At last every game of the second round has been played, let’s see what happened!

Israel 3 – 1 Finland
The victory on board 1 by Antti Törmänen (now insei in Japan) wasn’t enough: Israel was able to subvert the game and clench an unexpected victory thanks to a 1 point mistake during the final ko battle on board 4, played yesterday. As far as I can see, Black should have played T1 at move 249, which gives him a further threat in T5, just enough to win the ko and the game by 0.5 points.
Antti has published a pro-mediated comment of the first board on his blog (post 1, post 2).

Austria 1 – 3 Serbia
A close game decided by sunday’s match between Viktor Lin and Dusan Mitic. The Mitic brothers are still undefeated, and Serbia has now closed the gap with Finland.

Slovenia 1 – 3 Denmark
Denmark prevailed, and moves to the fifth place. As of today they are the only team who won all games on board 3, helped by their balanced lineup. Slovenia put up a good fight, winning on board 4 and losing board 1 only by 7.5 points.

Belgium 3 – 1 Slovakia
Belgium was able to win even without one of its two top players. The most interesting match was probably board 1, in which Lucas Neirynck prevailed after killing one of his opponent’s groups.

United Kingdom 2 – 2 Switzerland
Victories by John Walch in a game characterized by an unusual opening and Sébastien Ott in a game of many invasions allowed Switzerland to get one point and gave the UK their third draw in five games.

Here you can find the pairings, games, and complete results.

What’s next? – Round 6
The next round will hopefully be played between the 15th and the 21st of February.

There won’t be any direct confrontations in the battle for promotion between Finland, Israel and Serbia, as they’ll be playing the UK, Switzerland, and Belgium. Serbia has probably the easiest pairing, and will hope that the UK and Belgium won’t leave their games empty handed.

The last two matches are between Denmark and Slovakia and neighbours Slovenia and Austria.