The 2012 Irish Go Congress occurred over the weekend with 48 players attending in sunny Dublin. Csaba Mero, 6d Hungary, won the main tournament, The 1st Confucius Cup, with a perfect 5/5 score. In second place was Guochen Xie, 6d China, who flew in from Boston for the event. Kim Ouweleen, 3d Amsterdam, came third, edging out Chu Lu, 4d Warwick Uni. Former Dublin resident Julien Renaud, 1d France, returned to Ireland to win first place below the bar, which was at 2d. He was followed by James Hutchinson, 1d Belfast, and Ian Davis, 1d Belfast.

Winning four games were Diana Blaszczyk, 4k Warsaw, Frank Tan, 9k Dublin, Marek Gutkowski, 9k Warsaw, and Paul Kelly, 11k Belfast. Patrick Ridley, 10k Chester, won best double-digit kyu player. The Friday evening Rapid tournament was won by Julien Renaud with five straight wins.

Full results of the Confucius Cup are available here. As an interesting piece of trivia, Liming Wang (Director of the UCD Confucius Institute) played in the first Irish Open.

Rapid and Confucius Cup photos by Tibi.