After a few years in other countries, the World Amateur Go Championships has returned to Japan. The 39th edition has the restaurant review website Gurunami as its sponsor and is being held at the Nihon Ki-in in Tokyo. 61 players from around the world are taking part.

As expected after four rounds it is the big four that are unbeaten: Japan, China, Korea and Chinese Taipei. Several of the top European players are on three wins.

The UK's representative is British Champion Daniel Hu. After four out of eight rounds he has two wins and is in 26th place. He lost to Dmitry Surin of Russia, beat Jose Islas of Mexico and Stjepan Mestrovic of Croatia, and lost to Stanislaw Frejlak of Poland. He next plays the player from Norway.

Ireland's Michael Thai is on one win, having beaten Theodor Nedev of Bulgaria, but lost to the players from Denmark, Indonesia and Croatia.

The Spring 2018 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read.

A great win in the eighth round - against the strong third-place team from the Netherlands - sees the UK guaranteed at least second place in the Pandanet B League. With just Sweden to go for the UK, unless there is an upset by Turkey against top team Germany in the last round, the team will be in the play-off position and will have a chance for promotion by playing a team from the bottom of the A League. This is likely to be Serbia and the team would have good chances in a best-of-five match against them. Well done to the team for playing so well.

Andrew Simons wrote: I lost against Gilles van Eeden 6d by resignation.

The 51st British Go Congress was held in Bristol and the very modern Future Inns Hotel, just across from the Cabot Circus shopping centre in the middle of the city.

It started on the Friday with a teaching session and then the British Open Lightning. This was won by Alex Kent (3d); he beat the previous winner, Xunrui Zhao (3d) from London, into second place.

However in the British Open, played as usual on the Saturday and Sunday, it was Xunrui Zhao who was the winner, scoring victories in all six games. In second place was Jon Diamond (3d) and third was Sandy Taylor (2d) from the local club.

Final day (day 3) of Kiev Tournament (continued from part 3).

Whilst today may have been only marginally positive, with 10.5 wins to 9.5 losses, we are delighted to finish up, by 26 wins to 23 defeats - a good improvement on last year's EYGC in Grenoble. Considering the still very young squad, we can be very happy, as the bulk of the team will be young enough to play in their current age groups for quite some years yet. All our players won at least two games out of six. This includes our joint-youngest player Edmund who, despite a confidence-draining start of four losses, showed strength of character to win both his final rounds.

Day 2 (of 3) of Kiev Tournament (continued from part 2)

In the morning, we played Round 3 of six. The spoils went to our five U20 (under age 20) players, as four won, and the loser was playing against one of our own!

Day 1 (of 3) of Kiev Tournament (continued from part 1)

The remaining three squad members and their three mothers arrived safely on Wednesday afternoon, on the eve of the main tournament. We all went to a pizza restaurant, for some squad players to get to know newcomers.

On Thursday 29th, the tournament kicked off with an elaborate opening ceremony. This featured firstly a long and colourful Chinese dragon, then a superb circus troupe of youngsters. There were gymnasts, trapeze artists and girls climbing up silk ropes, acrobatically spinning back down, all very well rehearsed. The local Go pro Artem did some translation into English of words from various Ukrainian dignitaries who wished all players good luck and enjoyable games.

Then came the first of the day's two rounds of games.

The first part of the UK Youth Go team - kindly sponsored by DeepMind - has arrived in Kiev, Ukraine for the 225-strong annual European Youth Go Congress; the remaining members joining us on Wednesday. Everyone is looking forward to the main event: two games per day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The team has been getting used to mounds of snow (it's still freezing overnight), signs mostly in Cyrillic, plus Ukrainian and Russian words.

On Monday Natasha, a Kiev resident and part-organiser of the tournament, took us on a tour of the wonderful, quaint and deep metro; we climbed the bell tower at St.

In the seventh round of the European B-League, UK were matched against Norway placed fourth. With a staggered start time the match lasted from 19:00 to nearly 23:00 UK time. The match ended a draw with Andrew and Chris winning on the top boards, but Des and Jon losing on the other two. This left the UK in second place with 12 points, as Germany beat Denmark to go clear top with 13 points. Netherlands drew with Austria to stay third on 11 points. With just Netherlands and Sweden to go the UK team are still hopeful of promotion.

Andrew Simons wrote: I won my game against Jostein Flood.

I was black and started off with the AlphaGo (and 19th century) idea that approaching both his 3-4 points to prevent shimaris and then tenuki-ing was a good idea.

The 42nd Trigantius took place in a spring-like Cambridge, again held at the University Social Club in Mill Lane. A recent record of 56 players (including two ghosts) meant the event got off to a late start. In addition in the afternoon there were 28 players in Paul Smith's Novices Tournament making it even more popular (though more crowded). This number included four adults and a large group of pupils from Harpenden Academy.

The main tournament saw the return of Sam Aitken (3d) who won all three, including a win secured against Andrew Simons (4d Cambridge), to become this year's holder of the Trigantius Trophy.
Other players on three wins were Alison Bexfield (1k Letchworth), Matthew Reid (1k Cambridge) and Sebastian Pountney (8k).