Tony Goddard

Tony (February 1947 to January 2017) lived in Sheffield and first heard of Go in 1964 from a Chess magazine where Bobby Fischer mentioned Go as possibly harder than Chess. In 1965 he went to Cambridge to study Mathematics and due to Jon Diamond made the discovery that much improvement in Go can be made from theoretical study, and in particular the study of the games of great players!

In 1968 he played in the first of several European Championships, his best result being second in 1976 at Cambridge. He also subsequently competed in many tournaments in the UK and mainland Europe, including Mind Sports Olympiads in London, the World Mind Sports Games in 2008 and the Ing Memorial in Amsterdam. At various times he won the British Open, Irish Open, Belfast, Wessex and Three Peaks, and was the Challenger in the British Championship.

He worked in many locations, including Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Belfast and two stints in Saudi Arabia. He also worked for a consultancy in Washington DC whose remit was to help develop PC systems running in Arabic for the administration and went to Thailand to produce a spread-sheet program which worked in Thai. More recently he was involved in digital art, having programmed video wall installations in Sheffield, Manchester, Tate London, Haarlem and Amsterdam.

January 2017