XIII Го Конгресс 1969
Любляна, Югославия 1969, 3 – 17 августа
The 13th Congress was held in Ljubljana. Present was Edward Lasker (author of 'Go and Gomoku', the man who was largely responsible for bringing Go to the USA, aside from Go he was a well known name in chess and is probably responsible for the saying, that if there is extra terrestial life, they surely will play Go). At the opening ceremony he held a speech about the beginning of his Go career (1905).
About 120 participants from ten countries played several tournaments. In the most important event, the European Championship, ten players participated. Already in round three, Manfred Wimmer had taken the lead. He increased his lead to the extent that he could afford to lose his last round game against Henk de Vries. He finished first with a mere half point lead over Jьrgen Mattern. The final standing:
1. Manfred Wimmer (Aut) 8 points
2. Jьrgen Mattern (Ger) 7.5 points
3. Zoran Mutabzija (Yug) 6 points
4. Max Rebattu (Nld) 5.5 points
Henk de Vries (Nld) 5.5 points
6. Eduart Ekart (Yug) 4.4 points
7. Michael Katscher (Ger) 3 points
Ernst Skrob (Aut) 3 points
9. Tony Goddard (Gbr) 2 points
10. Primoz Pecenko (Yug) 0 points
The Master Tournament was won by Joze Intihar (Yug). Rob van Zanten (Nld) and Oskar Eberhard (Ger) shared the second place. In the second Master Tournament Bojan Rosj (Yug) finished first.
The results of Rebattu and De Vries in the European Championship meant that The Netherlands would win the country ranking with 62.5 percent, Germany got 61.8 percent. Austria took third and Yugoslavia fourth.
In all the other events the Yugaslavs proved to be very successful. Benkovic won the Zone Tournament and Golja the second Zone. Mutabzija won the general handicap tournament.
A fair share of the smooth running congress was because of the excellent functioning of the tournament referee, A.P.H. Schilp, former president of the Dutch Go Association. New was the mass attention of the media. All of the papers reported daily, the radio summerized the highlights of each day, and also television broadcasted several reports about the congress. Also, throughout the town banners and posters were hanging around and in two of the main shops the complete window display was dedicated to Go.
