Dear Go players!

First of all, Happy New Year and happy year of the Rabbit!
In this newsletter, we’ll first make a small but very very important announcement. Most of you might have guessed already 😏:

The European Go Congress 2023 will happen this summer!

Now, let’s get serious, here is the summary of this newsletter!

• A few words about EGC2023
• Registered participants: sleeping places!
• A sneak peak of the empty venue

EGC2023

The European Go Congress 2023 will take place in Markkleeberg, near Leipzig, in Germany, from the 22nd of July to the 5th of August. And yes, you can already register, book hotel rooms and train your Go skills. Also, we highly recommend you register to their newsletter as well: since the event is already in the “upcoming” part of your brain, it will be useful to follow closely any new development regarding the schedule and events!

For a bit of context, the 2023 EGC was supposed to take place in Ukraine. It was first cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, then in 2021 for the same reason, then postponed to 2023 and now postponed to better days.

In autumn 2022, Germany volunteered, despite the very short preparation time, to organize the 2023 edition. We sincerely hope that it will be a grand success and that you’ll join and make you all even more eager to join in 2024.

As we speak, more than 360 players already plan to participate!

And of course, we (the EGC2024 team) will also be there to introduce you to the French city of Toulouse and tell you more about the events we have planned. Aaaaand as always, we’ll come with surprises ;-)

Sleeping places for registered players

Good news (oh yeah, one more), we’ve negotiated sleeping places and rooms on site in student studios.

Priority will be given to the first-registered players, of course, and we’ll also save rooms for groups who said they will bring kids from a Go school but still don’t know precisely who will come.

We’re also working to get better prices for you for flight tickets and nearby hotels.

And a few pictures from the place!

Welcome!

If you see this, it means you found the place, congratulations! 🥳

If you can see the venue like this, you probably have a sort of 360° creepy vision but hey, maybe it helps on the go board!

A typical view from the eyes of a Go player taking a fresh air intensive breath, answering the “you won?” from his friend with “nah, still playing but tsssh I messed up a sequence although I was leading so much…” before getting back to the board with a small coffee or tea and renewed energy and ambition.

If you win 10/10 games, you may call this “the divine path to glory”

Next time, we may tell you more about the city itself and exciting updates.

Meanwhile, we sincerely hope to see you in the coming tournaments and at EGC2023!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. We still have a bit of time to go before 2024, your questions also help us improve the event and make it better for you.

All the best!

   The EGC2024 team

🎉 Dear Go friends!

300 players..(ok..🤐 "almost" 300!!) that's the number of players who registered two years in advance to the EGC2024! Incredible!!😱✨ Of course, such a number has very big consequences...

1) we are even more motivated, thank you for your trust! 💪🫂

2) we can already start planning accomodation options. We'll plan something for the volunteers, of course, and we also want to save the cheapest rooms for the players from countries with lower wages, and for groups with small budget coming from far away.

As you may know, France is not very cheap 🥲💸 , so as a Go community, we hope we can deal with it and help you plan in advance. We will do our best to make it possible for everyone to enjoy the Congress 💪✨.

3) Speaking of groups... some of you already plan to go with their Go school but don't know yet who, nor how many kids. And time flies... and fees also fly... and stress can reach hights 📈. No no no, that's not good! 😤

👍 So no worries! If you want to take part in the congress with a group (eg: National Youth team, Go school...), you can contact us! We will discuss group fees and will also help to arrange accomodation options once we get closer to 2024. 🫂

4) That was all... ah, and : Thank you all!! You're so awesome 😎

5) Have a great day and see you in some time for the next pack of news!

In the meantime, if you have any questions, write us!

If you have no questions, you have the right to remain silent!

if you want some more updates - not now but at some point - you can subscribe to our newsletter! 😗 👉 egc2024.org.

Maybe we'll tell you about your secret account on the website....

The team.

📢 Dear Go friends and readers of the newsletter! Our team is back from the EGC 2022, that took place in Vatra-Dornei, Romania. It was a wonderful experience and an incredible Congress. Applauds to the organizers! We were very happy to meet many players motivated to re-join the EGC in the coming years. See that, already 100 players registered for 2024!!!!!

In Romania, we had the chance to introduce in details the EGC 2024 to the EGF members during the Annual General Meeting and the players in general, and also discuss about organizing a congress. We could benefit from a lot of advices and experience from the EGC2022 and previous Congresses. It will be more than useful to prepare you a great event ☝️That's one of the powers of the Go community: sharing advices and tips, helping everyone improve, be that in Go or in EGC organization.

But ok, let's get to the point. Some veeeery important information:

[📣 Extra-important]

💶 • Early-bird fee will last until August 31st - register today to benefit from the special early entry fee, only 90€ for the two weeks!

💸 • ...and, if you register early, please consider also paying by the 31/08 :-) otherwise your early bird fee might...fly away!

[📣 Less important but still very important]

✨😳 • we had a nice walk in the future tournament place, the ENAC in Toulouse. It's big, nice, comfortable...We can already imagine the gobans, the stones sound ..."shtrshtr" when in the bowl, then "pa!" on the board. We can hear the "hhhhhmmmhffff" of strong players who misread a complicated situation and bow over the board in search of a desperate tesuji. We can picture the rengo tournament and the blitz tournament with clocks suffering from our love of Go 🥰 We can see the European Championship with its serious atmosphere and cameras looking with approbation at the moves of the top players, the big silence soon replaced by the growing whisper of game commentators after someone lost by 0.5...

Soon we'll share new updates, you can follow us on social medias - Facebook & Twitter

🍻 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇰🇷 • ah, yeah, we have one more big news! The website is now available in Japanese and Chinese, so you can share it with your Japanese and Chinese speaking friends. Korean should follow soon. Big thanks to our translators! 🥳

[📣 Maybe not important to you but important to us and you'll read it anyway]

• You're amazing, have a nice day and play a great Go 🤗

  The team.

Dear go friends!

As you may have heard (otherwise, probably you wouldn't be reading this at this moment), the European Go Congress 2024 will take place in France in Toulouse!

It will take place in the National School of Civil Aviation, and we are planing many many activities, also some game of Go.

We're super happy for this opportunity to organize such an awesome event and we want it to be an amazing experience for you as well.

To learn and prepare, what better choice than coming ourselves to a wonderful congress? We are right now participating to the EGC 2022 in Romania, Vatra-Dornei. The congress is going well and it's good to finally be all able to meet, play go and games and have fun. Despite the COVID uncertainty and the difficult political situation, the organizers and volunteers managed to prepare an incredible event and there are still a bit more than a week to go (or Go?)!

So we're looking forward to the EGC 2023 and then EGC 2024! In fact, you can already register and get the very very very early bird price!!

For the two weeks, if you register now it costs 90€.

And to be informed of all the updates, you can also subscribe to the newsletter.

See you around at the EGC 2022!

The team.