which was very reasonable. I think it would be better to reduce the number of tournaments, but not by letting each country organize one tournament once in three years instead of once in two years. One thing we could do, is to distinguish "central" countries and "peripheral" countries and each country in the central zone organize a tournament once in two years whereas others do, for example, once in four years.
I am sure you are eager to win the 2014 EGP too. How many hours do you spend studying Othello?
Not a lot this year. The results in the last two tournaments reflect this...
For the Othello rookies, is there a fast way to on the board succes?
Depending on what you call "fast". By dedicating ten hours a day to Othello, one will probably make seventy times as much progress as by spending an hour each week for Othello. Can we call it a fast progress?
Your best result at the WOC is a third place in 2005, Isn't it about time that the 7x European champion also takes the World title?
As I said before, at the moment I can't spend enough time for Othello this year, so I certainly will not win the World title.
Thank you very much Takuji for the interview and good luck!!!
Interview by Trees van Seggelen, April 2014
Scott Hughes wins Australian Nationals 2014Location: Tuggerah, Australia
Date: April 26th Tourney format: 6 rounds swiss + 1 game final Australia has a new Othello National champion, Scott Hughes! Scott won the title in 2008 and finally succeeded in winning it back. Matt took the title back in 2009 and kept it for 5 years in a row but this year Matt finished second. Third place for Nathan Cairns Report by Robert Girardo, president of the AOF: There were only 7 players at the Australian Othello Nationals this Saturday in Tuggerah but there was plenty of quality with 3 former Australian champions in the group. Matt Vinar went undefeated in the preliminary 5 rounds and looked set to win his 10th national title. However the 2008 Australian champion Scott Hughes defeated Matt in the final 17-47 taking an early advantage in the game with a well prepared opening. Standings after round 5 : 1: 5 pts [406] VINAR Matt 2: 4 pts [363] HUGHES Scott 3: 3 pts [325] CAIRNS Nathan [313] CAIRNS Phil 5: 2 pts [277] MILANKOV Samuel [229] GIRARDO Robert 7: 1 pt [207] BROOM Adrian |
VINAR Matt 17 - 47 HUGHES Scott Australian Nationals 2014, final 
link to AOF website
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Ivo Rybárik wins stage 3 Czech GP Othello
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
Date: April 26th
Tourney format: 7 rounds
Thanks to Ján Rybárik for the ready to post results and pictures.
Date: April 26th
Tourney format: 7 rounds
Thanks to Ján Rybárik for the ready to post results and pictures.
Marcus Frönmark wins Norrköping OpenLocation: Norrköping, Sweden
Date: April 26th Tourney format: 7 rounds The tournament is also the 15th Östgöta Championship ! The tournament is open for all, but only Östergötland residents and players that were born in Östergötland can win the Östgöta Champion title. Final results:
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Marcus 1st DAN at Meijin 2014
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ASPENRYD Henri 28 - 36 STEENTOFT Benkt Norrköping Open, round 2 |
ASPENRYD Henri 36 - 28 FRONMARK Marcus Norrköping Open, round 7 |
Nicky van den Biggelaar wins Ghent Easter TournamentLocation: Ghent, Belgium
Date: April 21st Tourney format: 7 rounds,15 minutes Another edition of the Ghent Easter Othello tournament. Tom Schotte won the First Ghent Easter Othello Tournament in 2012 and the Second Easter Tournament in 2013. A lot of strong Dutch players came to Ghent for this 3rd Easter tourney, among them Nicky van den Biggelaar. The Easter Trophy Egg did not stay in Belgium, but crossed the border to the Netherlands. Nicky won six games, the only player strong enough to beat him was Erwin van den Berg. Erwin also finished with 6 points, he unfortunately started the tourney with a loss against Nick Reunes. Tom Schotte (BEL) finished 3rd with 5 points, he lost to both Nicky and Erwin. 
