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The Ambassador Cup 2008 Printer Friendly The 2nd edition of the Ambassador Cup Open tournament was held in Bucharest during 13th-14th December 2008. The location for this big Go event who gathered about 150 players was one of the hall rooms inside the National Theatre building right in the city center. This event was possible due to the efforts of "Saijo Go Club" members led by Catalin Taranu, the Romanian Go Federation, the Japan Embassy support and Fujitsu Siemens as main sponsor. There were 2 tournaments, the Open one where about 130 contestants played 5 rounds to decide he winner of the Ambassador Cup and 20 players fought in a side event for beginners. On friday afternoon there was an Openning Ceremony where the organizers and the Japan's Ambassador in Bucharest, Yoshiobu Higashi, had a speech and welcome the players for a glass of wine and some sweets in japanese style. The big regret for most of the players was that Radu Baciu, the romanian Go 'Godfather' was missing as he passed away a few days before the tournament, but we could all feel his presence while placing the stones on the goboard in perfect silence. Also as a side event some very talented kids organized an origami show during the whole weekend so players could learn some traditional japanese skill during game breaks. The schedule of the tourney was pretty tight with 3 rounds on Saturday and 2 rounds on Sunday, the games were played with 45 minutes basic time and 30 seconds per move byo-yomi (overtime). The winner was Cornel Burzo 6 dan who managed a perfect 5-0 score. Last year he finished 2nd with 4 wins and 1 loss against the winner Cristian Pop 7d, who didn't manage to finish top 3 this time because of the 2 losses against Mirel Florescu 6 dan and Lucian Corlan 5 dan. Lucian finished 2nd after beating Pop in the last round in a very spectacular fight game reviewed here. Daniel Cioata 5 dan won 3rd place with 4 wins and 1 loss. Both Lucian and Daniel lost to Cornel, you can find them commented in the Go Library, under Amateur Games (Dan Cioata - Cornel Burzo, Lucian Corlan - Cornel Burzo). There were no money prizes in the tourney, but the first 2 places got laptops and the 3rd place won a big LCD monitor. All other players who scored 4 wins took cups and T-shirts. One special prize was rewarded to the only foreigner player in the tournament Alexio Voudouris 1 dan from Greece. We hope that next year more players from other countries will join this big event. More images from the tourney can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.ro/cupa.ambasadorului Share it: Delicious Digg Facebook StumbleUpon Reddit Comments User Post Please login to post comments

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