Othello News December 2015

Takashi Izumi wins 3rd Mito Endurance Tournament

Location: Mito, Japan
Date: December 27th
Tourney format: 18 rounds Swiss, 15 minutes
Link: JOA website

Takashi Izumi won this monster marathon tournament with 15 wins, two losses and 1 draw. After such a brilliant victory, he really deserved a large beer. Cheers!

Takashi Izumi also won the 2nd Mito Endurance Tournament in May of this year. That tournament even had 2 more rounds! At the 1st Mito Endurance Tournament in December 2013, Takashi finished 3rd. That 16 rounds tournament was won by Keiko Nakamura.

16, 18 or even 20 games on one day, I thought wrongly that this kind of tournament had never been played outside of Japan.

Cheers!

One of the first endurance tournaments was played in 1984 in Pontoise, just outside Paris. 8 players met for 24 hours !
We started playing at 1pm on Saturday and stopped at 1pm on Sunday… without sleeping of course !
We played 7 rounds of normal 25mn games, 7 rounds of 5mn blitz games and 5 rounds of "special rules" games (different start position, you could sometimes force your opponent to play a specific move, you had an objective in the game (play an X-square, take all four edges…) and others I can’t remember).
Of course, we also had pauses : dinner, soup at 2am and croissants in the morning.
And afterwards the Finns have played several night fights of course.
Manu Lazard

Of course, Manu was the fastest, as usual, to tell you that we had had 24-hour tournaments outside of Japan (though I never played in any of them).
You can find more info about Finnish Othello Night Fight here.
I even think that one year they played a 25-hour tournament, just to break the record and maybe even a 26-hour one.
Marc Tastet

Ryosuke Tsuchiya wins Kyushu Cup 2015

Location: Fukuoka, Japan
Date: December 27th
Tourney format: 6 rounds
Link: JOA website

Ryosuke Tsuchiya
Hidefumi Sentoku
Naoki Hamada

Yasushi Nagano wins 108th Shinagawa Seaside Othello Open

Location: Shinagawa, Japan
Date: December 26th
Tourney format: 6 rounds
Link: JOA website

Yasushi Nagano won the tournament with 5 wins and 1 loss. Right behind him two other players with 5 wins: Kouichiro Sato and Jyou Nakano. Ysuske Takanashi finished 4th with 4 points.

Koh Bo Xiang wins Singapore Othello Masters Series 2015

Location: Singapore
Date: December 20th
Tourney format: 7 rounds Swiss
Link: SOO on Facebook, pictures on FB by Chu Chee Chin

Best of the 1st division was Koh Bo Xiang with 5 wins. Two other players also scored 5 points. The tournament was exciting till the end. The winner commented online "So this time I got lucky again. Too lucky". In 2014 Koh Boh Xiang finished second, 1.5 points behind the 2014 winner Alex Koh Bo Chao.
Ng Hui Wen won the 2nd division, also with 5 wins.

final results division 1 and 2

Koh Bo Xiang, winner of Singapore Masters Series 2015

Takanori Oshimizu wins 81st Sendai Open

Location: Sendai, Japan
Date: December 19th
Tourney format: 6 rounds Swiss
Link: JOA website, Tohoku block on Facebook

Best of the 11 players at this tourney was Takanori Oshimizu. He won all 6 games

Mireille de Graaf - Blijleven wins 7th Burijn Othello Open

Location: Alkmaar, Netherlands
Date: December 15th
Touney format: 5 rounds Swiss
Link: NOV website

Winner of this tournament with 22 players was Mireille de Graaf - Blijleven, wife of Jan de Graaf and mother of Wendy and Jasmijn. This family is really committed to Othello.

Othello News editor Trees wants to go to WOC in Mito

Wishes for 2016

Koh Bo Chao is determined to win the Singapore Championship in 2016 and the World Othello Championship in 2016-2020. He sent his wish to the Othello Gods by means of a big Chinese lantern. Good luck!!!

