European Cup

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I wondered about the appeal of other random draw tournaments and thought that one combining Puzzles and Sudoku might be nice. There were exactly 128 European competitors in Puzzle Ramayan Round 1, so I've drawn them all against each other to compare scores for Sudoku Mahabharat Round 1 this weekend. Obviously most people don't know they're competing in this, and there will probably be a lot of no-shows for the Sudoku, but it might be fun!

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There were quite a lot of no-shows for this, but we've got a decent number of solvers who seem to be doing both competitions. The biggest upset in Round 1 was Martin Ender who lost to Reinier from Netherlands, and the #1 qualifier Freddie Hand, who doesn't do SM. One other upset was Calum Mailer who narrowly lost to Czechia's Pavel Kocka despite finishing in the top 50.

Here are the full Round 1 results. Where neither competitor competed, the one with the highest qualifying position from PR1 has been put through.




Round 2 is already taking place (sorry for the delay in publishing). There are 5 UK competitors left, including an all-UK clash in Adam Bissett vs Matthew White.

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Round 2 is now complete and there are 3 UK solvers in this last 32. Here are the Round 2 results:



Round 3 takes place this weekend, but through until 6th March if you're at the UK Open this weekend. Here are the fixtures:

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Some players from the top 100 got knocked out in this round. Robert Vollmert, Valentin Miakinen, Gennady Korotkevich, Aubin Danzo, Salih Alan all caught my eye.



We head into the last 16 on a Puzzle Ramayan. I suspect my run is over as I come up against Christian Konig.

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Again I ran into a top competitor this round and was knocked out, but there were lots of scores in the top 50, so it's a competitive field making up the quarter finals.



The quarter finals sees an all-German affair between Christian Konig and Martin Merker, and one of the remaining outsiders, Tomasz Skalski manages to avoid the really big names by drawing Serbia's Branko Ceranic.



Of these last 8, it looks like all bar Christian and Tomasz favour sudoku, so we could see some really high placements this weekend.

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In this round, 90 solvers finished the whole round, including all 8 quarter finalists, so it was just down to speed.

Tomasz Skalski (POL) 85th-52nd Branko Ceranic (SRB)
Christian Konig (GER) 35th-22nd Martin Merker (GER)
Jan Vondruška (CZE) 19th-38th Dominik (POL)
Tiit Vunk (EST) 4th-6th Chiel Beenhakker (NED)

Tiit and Chiel both had great rounds and Chiel was incredibly unlucky to come up against the one European to beat him. Christian, the top puzzler left in the contest was taken out by fellow German Martin Merker, again with less than a 5 minute difference in their times. 2025 UK Open Sudoku champion Jan also remains in the contest.

In the semi finals this weekend, the draw is:

Martin Merker vs Tiit Vunk
Branko Ceranic vs Jan Vondruška

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2 of the 4 semi-finalists finished the whole set in this Puzzle Round, but unfortunately for Tiit, he came up against the other one, so the final this weekend will see Jan Vondruška face Martin Merker. These two have finished very close together in all the Sudoku rounds so far, but Jan has just edged them.

Martin Merker 44th-76th Tiit Vunk
Branko Ceranic 166th-86th Jan Vondruška

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Unfortunately, Martin had a tough time and wasn't able to get close to Jan, who finished the whole set with 5 minutes to go. Congratulations Jan!

Jan Vondruška (CZE) 10th-142nd Martin Merker (GER)