This year’s Slovenian Open, traditional Vladimir Omejc Memorial, started the 2009/2010 edition of Pandanet European Go Cup in an exciting way: at the end of a six-round tournament, held in Hotel Astoria in Bled, there were no unbeaten players left at all - and two of them, In-seong Hwang 7d (Korea/Germany) and Ting Li 6d (China/Austria), tied for the first place after some heavy fighting in the last day’s games, while Pal Balogh 6d (Hungary) finished as third in this tough competition, followed by his compatriot Csaba Mero 6d and Czech stars Vladimir Danek 5d and Ondrej Šilt 6d, the winner of previous PGEC season.

All in all, 53 players from eight countries took part in the competition; more than 20 of them were holders of dan level, including a handful of ex-inseis. The duels below the top group were no less fierce than those between the big guns, and eventual winners in different categories had to work hard for their success: at the end, the best 3d became Andrej Kralj (Slovenia), the prize for the best 2d went to Damir Galić (also Slovenia), best shodan/1k was Peter Marko 1d (Hungary) and Vigor Grego from Croatia finished at the top of the group of players 2k or lower. Last but no least, the experienced veteran Borut Zaplotnik 1k (Slovenia) received a special award for 5 wins, upsetting a couple of dan players on his way to this notable result.

There are only a few days left until the start of this year’s Slovenian Open: the traditional Memorial of Vladimir Omejc, which will be held for the 20th consecutive time, will kick off the 2008-2009 season of Pandanet Go European Cup, which is sponsored by the popular go server Pandanet. The tournament will be held from April 18th to 20th in Bled, one of the major tourist centres in Slovenia, and some of the best European players have already confirmed their participation. More than 70 players of all strengths are already registered for the event, almost half of them are dan level holders. This alone promises an exciting tournament, not to mention the attractive side-possibilities that Bled has to offer for anybody.

A thriller that ended in sensation – the surprise winner of 16th Ljubljana Open is Srečo Čamernik 2k, who captured this traditional tournament with four wins out of five rounds, edging four other players with the same final MacMahon score thanks to superior SOS and SODOS criteria. Exciting, drawn-out tournaments seem to be the norm in Slovenia these days: SOS points already decided top-three places at this year’s Maribor Open, and the same thing happened in recently finished National Championship. In this respect, the tournament was extra-drawn-out, but Čamernik’s win was well deserved, since he also beaten the second-placed Gregor Butala 4d and Ruben Belina 1d, who finished third.

Čamernik’s triumph also set a historical landmark: namely, this was the first time that this traditional tournament, who is nowadays held as a memorial to late Peter Gaspari, was won by a kyu player. Čamernik took good advantage of the fact that this is a handicap tournament, but he also showed that he knows how to use his recent great form – he had also done well in Ljubljana Oza, where he scored some big wins and reached the play-off. Of course, this is the first tournament he won and his biggest success so far; he promptly received 1k rank after his great achievement.

Nevertheless, the field of 18 players from Slovenia and Italy provided some great games and apart from the top duels, it was interesting to see various match-ups in the lower ranks, which were well represented. It is worth to mention Maja Logar and Miha Zaletel, who successfully made their debut in official competitions.