Curious to see if this will work, Othello News lighted a couple of virtual lanterns, If you see me in Mito next year, it means the trick worked :)

Hidekazu Nagasaki wins 69th Niigata Open

Location: Niigata, Japan
Date: December 13th
Tourney format: 5 rounds Swiss
Link: JOA website, Satoshi Koide blog

Hidekazu Nagasaki won the tourney with a full set of 5 points. Runner-up was Hiroto Nagano who scored 4 wins. Also 4 wins for Masaki Takizawa and Satoshi Koide.

Naga Takahashi wins 102nd Coastal Challenge Cup

Location: Tokyo, Japan
Date: December 12th
Tourney format: 6 rounds Swiss
Link: JOA website

His first tournament victory for Naga Takahashi with 5 wins and 1 loss. Congrats! Runner-up was Tetsuya Nakajima who also scored 5 points.

Francesco Marconi wins Torneo di Natale di Othello

Location: Rome, Italy
Date: December 13th
Tourney format: 4 rounds, 16 players
Link: FB Photo album by Biagio Privitera

Jeroen Everts wins December Open & Othello Julfest!

Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Date: December 12th
Tourney format: 7 rounds

Jeroen won the tournament with a perfect score of 7 points. Second place for Niklas Wettergren with 6 points.

Bintsa Andriani wins Tournoi de Noël

Location: Paris, France
Date: December 12th
Tourney format: 5 rounds Swiss
Link: FFO website

Bintsa won all his games at this Christmas tournament, great job!

1:   5 pts [228]   ANDRIANI Bintsa (45) {FRA}
2:   4 pts [221]   LEVY-ABEGNOLI Thierry (3598) {FRA}
3:   3 pts [200]   BUSUTTIL Michel (228) {FRA}
              [179]   BENOIT Serge (3600) {FRA}
              [163]   CLUZON Gilles (3734) {FRA}
6:   2 pts [158]   LECAT Monique (2788) {BEL}
                [98]   RUSSKIKH Svetlana (50092) {FRA}
8:   1 pt [81] OVION Jacques (275) {FRA}
9:   0 pt [72]   ENGUEHARD Guillaume (50091) {FRA}

Bintsa Andriani - Thierry Lévy-Abégnoli

ANDRIANI Bintsa 34-30 BUSUTTIL Michel
Tournoi de Noël

ANDRIANI Bintsa 34-30 LEVY-ABEGNOLI Thierry
Tournoi de Noël

WOC 2015, Imre Leader's favourite moments

Here are Imre's favourite moments from the Worlds. They are the times when he just gasped with amazement.

JUIGNER Arthur 35-29 TAKANASHI Yusuke (Round 5)
39th WOC Cambridge

Arthur Juigner 35-29 Yusuke Takanashi, round 5

This has the trademark Juigner move 17: he plays this line so very nicely.
But what is brilliant is the extraordinary move 47, followed by 49. He gives up both a2 and a1, just to get h2 and parity. So many discs given up for parity, and yet after that the outcome is clear.

Matthias Berg 27-37 Steven Robinson, round 5

Robinson, to play at move 34, needs access to c2. So he plays g7 to get it!
I think this was the bravest move I saw in the tournament. This is not Zebra-correct, since it turns out that Berg could have replied h8 g8 e8 and kept f8. But it is so fearless.

BERG Matthias 27-37 ROBINSON Steven (Round 5)
39th WOC Cambridge

SEELEY Ben 35-29 HAND David (Round 10)
39th WOC Cambridge

Ben Seeley 35-29 David Hand, round 10

This may be the only game I saw with both sides (not just one side) playing brilliant
x-squares. Seeley goes to g2 at move 31, which is not so surprising, but look at his move 33 to b2! And then Hand plays the wonderful 36g7, just to keep control.

More about the WOC 2015:

Marc Tastet posted an interesting article about the World Othello Championship in Cambridge on the FFO website (in french).
More game analysis can be found on Takeshi Murakami's blog (in Japanese)

Round 1 - 7, Yusuke Takanashi
Round 1 - 7, Yoko Rose
Round 8 - 13 and final, Yoko Rose

Why not send us your own personal WOC report. Analyse your best or worst game or comment on the game of your personal Othello hero.

