By Ivan Chan
The 2024 World Othello Championship (WOC) has finally concluded in Hangzhou, China on Sunday. Seiya Kurita (JPN) beat 4 times WOC champion Yusuke Takanashi (JPN) in 2 games and became the newly crowned world champion in 2024. It was a well-deserved victory for the Seiya Kurita, who won all 13 games in the Swiss rounds but he only went down in the semi final last year. Good to see the bitterness has been turned into the sweetness through all the hard work and persistence, congratulation Seiya.
For our Australian representatives, two times WOC female champion Joanna William was ranked 9th on the standings and she also won 9 games out of 13, setting a new Australian record (she broke her own personal best record of 8.5 wins made in Bangkok, Thailand in 2014). Johanna also came second in the WOC female category, beaten by Hisako Kinoshita (JPN). Huge performance!
Our 13th time Australian Nationals champion Matt Vinar didn’t let us down either. Matt won 7.5 games out of 13 and he was ranked 22ndout of 74 players in total. Matt beat top class players like Maverick Lam (HKG), Kelvin Yang (HKG), and the European Grand Prix (EGP) champion Takuji Kashwabara (FRA), that proved Matt’s international class of the game.
All the results can be found on the following website
http://flipthedisc.com/live/112
Once again, we thank Joanna and Matt’s representation of our country, and we hope they had a wonderful time in China.
