It’s no secret to anyone that Latin America is one of the regions where the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the worst. Under these circumstances, the main way go enthusiasm has kept up is through online team matches. 

So far three university team matches have been played. The first one was played on June 6 between the Ecuadorian ‘Universidad de las Américas’ (UDLA) University Go Club and Mexico’s ‘Taller de Go UNAM’. 

The second match was on June 27 between the Ecuadorian UDLA Club and ‘Universidad de Chile’ Engineer Faculty Go Club. This was a four-board match in which Ecuador took the victory with a 3-1 score.

The third match was between Mexico’s Taller de Go UNAM and ‘Universidad de Chile’ Engineer Faculty Go Club. On this occasion the match was played on eight boards, resulting in a 5-3 victory for the Chilean team.

‘The idea came around after the Mexican Internet Go Quarantine Tournament, which was played from April 13 to May 10, when Diego Albuja from Ecuador approached me with the idea of a University Team Match’, Dante Hernández from Mexico’s ‘Taller de Go UNAM’ reports to IGF. 

‘University players are enthusiastic about these matches, so we hope to keep running them in the near future’, Dante Hernández adds.

Besides these university team matches, national team matches have also taken place, such as a Colombia–Cuba match on five boards and a Venezuela-Chile match on seven boards, both played on July 19. Also, a nine-board ‘Encuentro Patagónico‘ match took place between Chile and Argentina on July 4.