Clean sweep for Team Japan at WOC2023 in Rome

WOC2023

The 45th World Othello Championships were held in Rome from November 1st to November 5th 2023.
The Japanese team totally dominated the tournament with a clean sweep of titles this year, Yasushi Nagano winning the overall title, Hisako Kinoshita won the women’s title and Osuke Kawazoe won the youth title.

The 2023 Japanese Meijin title winner Seiya Kurita had finished in the lead after the first two days with a perfect 13/13 score. However Kurita became the latest victim of the “13 win curse” as he went on to lose the semi-finals against his teammate Yasushi Nagano in two straight games (so far it’s happened to all those who finish with 13 wins, it happened to David Shaman in 1991 and also Yasushi Nagano in 2016).
Nagano went on to defeat Rujipas Aunchulee of Thailand in two very entertaining games in the final to become the new 2023 world Othello champion.

Australia was represented this year by my 17 year old son Alessandro and myself. Alex did really well for his first WOC finishing on 5.5 points and one of the highlights for him was playing against the new world champion Nagano in Round 4.

Alex-Yasushi

Round 4 : Alessandro Ortiz (AUS) – Yasushi Nagano (JPN)

You can find all the standings and games of the 45th WOC on the official WOC2023
website. For the lighter side of WOC2023 I highly recommend reading Carlo Affatigato’s article
.

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