The challenge is to get to 1 dan, or another target grade of your choosing. Signing up to the challenge is a committment to do some regular study and some serious play. In exchange we arrange for a mentor to help you get stronger.
To sign up, you must be a BGA member, and you must be a kyu player.
Then you must be prepared to make the commitment to study and set yourself a target. If you are not yet ready for the 1 dan target, you should choose a lesser one for yourself. Generally, 10 kyus and weaker should be aiming to improve by at least 3 grades, 2 kyus to 9 kyus should be aiming to improve by at least 2 grades.
The 2008 challenge has just started on August 3rd, with the sending out of 21 pairings of mentors and challengers, and the welcome emails.
Please report any problems to the organizers.
I hope the challengers and mentors will create a community, focussed around this section of the web site. There is already a mailing list for all participants. Hopfully we can add a forum and a photo gallery - it all depends on how much I (or we) learn about what the site is capable of.
Another meeting point is the British Room on KGS. The challenge is also sometimes discussed on the gotalk email list.
As last year, we hope to organize some lunchtime talks at selected tournaments.
This is the third year the shodan challenge has run. We still have the information about the challenge in previous years [1].
Links:
[1] http://britgo.org/events/shodan/old