This year the Varsity Match between Oxford and Cambridge universities raised its profile, by having the match at the neutral venue of the London Go Centre.

The three-player teams played three rounds, with Cambridge emerging the winners by six boards to three.

The Oxford players were Alexandru-Petre Pitrop, Han Yang and Guodong Cao, and the Cambridge players were Tony Tunyang Xie, Doha Chris Lee and Zherui Xu. They are shown with non-playing John Bamford from Oxford University.

R1: Cao 0:1 Xie; Pitrop 0:1 Xu; Yang 1:0 Lee

R2: Pitrop 0:1 Lee; Yang 0:1 Xie; Cao 0:1 Xu

R3: Yang 1:0 Xu; Cao 1:0 Lee; Pitrop 0:1 Xie

The second match in the new league season was against Turkey. The match produced some entertaining games of which the British team won three to take their first win of the season. This left the team in sixth place out of ten.

Bruno Poltronieri was the losing player, by resignation to Emre Polat (5d). He wrote: I lost by resignation. I was relatively happy with the opening, though Leela seems to prefer Black. I then managed to cut off part of my opponent's group and get a fairly large territory on the right side, at which point I’m definitely leading. I guess I was too confident after that because I played a very questionable tenuki which probably made the game even again, if not worse. I actually still thought I was winning at this point, but it seems I was wrong. I probably had one more chance to play a cut in the top right, but I missed it.

For the tenth season of the Pandanet Go European Team Championship, the UK team remains in the B-League, the second of four leagues.

The first match was against a strong Swedish team. Jamie Taylor was our only win by resignation against Lova Wåhlin (1d). Bruno Poltronieri lost to Charlie Åkerblom (5d) by 18.5, Alex Kent lost to Martin Li (4d) by Resignation and Des Cann lost to Erik Ouchterlony (4d) on time.

Jamie wrote: I started a very dubious fight in the corner pretty quickly and my opponent misplayed and died. After that she tried to make a huge moyo to compensate, which looked scary for a bit, but she made a very weak group in the process which also died. After that she resigned.

Bruno wrote: Disappointing loss for me. I thought the opening went very well. I pushed around a group and my opponent got decent territory but lost all potential. After that when we switched to the empty upper left, I think it should be easy for me to make enough points.

The Wessex Tournament celebrated its 50th edition by making 2019 a special two-day event. Sponsorship from the T Mark Hall Foundation enabled the nice, but expensive, venue of the Bristol Village Hotel, in Patchway just north of Bristol. Fittingly T Mark had been a member of Bristol Go Club, a great fan of lightning Go and a four-time winner of the Wessex.

The main event on the Saturday afternoon was the T Mark Hall Lightning (played with handicaps). It was won by Peikai Xue, who defeated Carl Roll in the playoff between the two division winners. Both received cups. For non-players, there were kyu-level teaching sessions taught by Richard Hunter and Youngjin Noh.

The Autumn 2019 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read.

On a pleasant autumn day, Cheadle Hulme School once more hosted the 3-round "Northern" tournament, with 32 players competing - 11 of them CHS pupils. The latter included an intrepid foursome in the first year at CHS, who'd scarcely played on full boards before – but nonetheless had great fun, and learned a lot on the day! We were also pleased to see players who had travelled from as far as Edinburgh and Lincoln.

The overall winner was Jingchen Sun, a 3 dan from China, pictured receiving the winner's cash prize from time-honoured organiser, Chris Kirkham. Jingchen was also awarded the Red Rose Shield, in use since 1975.

Twenty five years ago Paul Smith and some others started the Cambridge Junior Chess and Go Club. In order to celebrate their first quarter century it was decided to run an event that would be attractive to both children and adults. After a five year gap, the British Small Board Championship was brought back. It was suspected the main reason for this was that Paul Smith was fed up of having the trophy for so long!

The venue was the modern lofty hall in Storey's Field Centre, in the newly constructed district of Eddington, with a separate room for relaxing and eating some of the large variety and numbers of cakes kindly provided by Andrea Smith and others in the family.

Twenty five years ago Paul Smith and some others started the Cambridge Junior Chess and Go Club. In order to celebrate their first quarter century it was decided to run an event that would be attractive to both children and adults. As the UK Go Challenge Finals were not held in the summer as normal, it was decided the event would be the finals for 2018-2019 (making deciding which age group players were in harder than normal). In order to make it interesting for adults it was decided to combine the event with the 2019 British Small Board Championship, as both events are played on 13x13. It was good to see that event back after a five year gap, though it was suspected it was brought back as Paul Smith was fed up of having the trophy for so long!

The 2019 UK youth go squad has been selected. The team of fifteen players comprises a mix of U20, U16 and U12 players, who form a team to compete for the UK in the European Youth Go Team Championship, played online between November and February. Each of the four matches involves five players (one Under 20yo, two U16 and two U12).

The UK team has improved in strength each year since the championship first started and this year is no exception. The prospect of making it into the youth team and acquiring one of the distinctive red team hoodies has boosted youth go in recent years. Team manager Alison Bexfield explains that she reviews the results from rated tournaments during the year, to select new players for the team.

The first game of this year's British Championship title match took place on Saturday 5th October, between Andrew Kay and Andrew Simons (the two top-placed players from this year's Challenger's League). After an entertaining game Andrew Kay came out on top, winning by resignation. As well as a live relay on KGS, Matthew Macfadyen commented on a clone of the game. The next game of the best-of-three title match is expected to take place in early November - more details to follow.