Go Club Zürich

News

Workshop with Cho Seok-bin and Kikkawa Hajime

On Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 October 2026, Cho Seok-bin 8d and Kikkawa Hajime 4p will give a workshop at the Zurich Go Club. Both evenings start at 19:00. The two teachers are visiting several European cities this autumn, and Zurich is one of their stops.

Cho Seok-bin 8 dan

Cho Seok-bin Workshop evening at the Zurich Go Club in September 2025

Cho Seok-bin was an insei (pro student) at the Korean Baduk Association in Seoul. From 2005 to 2008 he lived in Germany and Switzerland, where he taught Go and played many European tournaments. Some of his results from that time:

He moved to Japan in 2008.

Since 2013 he has run Nakamura Honinbo, a Go club and children’s Go school in Nagoya. Six of his students there have become professional players, among them Terada Shuta and Suzukawa Nanami (Nihon Ki-in school list). The school also takes foreign students, for single days or longer stays. Twice a year it holds a Go camp.

Kikkawa Hajime 4 dan pro

Kikkawa Hajime in Prague at the Old Hunter’s Cup, May 2026

Kikkawa Hajime is a professional with the Nihon Ki-in at its Kansai headquarters in Osaka (Nihon Ki-in profile). He was born in Hiroshima in 1990 and started playing Go at 12. He became an insei in 2005 and passed the pro exam in 2011 (Osaka Kodomo Igo Dojo).

Tournament results:

He is head instructor at the Osaka Kodomo Igo Dojo, a Go school for children that opened in 2019 (Wikipedia). Ten of his students have become professionals. One of them is Omote Yuto, now 4 dan at the Kansai Ki-in (Kikkawa Go Dojo). He also teaches Go at a kindergarten and gives online lessons in English.

Programme

At their Frankfurt workshop the programme is:

The Zurich evenings will follow a similar format.

Details

Dates Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 October 2026
Time 19:30
Place Zurich Go Club
Fee No fee
Registration  No registration

The workshop is open to players of all levels.

30.09.2026

Swiss Go Championship 2026

The 2026 Swiss Go Championship was held on September 19 and 20. Eight players competed for the title, which was won by John Walch.

At the same time, the 2026 Swiss Go Open took place, won by Tianyi Fu.

Detailed results are available on the tournament website. Incidentally, the Zurich Go Club was represented by 11 players. 💪

Worth mentioning was an incident in the final round that once again highlighted the importance of ladder reading.

08.05.2026

MANIAC at Schauspielhaus Zürich

In 2016, Lee Sedol lost to AlphaGo in a five-game match. Schauspielhaus Zürich has turned that into a play.

Photo by © Eike Walkenhorst / Schauspielhaus Zürich

Based on Benjamín Labatut’s novel, the 90-minute world premiere (directed by Calixto Bieito, Pfauen, from 8 May 2026) culminates in the 2016 match between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, re-enacted on stage.
In Game 4, Move 78 at L11 Lee Sedol plays an unorthodox move that AlphaGo misreads, upon which the AI resigns, it’s like for the last time.

The play tells the story of how we got there; from John von Neumann, who designed the modern computer in the 1940s and contributed to the atomic bomb, to the AI systems that grew out of his work. Go runs through the whole piece as a common thread.

If you play Go and know what the 2016 match meant, don’t miss this play!
Tickets: Schauspielhaus Zürich, Pfauen.
Running through the end of June 2026.

28.02.2026

Zurich Spring Tournament 2026

This year’s tournament will be again at GZ Buchegg. Play go in the exact two last days of spring!
zurich.swissgo.org/tournament2026

End of the Year Holiday Schedule 2025

The club will be closed on Wednesday, December 24th, and Wednesday, December 31st.
Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year!

12.08.2025

Workshop with Cho Seok-bin 8d & Cho Hye-Yeon 9p

On Tuesday 23th and Thursday 25th September we will have Cho Seok-bin at the club again. He will bring his friend Cho Hye-Yeon, she is a well known pro from Korea. Check her profile on Sensei Library, she also has a cool video channel on youtube.
Seok-bin will bring his new book “Let’s master Go, the road to 4 dan”.
On Wednesday 24th we play in the club like always.

12.05.2025

New Website

We have a new website! I’s built with the Kirby-CMS. At the moment there is not much new content, but we are organising a Club Tournament and you can already register now.

The previous website will remain accessible: zurich.swissgo.org/archive