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Riki Saito wins 152nd Nagareyama openLocation: Nagareyma, Japan
Date: April 19th Tourney format: 6 rounds, 27 players The winner of this tourney, Riki Saito had a perfect score of 6 wins. 
link to results (in Japanese)
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Takashi Yamakawa wins 69th Sendai Open
Location: Sendai, Japan
Date: April 20th Tourney format: 6 rounds, 13 players Takashi won the tourney with a perfect score of 6 wins 
link to results (in Japanese)
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69th Sendai Open
Leonardo Caviola (best category A), Maria Serena Vecchi (best category B), Alessandro Di Mattei (winner)
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Alessandro Di Mattei wins Città di Roma 2014 stage 3Location: Rome, Italy
Date: April 13th Tourney format: 6 rounds of 16 minutes Three players with 5 wins after 6 rounds. In round 2, Carlo Alami lost 24-40 against Alessandro Pace and Michele Diodati lost 21-43 against Alessandro Di Matei. Alessandro lost a game in round 5 against Carlo Alami. 
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DIODATI Michele 21 - 43 DI MATTEI Alessandro Città Di Roma 2014, round 2 |
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DI MATTEI Alessandro 29 - 35 ALAMI Carlo Città Di Roma 2014, round 5 |
Phil Marson wins Oadby RegionalLocation: Oadby, Leicester, England
Date: April 12th Tourney format: 6 rounds Final Result: 1st Phil Marson 5.5 2nd Iain Barrass 4 3rd Andrew Burgess 3.5 4th Roy Arnold 3 5th Steve Rowe 2 6th Gökçe Balkan 0 |
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Emmanuel Lazard wins Ile De France 3
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Location: Paris, France
Date: April 5th Tourney format: 5 rounds Ile de France 4 will be played May 17th 1: 5. pts [223] LAZARD Emmanuel (11) {FRA} 2: 4. pts [212] DELAUNAY Arnaud (3518)) {FRA} 3: 3. pts [213] ANDRIANI Bintsa (45) {MDG} [212] TASTET Marc (2) {FRA} 5: 2. pts [152] BUSUTTIL Michel (228) {FRA} 6: 1. pt [107] BENOIT Serge (3600) {FRA} [86] OROZCO Ana (9025) {FRA} [75] PRIETO Jean-Raphael (9026) {FRA} 
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Janne Peiponen (FIN) wins Nordic Championship 2014
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Location: Lund, Sweden
Date: April 5th Tourney format: 7 rounds + final The Nordic Championship is an open Championship for the Nordic countries; Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The championship was first held in Copenhagen in 1985 and rotates through the Nordic countries. Karsten Feldborg and Erik Lund Jensen are the leading Nordic players of all times, with eight and five individual Nordic titles respectively. Last year Karsten Feldborg from Denmark won his 8th Nordic title in a very close 31 - 33 final game against Norwegian Vidar Albrigtsen. Four players from Denmark at this tourney, Henrik Vallund, Palle Badsted, Jens Aagaard-Hansen and Mikael Mårtensson. From Norway, Martin Ødegård and from Finland Janne Peiponen. Four Swedish players, Benkt Steentoft, Daniël Rignell, Mathias Andersson and Marcus Frönmark. Winner of the Nordic Championship 2014 is Janne Peiponen. Janne played against Marcus Fronmark in the final. They played each other in round 4 and that was 1 28 - 36 win for Marcus. But in the final game, the win was for Janne 54 - 10 Ranking of the 10 players after round 7: 1: 6 pts [416] FRONMARK Marcus (1454) {SWE} 2: 5 pts [423] PEIPONEN Janne (1645) {FIN} [406] ODEGARD Martin (2560) {NOR} [392] VALLUND Henrik (96) {DNK} 5: 4 pts [408] ANDERSSON Mathias (6552) {SWE} 6: 3 pts [366] BADSTED Palle (1025) {DNK} [341] STEENTOFT Benkt (1301) {SWE} 8: 2 pts [307] RIGNELL Daniel (1358) {SWE} 9: 1 pt [343] AAGAARD-HANSEN Jens (1019) {DNK} [308] MAARTENSSON Mikael (1017) {DNK} |
Final: Janne Peiponen (FIN) - Marcus Frönmark (SWE)
tourney results on SOF site
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ODEGARD Martin 30 - 34 FRONMARK Marcus Nordic Championship 2014, round 2 |
FRONMARK Marcus 46 - 15 VALLUND Henrik Nordic Championship 2014, round 3 |
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PEIPONEN Janne 39 - 25 ODEGARD Martin Nordic Championship 2014, round 5 |
PEIPONEN Janne 54 - 10 FRONMARK Marcus Nordic Championship 2014, final |