Yusuke Takanashi picks up Othello magic at Hogwarts

Yusuke Takanashi wins 26th Kawasaki Open

Location: Kanagawa, Japan
Date: December 6th
Tourney format: 6 rounds Swiss
Link: JOA website, Takeshi Murakami blog

Yusuke Takanashi won the tournament with 5 wins and a draw. Second place was for Yoshinori Ohike with 5 wins and a loss. Daisuke Kamikura finished 3rd with 4 wins and a draw (against Yusuke).
It is great that Othello News can show you games from the tournament thanks to the excellent blog by Takeshi Murakami. If you want to share some of your own games, please don't hesitate to send your game transcript to Othello News. If you can include a short game comment, that would be perfect too.

NODA Bintatsu 32-32 MURAKAMI Takeshi
26th Kawasaki Open, round 1

YABE Yuma 46-18 MURAKAMI Takeshi
26th Kawasaki Open, round 6

Three at Othello

The ever creative Italian Othello players, Maria Serena Vecchi, Chiara Gigliucci and Leonardo Caviola, experimented with a simultaneous game for 3 players.
Three players at one table and each plays 2 games at the same time, one game as white and the other as black:
player 1 (Black) - player 2 (White)
player 2 (Black) - player 3 (White)
player 3 (Black) - player 1 (White)
You can see the players placed a disc by the side of the board to remind them of the colour they play at that particular board. I think that once you get over the initial confusion, it can be a lot of fun.

Arnaud Delaunay wins Préqualificatif Grenoble

Location: Grenoble, France
Date: December 5 - 6
Tourney format: 7 rounds, semifinals and final
Link: LiveOthello, FFO website

There were no more than 7 players at this tourney. But it's not about numbers, it's about how the game is played and we saw some very interesting games.
The top 4 of the Préqualificatif Grenoble in June 2014 was also present at this 2015 edition. Winner in 2014 was Takuji Kashiwabara, runner-up Arthur Juigner, third place Bintsa Andriani and 4th place Arnaud Delaunay. This time the same four players qualified for the semi's on Sunday. Arthur won all his games in the round robin on Saturday.

Standings after day 1 :
1. Arthur Juigner     7/7
2. Takuji Kashiwabara 5/7
Bintsa Andriani    5/7
4. Arnaud Delaunay 4,5/7
5. Félix Juigner    3,5/7
6. Stéphane Michel    2/7
7. François Juigner   1/7

final game Arnaud - Takuji

KASHIWABARA Takuji 29-35 JUIGNER Arthur
Préqualificatif Grenoble, round 1

DELAUNAY Arnaud 32-32 JUIGNER Felix
Préqualificatif Grenoble, round 3

KASHIWABARA Takuji 19-45 ANDRIANI Bintsa
Préqualificatif Grenoble, round 5

Takuji Kashiwabara and Arnaud Delaunay both qualified for the final 2-0.
Arthur Juigner won the playoff for 3rd/4th place against Bintsa Andriani

Semifinals:
Arnaud Delaunay 38 - 26 Arthur Juigner
Arthur Juigner 19 - 45 Arnaud Delaunay
Takuji Kashiwabara 49 - 15 Bintsa Andriani
Bintsa Andriani 22 - 42 Takuji Kashiwabara

Playoff 3rd / 4th place:
Bintsa Andriani 23 - 41 Arthur Juigner

Final:
Takuji Kashiwabara 26-38 Arnaud Delaunay
Arnaud Delaunay 20-44 Takuji Kashiwabara
Arnaud Delaunay 48-16 Takuji Kashiwabara

Congrats to Arnaud Delaunay who won the first pre-qualifying tournament for a spot on the French team at the WOC in 2016.

ANDRIANI Bintsa 23-41 JUIGNER Arthur
Préqualificatif Grenoble, playoff 3/4

KASHIWABARA Takuji 26-38 DELAUNAY Arnaud
Préqualificatif Grenoble, final game 1

DELAUNAY Arnaud 20-44 KASHIWABARA Takuji
Préqualificatif Grenoble, final game 2

DELAUNAY Arnaud 48-16 KASHIWABARA Takuji
Préqualificatif Grenoble, final game 3