A Division – The Tiger roars

The top division was dominated by Martin Mueller and Wei (Tiger) Cheng. In case you hadn’t heard, the nickname Tiger was adopted to distinguish from Wei Cheng (The Water) from Calgary. There were five other entries including Terry Fung 4D, Sangkun Park 4D, Beipei Shi, Irene Sha and Bing Xiao. The defending champion, Luke Chung was unfortunately absent this year. When Martin defeated Tiger in the third round we thought it was over. In a Swiss Mcmahon format it would have been but this was a double elimination so Wei still had a chance. After fighting off 4 dans in the lower section he met Martin again in round 5 and scored an upset. This forced a deciding final Sunday afternoon and the Tiger took an advantage in the early fighting and never faltered after that. The Tiger has regained his title since winning in 2005. Wei also gained a provisional  6 dan rank by the smallest margin of 1 point (501). By the CGA custom an official 6 dan rank is not awarded until a rating of 530 is achieved.

Martin praised Wei’s fighting skill and reading ability and admitted that he rightly deserved the win. Wei also was humble with praise for Martin saying that Martin is still stronger and perhaps he (Wei) was lucky. The Sabaki players are blessed to have Martin back from Europe and also having Wei move to Edmonton. Hopefully Luke will be back to challenge both in the future. The pack of 4 dans are in hot pursuit and as they get stronger we look forward to good competition. I think Terry lost to Wei by only 0.5 points so he certainly deserves a mention.

B Division – Jonathan Melcher wins over Ivan Lo in Final

                        Aden Grue took third place.

C Division

The winner was Oliver Rossier who was undefeated. The second place award went to Steve Leung from Calgary.

E Division

The E division (beginners) had 7 entries. They played round robins on 13 x 13 boards and I think they had fun and learned a lot. The top group was won by Davis Lazowski who upset John Henderson who has been promoted and will move to D division next time