Barcelona XVIII 19-20 February
The Barcelona Tournament was won by Miyakawa Wataru (6 dan), a Japanese student living in Paris. He won all five games in this McMahon event, with the bar set at 4 dan. Among his victims were Du Jingyu (7 dan) and Zhao Pei (6 dan), both Chinese but living in Germany (Zhao is one of the women players at the top of European Go). Full results are posted on the web.
While Go has not developed in Spain as quickly as in some other European countries, the Catalan organisers have run a strong tournament, year after year (history, results archive). Marc Gonzalez was presented with a special award by EGF President Erik Puyt to recognise his continuing efforts.
Miyakawa first came to prominence by sharing the 1992 European Championship at Canterbury. He currently ranks eighth in Europe with a rating of 2680 on the basis of two dozen events, a level which signifies strong 6 dan (2650+) even for the grading purists. He has a good personal name for a Go player (watari is a Go technical term from Japanese, meaning a connection using the bridging property of the edge). His closest game, a half-pointer, was against Mikami Masaru (2615), a Spanish resident and dark horse, who came third; in second place was Du Jingyu, European number five.
