January 18, 2005
Program "Project GIPF Championship" in Cannes

As already mentioned last time: Project GIPF will be put in the spotlight during the coming *Festival International des Jeux* in Cannes, France. This item is a reminder of the previous item about Project GIPF in Cannes. But it would be stupid merely to repete what I wrote the other time, no? Better to instal a link and ask to read the previous item again, right? Here's the link. If you click on it your memory will be refreshed.

I'll be in Cannes from the beginning of the activities until te end - that is from Wednesday the 23rd to Sunday the 27th of February. On Wednesday and Thursday I will demo the games of Project GIPF, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday I'll run the tournaments. For the details: go to the Agenda!

Of course, in the first place we hope that *many* French players will participate at the different tournaments, but it would be nice if it would become a bit of an international Championship. So far 3 Belgians and 1 German have let me know that they'll go to Cannes - to play *and* to enjoy the atmosphere in the South of France. If you would also consider going there, please contact me. The City of Cannes sponsors the event, and as a result of that it is possible to find good accomodation at low prices if you don't mind sharing an appartment with others. It would be just great to have a few more of you there.

Yoshi Ikkai (J) remains the strongest Gipfer

Yoshi *the Octopus* Ikkai from Japan remains the number 1 ranked GIPF-player. Last October he had to be in Europe for professional reasons. He made use of it to come to the GIPF-club in Antwerp, Belgium, and to go the yearly games fair in Essen, Germany. Yoshi hadn't played an official game of GIPF any more since August 26, 2000, the day he became the very first GIPF World Champion. In London, that was, during the Mind Sports Olympiad. Since then more than 4 years passed by and many of the strong players from Belgium and the Netherlands were eagerly waiting for the opportunity to play against him again. Finally, here was the occasion. He was challenged by all of the top-players. André De Laet, Patrick Van de Perre and Ad Rovers succeeded in beating him, but they also lost a game. Jix Demerco, Werner Dupont and Aksel De Meester just lost. So, Yoshi won 6 of 9 game he played and that was enough to stay were he was: on the number 1 spot of the rankings!

New GIPF and ZÈRTZ rankings

The last adjustments of the GIPF and ZÈRTZ rankings are from about one year ago. There have not been many competitions in 2004, so there was not really a necessity for a update. But at the end of the year we had the World Championships in Essen and in Eindhoven, and, of course, there were also the games of GIPF that Yoshi Ikkai had played. Maîte, time for a few calculations!

Here's the GIPF top three: as written above, the Octopus did not have too much problems to stay in the 1st place. Also Ad Rovers (NL) stayed were he was, namely in 2nd place. Patrick Van de Perre had to make room for André De Laet, the reigning World Champion, who jumped from the 7th to the 3rd place.

Go to the new GIPF and/or the ZÈRTZ  rankings.

Results e-ZÈRTZ and ZÈRTZ league

A bit late, nonetheless here they are:

The yearly e-ZÈRTZ+11 tournament on Richard's PBeM server has been won for the second time by sharkey. Last year he won with a clear cut, this year he had a harder fight on his hands. Sebastian ended with the same score (7 wins out of 8 games), so the results of the previous round was used to break the tie and that turned out to be in favour of sharkey. The other finalists were mreits, robrecht and djanes, ending, respectively, in 3rd, 4th and 5th place. Gratz also to them. And I hereby also thank the other players for their participation.

The second season of the ZÈRTZ+11 league on Dave Dyer's boardspace.net was played in two groups. The ZÈRTZ+11 league concerns games that are played online in real time. The first season learned that there often was a problem with the time difference between North-America and Europe and for that reason it appeared better to play two different competitions. Ddyer was the strongest in the North-American group; he won all of his games. Mreitz, the winner of the first season, won the European group. Maybe the two winners should play a *best out of 7* or so?

You can find the results of all the games played in both the e-ZÈRTZ as the online tournament on Michael Reitz's the ZF1 site.
BTW, Mike, thanks for having run these tournemants again.