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Both the European and the US Go Congresses are over. Catalin Taranu 5p of Romania won the European Champion title this year as the best placed European, even if his overall place was 6th. His score was 7-3, same as Alexander Dinerstein 3p, Ilia Shishkin 7d and Pal Balogh 6d, but Catalin came ahead on SOS (sum of opponents scores). Otherwise, the congress was dominated by guests from Asia as usual in the last few years: first 5 places overall were taken by Park Jong Wook 7d of Korea (9-1), Hong Seok Ui 7d of Korea (8-2), Lai Yu-Cheng 7d of Taiwan (7-3, after a very good 6-0 start), Kim Joon Sang 7d of Korea (7-3) and Hong Seul-Ki 7d of Korea (7-3). Full results here. European professionals don’t seem to be a match for the Asian top amateurs, unfortunately. On the other hand, the US Go Congress was dominated by professionals – Asian professionals, that is. The winner of the open tornament was Kim Myungwan 8p of Korea (who also played the demonstration match against computer program Mogo) after defeating Jiang Mingjiu 7p of China in the final round. You can see the final results here. Feng Yun 9p of China won Ing Masters after defeating Yang Yilun 7p of China – the game was commented live and extensively by Takemiya Masaki 9p of Japan who was the star guest professional at the US Congress. You can downlowd the commented game record from KGS. Final results are here. It’s too bad that these major events in the non-Asian Go world are overlapping so many players and guest professionals have to choose one or the other – the two Go federations should work together to schedule them better.