The winner of the world championship in the browser game GeoGuessr, held in Berlin (Germany), was 21-year-old Hungarian Szabolcs Debre. During one of the decisive plays of the final, he made the so-called “Belarus move” (Belarus hedge), betting that the photo shows Belarus, despite the fact that photographs of the streets of this country are not available on Google Maps.
World championships in GeoGuessr have been held since 2023 by the game developers. Its essence is to guess the location where a particular image was taken from the Google Street View service as part of Google Maps.
The photo is shown randomly to players without any additional prompts, after which they must place a point on the map where it could have been taken. The smaller the distance between the set point and the real one, the more points are awarded.
To correctly identify a location, players usually pay attention to the landscape in the photo, the language of signs and traffic patterns, and also use other deductive methods. The game has become popular in recent years among major global streamers.
On Saturday, September 5, in the decisive match of the finals of the GeoGuessr World Championship – 2026, the prize fund of which was $100,000, the representative of France, Mathieu Huet (Blinky), and the Hungarian Debre met. The previous title holder, US player Radu Casapu (Radu C), was eliminated at an earlier stage.
The last picture shown to the players was an image of a desert landscape in Namibia, the location of which Debre determined with almost perfect accuracy (the Frenchman decided that Argentina was depicted).
Before this, they were shown a certain bridge across the river, on which two men stood and fished. In the background of the summer landscape one could see private houses, fences and a greenhouse.
The Frenchman bet that the picture depicts Ukraine, and the Hungarian, to the surprise of commentators, pointed out Belarus, which does not have official coverage by the Google Street View service.
The “Belarusian maneuver” worked – the point on the map indicated by Debra turned out to be closer to the real shooting location. The photo was actually taken in Russia near the border with Estonia.
The most iconic Belarus all time
byu/Life_Combination_825 ingeoguessr
Fans of the game were delighted with the champion's decision – as Reddit users write, no one had used this method in championship finals before him. This move is based on the assumption that the place is somehow located in Eastern Europe.
“The most legendary Belarus of all time,” reads a popular post in a group of GeoGuessr fans, who also called it the best trolling in the history of the game.
