History of Go in Slovenia

The history of go in Slovenia is connected with the history of go on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. In the following article we shall deal with events concerning go in Slovenia. The history of go in Slovenia can be found also in Ranka Yearbook 10, so in the following article we shall enlarge with the events occurring in the last decade.

First we would like to mention the go club in Pula (now a part of Croatia, at that time the main Austro-Hungarian naval base), where go was played from the year 1900 to the end of the First World War. In that club, in the year 1914, the young Slovenian naval officer Ervin Fink learned how to play go. Much later, in 1960, he wrote a series of articles about go in a Slovenian weekly newspaper. In the year 1961 he published the first go book in the Slovenian language - Go igra (The Game of Go).

As the result of these articles, a number of students, who used to meet in the chess club in Ljubljana, began to play go. Very soon a go club was founded (December 22, 1961) with Ervin Fink as the president. Go društvo Ljubljana (Go Club Ljubljana) very quickly established international contacts and so on August 5, 1962 it was accepted as the fifth member of the European Go Federation.

Slovenian players participated in the 1st and 2nd International Go Tournament (1963 and 1964) which were held in Tokyo.

Go društvo Ljubljana organised an international team tournament in March 1964 for the cup Zlati zmaj (Golden Dragon - the symbol of town of Ljubljana). The tournament became traditional and was played every year until 1978. Since the main contestants for the first places were Slovenian and Austrian town-teams, the tradition was renewed, in 1985, with the team matches between Yugoslavia and Austria. These matches on 8 boards became regular events held every year in both countries. For Yugoslav team usually 6 or 7 players appeared from Slovenia.

In April 1965, Lovro Šturm published the book Kako se igra go (How to Play Go) in Slovenian and later also in Serbo-Croatian language. In the same year Go društvo Ljubljana published the first bulletin. These publications caused the rise in go activity and the number of players grew constantly. Many new clubs were founded and so on April 28, 1968 nine clubs established Go zveza Slovenije (Slovenian Go Association), with Lovro Šturm as president and Peter Gaspari as secretary.

The Slovenian players participated in numerous international tournaments with very good results. Zoran Mutabžija (the member of Go društvo Ljubljana till the dissociation of Yugoslav Go Association) won the European championship in the year 1967 (in Staufen) and in the year 1971 (in Bristol). Eduard Ekart and Igor Bizjak placed very well on several European championship.

The other players, who had good results on the master tournaments (on European Go Congresses) were: Peter Movrin, Andrej Šturm, Peter Gaspari, Jože Intihar and Radovan Golja.

From the year l969 to 1974 there were also international tournaments in Bled with very strong participants. Slovenian players won these tournaments in 1970 (Mutabžija and Ekart), in 1973 (Klemencic), and in 1974 (Bizjak).

In 1969 Go zveza Slovenije (Slovenian Go Association) organised the 13th European Championship in Ljubljana. Next year, Slovenian go players visited USA, participating in an international tournament in New York, and playing matches with teams of go clubs in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Boston.

In 1974 Ervin Fink was awarded the Okura Prize for his efforts to spread go.

From that period we would like to mention the participation in Prague tournaments, where Lojze Šuc was 1st (1978) and 2nd (1979) and Peter Gaspari was 3rd (1978).

On October 15, 1978 three republic go association (Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia) founded Yugoslav Go Association, which took over the membership in the European Go Association from Go zveza Slovenije.

The winners of the Yugoslav championships were the participants in the WAGC; the members of the Slovenian clubs who participated in WAGC tournaments were:
1979 - Šuc, 1980 - Mutabžija, 1981 - Gaspari, 1982 - Ekart, 1984 - Šuc, 1985 - Mutabžija, 1987 - Matoh and 1990 - Mutabžija.

The three constituent go association of the former Go Association of Yugoslavia dissociated on October 8, 1991. The Go Association of Slovenia immediately (in November) started the process for membership in the European (EGF) and International Go Federation (IGF). So on the general meeting of EGF 1992 in Canterburry Slovenia was accepted in the EGF and in 1993 in the IGF. On the 1992 meeting of EGF Slovenian Go Association accepted to host the Grand -prix tournaments. So the tournaments were played in the years from 1993 to 1999 each year. In the year 2000 the tournament in Bled became a part in the series of the Toyota tour tournaments (top B). These tournaments are trying to revive the tradition of the "Golden Dragon" (Zlati zmaj) tournament and later of the Memorial to Lado Omejc. The history of the Lado Omejc Memorial you can find in Ranka ?? The Lado Omejec Memorial Tournament was played from 1989 to 1992 in Jezersko. Since 1993, when it attained the status of the Grand Prix tournament, it has been played in Bled.

The Slovenian championships were played every year since 1968,
Slovenian champions (some of them more times) in alphabetic order were: Bizjak, Cefarin, Ekart, Flajs, Gaspari, Intihar, Jukic, Klemencic, Matoh, Mutabžija, Šturm and Zagorc.

The Go Association of Slovenia publishes not a magazine, but issued the bulletins at the some occasions. More about the publications in Slovenian language you can find in Ranka 12. In the year 1996 we edited Bulletin for the 35 Anniversary of the Ljubljana Go Club (founded in December 1961). With the European Go Centre we prepared in the Slovenian language the cards for teaching in the year 1997 and the translation of the book Step by Step in the year 1998.

From the year 1961 many well-known players from other continents visited Slovenia. Let us mention a few of them (in order of their visits): Kaoru Iwamoto, Kazuo Matsumoto, Hirotaka Sanno, Tatsuko Masubuchi, Edward Lasker, Shuyo Miyashita, Sachiko Honda, Chizu Kobayashi, Yoshiaki Nagahara, Kunio Ishi and Hisashi Shirakami with the group of 22 players among them Shoji Hashimoto, Ryuji Ieda, Hirotaka Okahashi and Ryoichi Kuroda. The last visit of the Japanese players was in September 1999. Yoko Inori and Yukari Umezawa visited go clubs in Kranj, Ljubljana and Novo mesto.

At last we would like to mention the presidents of Go zveza Slovenije :
1968 - 1976 - Lovro Šturm
1976 - 1985 - Peter Gaspari
1985 - 1987 - Werner Ussar,
1987 - 1991 - Dušan Jukic,
1991 - 2000 - Peter Gaspari